Dark Money: how a secretive group of billionaires is trying to buy political control in the US by Jane Mayer

Author:Jane Mayer [Mayer, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Published: 2016-02-24T05:00:00+00:00

Although the cap-and-trade bill moved to the Senate, it was already dead. At first, Lindsey Graham, the independent-minded Republican from South Carolina, took a courageous leadership role in the fight, offering to co-sponsor the legislation with the Democrat John Kerry and the Independent Joe Lieberman after declaring, to the surprise and delight of environmentalists, "I have come to conclude that greenhouse gases and carbon pollution" are "not a good thing."

Graham, however, feared pressure from his right flank. He warned the Democrats that they had to move fast, before Fox News caught wind of the process. As he feared, in April 2010, Fox News attacked him for backing a "gas tax." A vitriolic Tea Party activist immediately held a press conference in his home state denouncing him as "gay," and a political front group called American Solutions launched a negative campaign against him for his climate stance in South Carolina. American Solutions, it later turned out, was funded by huge fossil fuel and other corporate interests, many of whom were in the Koch fold. Among them were Larry Nichols of Devon Energy, Dick Farmer of Cintas, Stan Hubbard of Hubbard Broadcasting, and Sheldon Adelson, chairman of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation. Within days of the drubbing, Graham withdrew from the process. Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader from Nevada, dealt the final blow to the cap-and-trade bill. Facing a tough reelection himself and worried about making Democrats walk the plank for the bill, he refused after Graham backed out to bring the legislation to the Senate floor for a vote.

Opponents of climate change reform got their wish. "Gridlock is the greatest friend a global warming skeptic has, because that’s all you really want," Morano later acknowledged. "There’s no legislation we’re championing. We’re the negative force. We are just trying to stop stuff."

Asked why the climate legislation failed, Al Gore told The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, "The influence of special interests is now at an extremely unhealthy level. It’s at a point," he said, "where it’s virtually impossible for participants in the current political system to enact any significant change without first seeking and gaining permission from the largest commercial interests who are most affected by the proposed change."

As the first legislation aimed at addressing climate change sputtered out, the Massey mine in West Virginia collapsed in a methane explosion, killing twenty-nine miners. Soon after, a leak from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico triggered the largest accidental oil spill in history, killing and causing birth defects in record numbers of marine animals. A grand jury would charge the owner of the Upper Big Branch mine with criminally conspiring to evade safety regulations, while a federal judge would find the oil rig’s principal owner, British Petroleum, guilty of gross negligence and reckless conduct.

Meanwhile, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was already above the level that scientists said risked causing runaway global warming. Obama acknowledged at this point that he knew "the votes may not be there right now," but, he vowed, "I intend to find them in the coming months.

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