Building Political Power

Crossposted from Checks & Balances Project

Grover Norquist is a familiar player in Washington debates, renowned for convincing nearly every Republican in Congress to sign a pledge to not raise taxes. But Norquist’s main job is not as a principled advocate for his brand of limited government but functioning as a paid lobbyist for whatever corporate interests are ready to write him a check. Norquist is a prominent pundit for Big Pharma and Big Tobacco, and now, he’s also batting for Big Oil.

Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), is at the forefront of the latest fight against renewable energy in the United States.

Conservative front groups and fossil fuel interests are attacking renewable energy standards in a coordinated assault to protect profits generated from fossil fuel-based electricity. Twenty-nine states have renewable energy standards and twenty-two of those have become fierce battlegrounds.

This coordinated attack on clean energy bears resemblance to the effort by Big Tobacco to prevent public health laws from impacting the profitability of tobacco companies. And it turns out, a lot of people working to dismantle renewable energy laws are deeply connected to Big Tobacco. Some, like Grover Norquist, even worked with Big Tobacco on their misinformation campaigns and are now turning their lobbying power to attack state clean energy policies.

Originally posted on Checks & Balances Project.

The Will Steger Foundation was a proud partner in the Forward on Climate rally held in Washington DC on Feb 2013. We sent four delegates from our YEA! MN high school program, including this blog’s author, with the unwavering belief that even youth too young to vote have a powerful role to play in the climate movement.

Ever since I had first heard Bill McKibben mention the event that would become the Forward on Climate Rally at his Do The Math tour stop in Minneapolis last November, it lingered in the back of my head as something I wanted to be a part of. An opportunity for tens of thousands of citizens with a common concern for the climate to come together in our nation’s capital doesn’t come along every day. And with a critical decision about the Keystone XL oil pipeline hanging in the balance, it was especially vital that people of all ages and backgrounds turn out to demonstrate their opposition in solidarity. Other young people I talked to also indicated restless wishes of attending the rally, which gave me the impression that Forward on Climate was something bigger that had the potential to be a truly significant, even historic, event. With this in mind, I was unbelievably excited to be given the opportunity to travel to Washington DC with Youth Environmental Activists Minnesota (YEA! MN - a program of the Will Steger Foundation), an experience that proved to be both challenging and inspiring in a number of vivid ways.

Florida youth are disappointed with Senator Marco Rubio’s recent comments on climate change. Last week in an interview with BuzzFeed, Rubio claimed that despite the “significant scientific consensus” that man-made activity is contributing to climate change, he has seen “reasonable debate” on whether this is true or not.