Resources for a sustainable future

22/4/2010 Guardian A secretive group linked to a leading European chemical company has joined the campaign to defeat Barack Obama’s green agenda, taking the fight beyond the traditional players – the big oil and coal firms – the Guardian has learned.The previously unknown Coalition for Responsible Regulation Inc (CRR) is at the
forefront of a strategy to strip the Obama administration of its powers to
regulate greenhouse gas emissions should Congress fail to act on climate change.
The group, which refuses to disclose its complete membership and which does not
have a website, has joined more than a dozen states and a host of industry
groups in 17 legal challenges to the authority of the Environmental Protection
Agency.
The connection to the chemical firm Solvay suggests opposition to action on
global warming, once spearheaded by big oil, is spreading to other industries
that will also be affected by proposals to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide
and five other greenhouse gases.
Several of the petitioners against the EPA are household names, such Peabody
Energy Corp, America’s biggest coal mining company, and the Chamber of Commerce,
which has led opposition to Obama’s climate agenda. They also include prominent
rightwing thinktanks.
But some of those launching legal challenges against the EPA have appeared as if
from nowhere – such as the CRR.
Court documents filed in Texas identify Richard Hogan, chief executive of
Solvay’s wholly owned US subsidiary, as one of three directors of the CRR, the
lead petitioner on the legal challenge to the EPA’s authority to act on
greenhouse gas emissions. The filings give Solvay’s Houston office as Hogan’s
address. The coalition was apparently created to block Obama’s efforts to deal
with climate change.
The filings with the Texas authorities reveal the coalition was founded on 10
November last year – a day after the EPA announced its scientists had determined
that greenhouse gases were a public danger. The group filed its challenge to the
EPA on 23 December.
Eric Groten, an attorney for the coalition, said it plans to file at least three
more legal challenges against the EPA, which could tie up the agency in
paperwork.
Such challenges to the EPA have intensified since last November when the agency
signalled it was preparing to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, a measure
widely seen as a backstop in case Congress failed to pass climate change
legislation.
At least 15 state legislatures are now considering motions casting doubt on
climate science or seeking to overturn the EPA’s authority to regulate
emissions. Republicans in Congress have filed separate resolutions to set aside
the EPA’s finding about the dangers of greenhouse gases, and the Senate may
reportedly seek to strip the EPA of powers in a climate bill expected to be
rolled out next week.
Court documents identify the CCR as a non-profit membership corporation “for the
purpose of promoting social welfare, particularly to ensure that the clean air
act is properly applied to greenhouse gases. Its members include business and
trade associations engaged in activities that would likely be subject to
regulation under the clean air act.”
The court documents list six companies and trade associations representing
mining and beef interests among its members – but not Solvay.
Groten said there were more members – individual as well as corporate. He
refused to identify members beyond those listed on the court petition, but
compared the group to the Sierra Club, the popular grassroots conservation
network. “Those who want to support its objectives contribute financially to
it,” he said.
Carrying the analogy further, Groten said membership was determined by donation.
“One becomes a member of the organisation just as one becomes a member of the
Sierra Club by donated money to it.”
Solvay Chemical’s connection to the legal challenges seems at odds with the
company’s stated commitment to sustainable development on its website. “We
commit ourselves to take into account, in a way that is comprehensive and
integrated in all our activities, the triple demand of economic, societal and
environmental sustainability,” the statement says.Mark Wheeler, communications
director for Solvay in America, denied the company was a member of CCR.
Kert Davies, research director for Greenpeace, said Brussels-based Solvay
produces sulphur hexafluoride (or SF6), used for industrial cleaning, but also
an extremely potent greenhouse gas. Each kilogram of SF6 produces an atmospheric
warming effect equivalent to nearly 24,000kg of carbon dioxide. The EPA proposed
last year to begin regulating SF6.
The secrecy enveloping the CRR is typical of the efforts to block regulation of
greenhouse gases, according to Greenpeace, which has spent years tracking the
behind-the-scenes efforts by oil companies such as Exxon and Koch Industries to
deny the science of climate change.
Also among the EPA’s opponents this time around is the Alliance for Natural
Climate Change Science. That organisation appears to exist only as a Fort Worth
post office box on the original court filings, which list Alexis Hathaway and
William Orr as contacts.
Orr, a Colorado businessman, was convicted in 2008 on several counts of
defrauding public funds and private investors for a project purporting to
produce an alternative fuel that received a $3.6 million grant from Congress.
However, subsequent filings link the legal challenge to Bonner Cohen, a fellow
of the Committe for Constructive Tomorrow, a well-known climate sceptic group.
“[Orr] is no longer affiliated with the organisation,” Cohen said.
Oxfam’s Kert Davies said the link between the CRR and Solvay could be an
indicator that the opposition to climate change regulation is spreading to new
sectors of the economy. “The industrial bloc is powerfully organised and rich.
They have all the tools and all the lawyers and they are going to do all they
can to stop carbon regulation,” he said.”It is going to take a generation to
really regulate greenhouse gas emissions in this country, just as it has taken a
generation to get action on other pollutants.”
Analysis: Why target the EPA?

The EPA has become a prime target for politicians and industries seeking to slow
down or block moves to curb greenhouse gas emissions in America. The fiercest
opponents of the EPA accuse the agency of trying to put in place a top-down
regulatory regime that would stifle economic growth and monitor every puff of
human breath for carbon dioxide. But the Obama administration says the EPA has
no choice but to put in place a regulatory regime, should Congress fail to pass
a climate change law. The supreme court ruled two years ago that the agency had
a duty and authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. So the EPA could open
itself up to a whole slew of new court challenges if it does not act on climate
change.
Go to: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/21/solvay-chemicals-obama-green-agenda