Green Money: The Perpetual Motion Machine
The Washington Examiner is publishing a five-part special report in association with PJ Media on “Big Green”: the alliance of the Democratic Party, environmental groups, and activists in the progressive movement. It’s not just a band of flannel-shirted environmentalists any longer; it’s become a big-money, major player in Washington power politics and American elections.
In the third of five pieces, we examine how “Big Green” uses its political power to get taxpayer money, which is then used to enhance its political power. The result: a self-perpetuating environmental activism industry, funded by taxpayers.
In today’s Examiner, the “Big Green” series looks at how the environmental activism industry is funded. With the dues and contributions of millions of environmentally concerned citizens, of course, the various environmental groups start out with millions of dollars in annual revenue, and literally billions of dollars in assets, all dedicated to protecting the environment; that must be the source of their funding.
Wouldn’t it be pretty to think so?
Because of convenient peculiarities in the laws, and some special relationships with the federal government, a large part of the environmental groups’ funding for legal aspects of their Good Works comes, not from their own assets, but directly from the federal government.
This can work in several ways. First, environmental groups receive federal grants that provide cash to the group; cash, being fungible, can be used to pay attorneys and staffers on many different projects. While federal grants are, in theory, targeted to a specific area of research, the acceptable “overhead” charges can pay for a fair bit of staffer time between grants. (This, by the way, isn’t inherently illicit: any non-profit that operates on “soft money” needs to be able to bridge salaries from one grant to the next in order to retain their best people.)
Second, sometimes the EPA or Department of the Interior will file a suit on their own behalf, but then allow various environmental groups to join the action as co-plaintiffs. Some environmental groups, like the National Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund, specialize in these sorts of legal actions. Often, if the EPA wins a judgment, the result will be that the loser pays not only their own legal fees, but also pays fees or otherwise compensates their co-plaintiffs. If not, these groups at the very least get to piggyback their own legal work on the EPA’s vast hoard of government-paid lawyers, leveraging whatever money of their own they do invest.
The third approach is the strangest. As Mark Hemingway’s piece today explains, in certain cases, the EPA actually pays environmental groups that are suing the EPA.
The legal rationale is simple enough, at least to a lawyer: in cases like Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA could hardly sue itself. There must be another party with standing; if it just happens that the EPA is also giving the same parties a little money — in this case, a measly $7,656,829 minimum — that’s not important.
The fourth method is possibly the worst of the bunch. As Karen Budd-Falen described here in PJM last week (“Radical Environmental Groups Extorting Federal Money with Lawsuit Threats “, PJM 22 Sept 2010), one of the most effective ways in which environmental groups obtain funding is by simply using lawsuits, and the threat of lawsuits, to obtain “settlements.”
This has become particularly popular in the Western U.S. Basically, imagine you have a new construction project. A pipeline, let’s say. An environmental group then files suit to prevent the project from going forward. That environmental group may have lawyers working for them pro bono, and they often have the implied backing of the Department of the Interior. You look at the lawsuit, consider the legal costs, and consider the opportunity cost of spending years in court before you can proceed — and you, quite sensibly, offer the environmental group money to go away. As Budd-Falen points out, this was exactly what happened with the Ruby Project, a pipeline intended to take natural gas (a relatively clean, carbon-sparing fuel) from Wyoming to super-green Oregon.
In the settlement, the Ruby Project made no changes to the project, altered no plans. It just paid the Oregon Natural Desert Association and the Western Watersheds Project $22 million to drop their suit.
You can buy a lot of legal filings with $22 million.
Which, one has to suspect, is the point. The executives, directors, and attorneys involved may sometimes work pro bono publico — “for the public good” — but often the salaries paid and expenses charged seem to involve quite a bit of more personal, private bono.
It becomes a perpetual motion money machine of the environmental activism industry: the lawsuit settlements pay rich salaries and fund further lawsuits, which lead to more settlements, and then to more lawsuits. Without producing anything of value, or even, as in the Ruby Project, without changing the environmental impact of the project in any way, environmental groups impose their own private “tax” on productive work all over the world — and the money keeps rolling in.
Seems to me that there is now a largrest of case file if you will call it that of the EPA & many of these Environmental groups as well as alot of the Pro Bono lawyers where there’s nothing but alot of money changing hands and as is the case you pointed out in the “Ruby Project” the actual layout of the project, the original plans remained the same but the only items that change is Money the fear of the project still is the same but now if a project wanted to could charge these EPA groups with exactly what there doing “Black Mail” There now on record in many cases across the Fruited PLain where the only item that makes the difference with a project being environmentally friendly or bad for the environment is cold hard Green cash.
