DOUG MACEACHERN

MacEachern: Green energy billionaires doing own "Koch" thing

Doug MacEachern
columnist | azcentral.com

A day doesn't go by without our "letters to the editor" file flooding with missives about those wicked, old Koch brothers and their insane conspiracy to lay waste to the earth.

A newly released report claims to have found a conspiracy among "green" billionaires like Tom Steyer, the EPA, the White House and conservation groups to force coal-fired energy plants to shut down, clearing a path for heavily subsidized "green" energy sources

Thanks, Mr. Soros!

But Koch-obsessing is getting a little long in the tooth, isn't it? Especially now that there is a new conspiracy to monger: The Rise of the Anti-Kochs: Revenge of the Green Billionaires!

The Energy & Environment Legal Legal Institute is a non-profit, free-market-oriented group that does "strategic litigation, policy research, and public education on important energy and environmental issues." It has produced a report that purports to show proof of conspiratorial collusion between the White House, the Environmental Protection Agency, conservation groups like the Sierra Club and "green-minded" billionaires like Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg.

The group's report contends the billionaires are funneling tens of millions of dollars to environmental groups who use the cash to raise armies of lawyers that then conspire with the EPA (with the eager oversight and support of the Obama White House) to crush the coal industry now, and oil down the road. All on behalf of their heavily subsidized green-industry investments.

I'd never heard of the group before, but let's just get ahead of the crowd anyhow and note that the Soros-funded Center for Media and Democracy has cited evidence that it has "connections with the Koch brothers... and other conservative donors."

The essence of the report is that the billionaires are rigging the regulatory game, state by state, in order to clear the energy field of cheaper coal on behalf of the taxpayer-subsidized solar- and wind-energy industries in which they've invested their billions.

As compared with all those conservative non-profit groups being tormented by the IRS, the political gamesmanship of liberal and environmental groups has totally escaped scrutiny. But the Steyer-types are indisputably sending tens of millions their way, and they are indisputably using that money in service of "clean-energy" causes that will greatly benefit industry investors.

Read for yourself to gauge whether the free-market legal group has effectively connected dots. A quick read left me sensing the quid-pro-quo element was a little thin. But there is no denying the astonishing political investment these guys are making on behalf of liberals and their causes. According to OpenSecrets.org, Steyer's limited partnership was easily the biggest overall contributor in 2014, all on behalf of liberal candidates and causes.

Particularly interesting is a July 2013 email from the head of Steyer's limited partnership, Ted White, to an aide to disgraced former Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber. In part, wrote White:

"As you now know, there are three areas of focus for us, housed in three independent but coordinated entities: business (accelerating the transition to an advanced energy future): policy (related to climate and energy); and political (acting politically to prevent climate disaster and to enable advanced energy businesses to succeed).”

Not to drive home the point too emphatically, but Mr. White and his boss would be among those "advanced energy businesses."

So how far will they all go to to "enable advanced energy businesses to succeed?" I can't really say. But I can say that those old Koch brothers have nothing, conspiratorially speaking, on these guys.