Conservatives Point Astroturf Campaign at Climate-Energy Reform

Above: President Barack Obama arrives at a town hall meeting at Portsmouth High School in Portsmouth, N.H., to speak about health care reform, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2009. Official White House photo by Pete Souza.

FreedomWorks is the conservative campaign consultancy that's been inciting people to violence with distortions about the Obama administration's health-care reform effort.

Apparently it's going to bring the same shrewd astroturfing and flexibile definition of accuracy to blocking climate and energy legislation. And the American Petroleum Institute, the American Farm Bureau, the American Highway Users Alliance, and other very interested business-and-industry groups will be footing the bill.

Reporting today for Greenwire, Alex Kaplun writes that this industry coalition is employing conservative advocacy firms, including FreedomWorks, to kick off a faux-grassroots campaign next week called "Energy Citizens." The effort will target Democratic senators who are on the fence about enacting climate legislation. "A list of planned events obtained by E&E shows rallies in the Midwest and the South," writes Kaplun. 'Two rallies are set for New Mexico, home of Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D). Others are schedule Id for Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and several Southern and Plains states."

Ian Talley of Dow Jones Newswires reports that rallies will be organized in about 20 states, targeting Blue Dog Democrats including Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Mark Begich, D-Alaska. Other states include Texas, New Mexico, South Carolina, South Dakota and Georgia.

To get people out to the events, the campaign is distributing materials that claim the Waxman-Markey climate and enegy bill, which passed the House this past spring, will eliminate 1.2 to 2.3 million jobs in America; raise gas prices to $4 a gallon; and demonize a cap-and-trade market for greenhouse gas emissions as an "energy tax" that will cost ratepayers $800-1,300 a year.

While all these figures are off base, that last is particularly disingenuous (a polite way of saying it's a flat-out lie, I suppose), since it's based on an MIT economic study whose own author has asked Republicans to stop misusing his work to make their case against cap-and-trade.

"What do you think of President Obama's campaign to raise taxes on oil companies?" someone off-camera asks "Bruce, a Colorado resident," on the Energy Citizens YouTube Channel. Bruce is almost aggressively a regular guy, from the earth-toned crocheted afghan draped over a chair in his living room, to the amateur-quality video lighting that turns his face into a giant, peachy golden-pink orb, to his apparently unscripted willingness to shill for fossil energy companies:

If you want to inhibit our nation's ability to develop its own natural resources, then tax away. If you want to incent the process, then you'll remove tax burdens and access burdens, and let the oil companies produce and generate additional revenues for the government, just on the basis of their increased productivity.

The campaign is even supplying adherents with a pre-packaged tweet: Congress: Don't raise energy taxes. Higher taxes = fewer jobs & diminished #energy security. http://sn.im/fg4m1

How can climate action advocates counter this oncoming wave of misinformation?

One good start: The White House can learn a lesson from health care reform about the depths reactionaries will go to incite fear, uncertainty, doubt and borderline violence about change. Start busting the myths, setting up town halls, and doing prime time press conferences right now about climate and energy policy reform, before the astroturf campaign sinks its roots too deeply into the national debate.