Seems to be of my opinion alot of these projects could in effect move forward without much worry form these groups or the EPA, such as badly needed NG lines, transmission lines needed to upgrade our infrastructure to communities that need them but can’t or couldn’t cause of the lack of money necessary to pay off these groups/EPA but at time has gone one over the course of years, decades there has been a long history of what these groups are all about and again IMO believe that if the next project were to come head on in a city, town or village where certain groups/EPA have battled before where the only “items that changed in the project” was alot of money should be a slam dunk for many project leaders, communities towns, villages to hold against these groups that there only intent is to gain a financial interest & not really want to change how the projects are constructed, or where they might be constructed or not even so much as a rework of the original plans except a change in the number of Zero’s in each of the parties involved Bank accounts. Make sense Case law is Case law isn’t it ???
Stop The Madness the EPA must be shut down !!!!
Maybe the problem with right wingers is that their sense of history is severely messed up: anything that happened more than a year ago belongs with Columbus coming to America, bronze helmets and/or the dinosaurs disappearing.
There are reasons why the “productive sector” needed and still needs monitoring and regulating. This little history of the Great Lakes shows what businesses do when all they think about is making money and getting away with stuff.
Gee, BC, might that have been why I mentioned the Cuyahoga River fires on Monday as one of the examples of why there had been bipartisan agreement on the original EPA? And why it was proposed and established by the famous Democrat Richard Nixon.?
Don’t talk to me about a “sense of history” until you can remember what happened three days ago.
BC likes to view everything as a right wing conspiracy. Living less than 10 miles from one of the great lakes makes one keenly interested in what happens with our drinking water source. Its not a partisan issue. It’s just that some of us think the bureaucratic sector needs as much or more monitoring. The internet is a useful tool for the cut and paste intellectual.
Charlie Martin wrote Gee, BC, might that have been why I mentioned the Cuyahoga River fires on Monday as one of the examples of why there had been bipartisan agreement on the original EPA? And why it was proposed and established by the famous Democrat Richard Nixon?
Golly gosh, my link was to the entire history of human-caused environmental problems with the Great Lakes, with the Cuyahoga Fire being only one of many, many little incidents that were mentioned. And Nixon was a reluctant participant at best in the formation of the EPA.
Don’t talk to me about a “sense of history” until you can remember what happened three days ago.
I might have taken a look if your links actually took me there: the one in your reply is broken, and the ones in your article only take me to a right wing summary at the Examiner a tad lacking in specifics (or common sense for that matter.)
Ah, I see: your objection is that I didn’t reveiew the entire multicentury history of Great Lakes pollution in a 750 word column.
Not exactly. BC’s objection is that in an article clearly tagged as Part III of a special report, you noted that his comment#2 was inane given that you had covered that base in the part of the report from Monday.
BC either did not tumble to the fact that the article is Part III (he did not actually read or understand the thread post), which a critical thinker would take as meaning that there must be earlier parts one should read before sticking his oar in. Or he did see the reference to Part III and, again not being much of a critical thinker, he missed the relevance. Either option is likely as he’s done both repeatedly in the past.
His recovery attempt is to excuse himself by dismissing your mentioning the Cuyahoga River fires as representative of the need for environmental reform is only representative of the need for environmental reform, not the whole story. Which in some way projects BC’s beclowning himself again onto you. Try that logic on your kids. Might as well, because it’s the same logic kids try on their parents.
Then BC mentioned that he was challenged and so unable to bring up the reference to the Cuyahoga River fires because the link was broken. In other words, his defense here is that he was incapable of referencing information from a prior part of the special report BEFORE making his first accusatory comment because in your RESPONSE to that comment, the link you gave him to go check his facts was broken. Therefore, the fact that he made the dumb first comment is your fault for not being clearer in your response to it, (though you clearly said it was posted Monday anyway, but I’ve covered that). Once again, the illogic is mindboggling.
So no, his objection to your calling his inane comment #2 out for popping off when that base had been covered is not that you did not provide enough information. It is that you wrote the article to an audience of people how could grasp the fact that Part III means there is a Part I and a Part II and would read them for background if they hadn’t already. On top of that you expected that audience could make reasonable extrapolations from points you made without requiring that you talk down to them in painful detail.
That audience does not include BC. That is why BC objects.
The pollution that was undertaken with the consent of corrupt GOVERNMENT officials? That stuff?
