By David J. Sanders
As Arkansas lawmakers prepare to take care of the people’s business, there are substantive questions to be asked related to the Governor’s Commission on Global Warming, its work, and its symbiotic relationship with the Center for Climate Strategies.
What should be the response of lawmakers, who soon will be asked to consider the commission’s final report, which effectively comes to them mired in controversy?
It’s likely that a majority of lawmakers will be daunted by the task of taking on a nebulous and complex issue like global warming. After all, aren’t there more pressing issues competing for their attention? It might be easy for them to take a pass. Why not? At least from some of his public statements, Gov. Mike Beebe appears to be backing away from some of his global warming commission’s more extreme policy recommendations.
But none of those are good reasons for lawmakers to leave it to others to wrangle with CCS and the GCGW. In fact, there are good reasons why lawmakers should train their attention on both groups and ask some tough questions.
It is neither advisable, ethical, fair-minded, nor democratic that the group (CCS) that helped push for the establishment of the GCGW was hired to advise and direct the commission. That’s especially true when it comes to limiting the terms of the debate by preventing the science of climate change or directive of the Act from being debated by the commission. That gives it a clear path to push its policy recommendations, many of which were controversial and costly, so those recommendations can be adopted by the commission and recommended to lawmakers.
It is both detrimental to the public policy process, and sets a horrible precedent related to the work of future government-mandated policy commissions that the funding required for the GCGW to hire CCS was arranged by CCS. Making matters worse, CCS relied on funding from out-of-state foundations that not only are aligned to the left both politically and ideologically, but are agenda-driven on the issue of global warming.
Lawmakers will have to determine whether the GCGW complied with Act 696, which establishes the commission with the force of law. Hiring CCS as the consultant and then turning over the commission’s agenda and process to them, made the task of complying with the law virtually impossible.
Both internal documents from CCS to the governor’s office, as well as testimony of commission members, clearly demonstrate that by limiting terms of the debate, first on the very issue of climate change and then directive of the Act establishing the commission, CCS intended to quash dissenting voices on the commission to push its agenda.
According to the law, under sections labeled “Purpose and Duties” and “Emergency Clause,” the commission was charged to “conduct an in-depth examination and evaluation of the issues related to global warming and the potential impacts of global warming on the state, its citizens, its natural resources, and its economy.”
The law states that it is “imperative that Arkansas study the scientific data, literature, and research on global warming to determine whether global warming is an immediate threat to the citizens in the State of Arkansas.”
What was mandated by law didn’t happen and, frankly, couldn’t have happened under the structure CCS set up for the commission.
So, what did the state receive? If lawmakers review the Arkansas report and those from other states in which CCS has worked, then they will find that apart from subtle changes in artwork and the state names, the reports are nearly identical.
All of this begs the question: Does Arkansas’ global warming commission exist for the benefit of the state or CCS?
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David Sanders writes twice weekly for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock and is a host of the Arkansas Education Television Network’s “Unconventional Wisdom.” His e-mail address is DavidJSanders@aol.com.
