Major Donations to Sierra Club to Promote Wind & Solar Revealed

With apologies to CTFWP members who are Sierra Club supporters based on the GOOD things the organization has done in protecting the environment, here comes the proof that Sierra Club was bought off by special interests to promote wind and solar development.  The folks who stand to make a lot of money off this scam have poured their money & influence into Sierra Club, as documented in "Big Donors . . . Big Conflicts".  That has to filter down to Maine, as Sierra Club Maine Chapter Executive Director Glenn Brand is highly visible pushing wind power in this state, testifying in favor of every wind project and lobbying the Legislature to turn down any changes to the Wind Energy Law.

Thanks go to the Energy and Environment Legal Institute for their work in documenting what most had assumed--that Sierra Club was bought out by the special interests pushing feckless wind and solar energy.  Here is the Press Release dated today:

For Immediate Release:
July 9, 2015
Contact:
Craig Richardson
703-981-5553
E&E Legal Releases Report: Big Donors…Big Conflicts: How Wealthy Donors Use the Sierra Club to Push Their Agenda
Washington, D.C. — Today, the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal), a 501 (c) (3) watchdog group, released an investigatory report, Big Donors...Big Conflicts; How Wealthy Donors Use the Sierra Club to Push Their Agenda, that examines some of the biggest contributors to the Sierra Club and their self-interested motivation for donating. (Fifteen-second video intro available and free for use.)
E&E Legal produced a report on the Sierra Club Foundation last ..., which showed how eight of the Foundation's 18 directors own or operate organizations that directly benefit from its Beyond Coal campaign, the Sierra Club Foundation’s single most expensive program. This type of "self-dealing" is a violation of IRS; a clear case of a private individual receiving “goods and services” from the Sierra Club to their direct and personal benefit. In response, E&E Legal filed a referral with the IRS pointing this out.
In this report, E&E Legal documents similar benefits accruing to some of Sierra Club’s largest donors and, specifically, how they appear to use the Sierra Club for market manipulation. Such self-dealing by donors is prohibited by the IRS.
"What is apparent from this latest report is that very wealthy individuals and family foundations use the Sierra Club as hired guns to beat up the coal industry, and to push renewable energy while these same individuals stand to gain significantly from this market manipulation," said E&E Legal General Counsel David Schnare. "This is a blatant violation of the IRS tax laws, and we will be filing a referral with the tax agency reporting several of the Sierra Club's largest donors as we did last fall regarding the eight Sierra Club Foundation directors who engaged in similar activities."
What is clear from examining the large contributors to the Sierra Club is that these donors seek to use the Sierra Club to manipulate government policies in order to irrevocably alter the world's energy portfolio in a manner that benefits the donors and their businesses. This strategy appears to have been put in place in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Energy Foundation, for example, was launched in 1991 by three extremely wealthy family foundations, including the Rockefeller Foundation.
"Looking back to the late 1980s, what emerges is that these influential elites, or 'one-percenters,' dedicated themselves to sounding alarms about 'global warming,' which morphed into 'climate change' as conditions demanded," said Craig Richardson, E&E Legal Executive Director and author of the report. "Huge money followed from some of this country's largest and most influential foundations, much of which ended up in the hands of groups like the Sierra Club."
Other billionaires, all large contributors to the Sierra Club and including Michael Bloomberg, Nathaniel Simons, and Roger Sant, jumped into the fray. Their strategy is simple. Phase I targeted coal as the threat that must be arrested, claiming anthropogenic C02 emissions are the root cause of 'climate change' and threaten a catastrophic future, thus opening the door to non-coal technologies in which they have invested; and to create movement in the markets that these men can manipulate to their own hedge fund benefit. The group’s unprecedented contributions allowed them to engage in one of the most intense and thorough public relations, political, and grassroots assaults ever waged.
Phase II of their campaign was a heavy push on government policies promoting renewable energy – primarily wind and solar. These intermittent energy sources are not an alternative to what is known as “dispatchable” energy sources such as coal and natural gas-based electricity and thus cannot replace the older, cheaper coal and gas generation. In 2009, this second phase accelerated in earnest with the Obama Administration’s policies to prop up renewable interests, benefiting these donors, while disabling coal through regulatory policy. Similarly, states pushed renewable energy rules requiring a percentage of a state’s consumption be composed of wind and solar.
In addition to serving the obvious financial and generally ideological interests of Sierra’s donors, the Sierra Club’s policies also serve donors who succor population control. This includes the family foundation of William Hewlett, a Sierra Club supporter, which is dedicated to population control and view environmental issues as a means to curb and ultimately reduce human involvement in the world as well. This, of course, is nothing short of a war on the poor, the antithesis of a war on poverty.
"This report helps answer the mystery of why the Sierra Club abandoned the mission of its founder John Muir, which was to protect this country's most sacred nature resources," noted Richardson. "When you see the hundreds of millions of dollars pumped through the Sierra Club for its war on coal - an effort that clearly benefits the very same people who are donating the money - it's clear the Sierra Club is now just a mercenary force beholden to the highest bidder."
Big Donors...Big Conflict was released through E&E Legal’s recently launched special project, Sierra Club Unearthed, an investigatory portal aimed at revealing the extent to which a small group of national hacks have hijacked the Sierra Club and have used it for their own financial and political purposes.

__________________________________________________________________________________

The Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal) is a 501(c)(3) organization engaged in strategic litigation, policy research, and public education on important energy and environmental issues. Primarily through its petition litigation and transparency practice areas, E&E Legal seeks to correct onerous federal and state policies that hinder the economy, increase the cost of energy, eliminate jobs, and do little or nothing to improve the environment.

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Comment by Donna Amrita Davidge on July 9, 2015 at 8:52pm

so interesting but we wind warriors knew this all along- the public who trusts sierra club as having integrity believe whatever that are told- such a sad statement of the lack of caring for the core beliefs of their followers. who would abandon them as many of us have, if they knew the truth. WE ARE NO LONGER THEIR FOLLOWERS!!

Comment by Brad Blake on July 9, 2015 at 7:43pm

Here is part of my testimony regarding the Maine environmental groups promoting the proposed Bowers Project.  My statement followed Glenn Brand's unabashed and unashamed promotion of the project that was denied by Maine DEP.  This is from May 2013:

"

Maine Chapter of the Sierra Club is simply being hypocritical in the conflicts inherent in their mission statement, which includes verbiage such as: “protect the wild places of the Earth” and “protect Maine’s wilderness heritage”.  “For over a century the Sierra Club has been devoted to the conservation of our forests, mountains, rivers, coasts and other natural areas.” 

By supporting blasting away Bowers Mt. and placing 459 ft tall turbines above lakes that are clearly scenic resources of state or national significance, I don’t believe Sierra Club leaders have ever left their Portland offices and experienced the vast national treasure that are the Downeast Grand Lakes.  The Maine Chapter unabashedly follows the national lead and National Sierra Club has been bought off by the wind industry.  It’s too bad, because if Sierra Club founder John Muir were at this hearing, he would vehemently oppose this project.  What he wrote in 1912 regarding Hetch Hetchy can be adapted to the destruction of Bowers Mt. and the Downeast Grand Lakes:  “These temple-destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar.”

U.S. Sen Angus King

THE UNTOLD STORY OF RECORD HILL WIND

The Untold Story of Record Hill Wind, continued

 

Maine as Third World Country:

CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power

 

Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.

Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT

******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********

(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/

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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law

Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future

"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."

https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/

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