Yeah!That “making money” thing. How dare they!
I don’t think anyone here has an objection to having the proper regulation enforced, but there comes a point where too much of a good thing can in effect be bad for everyone concerned. How clean is clean, how much should a Business, Corporation have to pay just to be or stay in business ?? Should it come to the point that we regulate the hell out of everyone until the Business, Corporation have to shut down forcing massive job loss just to get another 1%, 3% less Emissions ? One day soon the EPA will have the power or enact regulation that says anyone driving a vehicle older than 10 yrs old will not be allowed to drive said vehicle, imagine the hardships that will cause if or when they every were to come to fruition, sure it would be good for Gov’t Motors, Chrysler, Ford but when it increases the cost of living for everyone to a point where we all will be living in Igloo’s and reading by candle lite still won’t be enough for these Environmental Wacko’s!!! So I ask you, when will there be a point IYO that there’s too much regulation/Cost to “Protect” the Environment ?
Wow, what a racket. Designed by lawyers, for lawyers. And we the people get to pay for every bit of it.
I had the pleasure some years ago of debating a supporter of Greenpeace who approached me as I was doing yardwork. He was seeking donations, naturally. So I asked him where my donation would go, he replied “to lawyers filing environmental lawsuits.” So I asked him if his organization thought that reusable grocery bags were a good idea. He said yes. I then asked him if he thought it was better to buy the bags with that money and distribute them for free in front of grocery stores or to pay lawyers, and which would provide a more direct positive impact on the environment.
That was when his stammering began. When confronted with some simple logic, he was incapable of forming a cohesive answer. He was close to tears when he finally walked away, mumbling to himself. It was a good afternoon.
The methods outlined here describe nothing more than legalized extortion and are among the many reasons why the EPA should be dismantled. Far from protecting the environment, it has degenerated into a tidy little enterprise for unscrupulous lawyers who have no problem stealing from their fellow citizens.
Environmentalism is not a tiny little enterprise. There is a massive industry in environmental litigation, the Superfund clean up effort. A federal law, written by lawyers, for lawyers, in 1980, it stipulates that if you toss a cigarette butt into a hundred acre land fill that is later deemed an environmental disaster, you are liable for the total clean up cost, not the cigarette butt. Survival in the face of billions of dollars of liability, requires that you identify, and sue anyone else who threw a candy wrapper into the financial hell. Then the two of you nail other liable parties, via law suits, and the cost spreading exercise metathesizes.
It has been estimated that well over 90% of the funds spent on super fund sites went to legal fees. Few have been cleaned up, the main effort is to characterize, and identify who threw the letter with a legible return address.
In the recent years, we have learned that DoD, and DOE, worried more about war and hydrogen bombs, than green philosophies for most of the cold war. Their superfund liability is infinite, eternal, and the taxpayer is on the hook. The polluter must pay, that means you.
Superfunds go to lawyers, and government overviewers. The rest of us just pay. Large corporations have learned to add it to the price of everything. This is the secret to all environmental issues, just add it to the price, if you can. Or move off shore.
However, we are approaching a time, when the infinite costs has broken, or will break our economy. There is no cost discipline in environmental matters. In many ways, environmentalism has the characteristics of religion: worship, sin, judgment, damnation, and eternal punishment, with lawyers as the guardian angels.
Looks like an area a new Republican majority Congress should hold hearings on and tighten federal pursestrings about.
Then… stop. Stop paying these parasites to drop their lawsuits; stop paying them Danegeld.
And stop it with the “environmental sensitivity” training and other time-wasters. Just stop it, and watch the enviros squeal like hogs in a slaughterhouse.
BC: you do realize that direct public pressure on the companies involved (without the ‘helping hand’ of the Federal government) was what prompted the cleanup, right? And that municipalities did the heavy lifting there, right? Right?
You are the one who needs the history lesson. Go back and study the work of a real activist, like Martin Luther King. He got real results from economic boycotts, before the civil rights bill even was drafted (and later passed over the objections of the Democratic caucus).
Notice they don’t need scientific proof that is peer reviewed. All they need is threats.
Where does their power come from, our legislators and judges. Legislators write the laws used to file lawsuits and judges sometimes write their own laws. Without these legal friends the environmentalists would have no power. And our tax burden could be reduced or put to better use.
From laws to reduce the tank size on our toilets, saving the ozone hole, outlawing incandescent light bulbs, the endangered species act the list is endless of the contributions of our legislators and judges to the environmental movement. And don’t forget cash for junker’s or is it klunkers that required the total destruction of used cars to dry up the used car market and parts to eventually force people into greener fossil free fueled cars.
Al Capone would be proud, it was our representation that passed the amendment to the Constitution that allowed his criminal organization to thrive by outlawing the legal sale of alcoholic beverages against the will of the American people. Something to consider before you vots.
What a pleasure it would be to defund the EPA. But short of that, I think Congress should legislate a tax on all awards to the eco-lefty green organizations and lawyer-law firms who represent them at 99%. Further I would take away the 501(c)(3) status of the greeny organizations and also tax them at 99%. The greenies would never receive any more government grants. And any lawyer representing them must be from a private firm with no government connections.
How about just freezing all grants until proper legislation can be devised to insure that none ever arise again. Government grant abuse is recorded in every conceivable application wherever offered. Just the Fulbright Student Exchange program alone has provided aid to more treasonous action than one can imagine. Many other parasites have been taught “how to milk the cow” and many more tax funded grants created for those that “qualify”. Grants have contributed widely to the apex of present obvious socialist agenda. Tracking individual moral decline in the field of justice will expose that they constitute a hole in the ship that must be plugged before bailing begins.
There is so much misinformation in this article it is ridiculous. First, environmental attorneys do not make that much money. They make very little money compared to other attorneys. If these people were really just interested in making money they would go work for a big firm making millions of dollars a year vs around 60,000 which is what most environmental attorneys make. Next if you note Mass v. EPA it is not an environmental organization suing the EPA but the State of Massachusetts. It is clear that reading is beyond the scope of the authors ability. As to the second point, if the environmental group does decide to be a co plaintiff, if the plaintiffs loose that means that there are no attorneys fees. So they take the risk, and in return should get the benefits. This is how our litigation system works. Additionally, attorneys fees are not often rewarded in the kinds of cases environmental attorneys get involved in. Could you not do the basic amount of research before writing about something you obviously know nothing about?
Brian, define “that much money”. There’s a link now (it had to wait because we can’t link to the Examiner until the Examiner piece is up, a technical limitation) to the salaries of the top folks in these organizations; top salaries are in the neighborhood of a half-million a year.
As to basic research, follow the links: you’ll find that in fact attorney fees are getting awarded, or paid in the form of grants.
Could you please do that basic research before you come in with uninformed complaints?
Here is some basic research for you. http://elpc.org/2010/07/15/public-interest-environmental-attorney-fellowship. environmental attorney makes 48k a year. http://www.ilrg.com/nlj250. big law firm avg is 125k a year. Clearly the real money is in protecting big business and not the environment. Attorneys that choose to protect the environment are not doing it for the big bucks.
Brian: Your dissembling of the facts is pure progressive pigsh$t. Then, again, you believe Odummy is your messiah.
Blotto- There you go again with the ad hominem attacks. Good for you! Little thrills! It must make you angry when you get some reasoned opposition.
Your Obama reference comes from nowhere and adds nothing to the conversation, by the way.
Brian was simply pointing out that the average environmental lawyer doesn’t make tons of money as alluded-to in the article: “a measly $7,656,829 minimum”. The article didn’t really give much in the way of details about how much these lawyers make on average. Know why? Because the lawyers don’t make that much. Hmm… I know, it’s all about where the money comes from, not about the amounts – but the general tone insinuates that we’re talking about gobs of money here.
But you don’t want to look at the obvious dishonesty within the article because that wouldn’t fit with your pre-conceived notion of the evil enviro-lawyerbots.
I will again paraphrase what Brian said: Lawyers pick environmental law because it is moral. They pick it because they want to do something that serves the common good. They do it because it sounds cool and chicks dig it – (until the chicks realize it won’t pay the bills for a family of four.) They don’t do it for the money. Many lawyers would love to work for “Mother Nature” but they can’t afford to do it. The situations described in the article about federal grants and the EPA filing against itself are great and I hope those avenues continue.
So explain to me how is it a risk if you are paying a recent college graduate lawyer $48K/year but stand to win 10′s of millions of dollars. All you need to do is win once and you can continue your “risky” behavior for the next 20 years, if not more.
You do not win money!!! The environmental suits are for injunctions and enforcement of laws not for damages. You clearly do not understand what environmental groups do. You are thinking of tort lawyers.
Believe me, these groups are bleeding the ESA also for tons of money. They are legalized extortion and definitely shoudl not be classified as “non profits”, everything they do is for profit.