Koch Industries Reaches Out to Energy-Poor Minorities (free-market energy for all)

“Using the ploy of a ‘few cents more here, a few cents more there,’ appeals are made before state energy regulatory commissions to increase utility rates for millions of customers. Such commissions drive the enactment of renewable energy usage and subsidies. Ignored are the economic hardships imposed on the less fortunate members of society. Everyone pays more; the elite few benefit from these subsidies.”

“For all of us working to promote the sensible generation and use of fossil-fueled energy, this courageous and needed initiative by Koch Industries is a welcome event.”

In a pragmatic rebuke to its critics for promoting the use of fossil fuels, Koch Industries has shown true leadership by engaging in a constructive educational program demonstrating that minority lives do matter, and that fossil fuels are key to their well-being.  These grass-roots outreach programs  in minority communities deliver the message that cheap and reliable energy provided by fossil fuels is to their over-all benefit, in  contrast to eco-elitist, mandated renewable solar and wind with its attendant extra costs.

Government programs which have mandated the use of wind and solar generated power have made energy needlessly more expensive. Generous long-term contracts to providers of such energy lock-in their profits irrespective of their cost effectiveness in comparison to traditional fossil fuel energy.

Federal rebates, tax write-offs, similar state programs, and utility company rebates to customers all serve the interests of the eco-addicts of renewable energy, who then can claim that subsidized and mandated renewable energy is cost competitive with conventional fossil fuel power.

Who is paying for this environmental largess? We all are, of course. Federal and state taxes are incrementally increased to fund these programs, and energy companies tack on the extra costs to consumers’ monthly bills. Corporate lobbyists and environmental activists know how to work the legislative system.

Using the ploy of a “few cents more here, a few cents more there,” appeals are made before state energy regulatory commissions to increase utility rates for millions of customers. Such commissions drive the enactment of renewable energy usage and subsidies. Ignored are the economic hardships imposed on the less fortunate members of society. Everyone pays more; the elite few benefit from these subsidies.

At the other end of the economic spectrum, resultant higher energy costs make up a bigger proportion of monthly expenditures for people on a limited and marginal budget, and hurt them the most by impacting their health and quality of life. This is true in the U.S. and is even worse in Germany.

Possibly there are those, in spite of their economic impoverishment, anxious to do their part for the radicalized environmental movement. Fear not. Their higher energy bills and taxes are already easing the ownership of electric “muskmobiles” by giving purchasers a $7,500 federal income tax credit (and for Californians an additional $2,500 rebate).

Even though the impoverished minorities cannot afford a home of their own, they can take solace in the fact that their higher energy bills are funding a federal tax credit up to 30% for solar panel home installations for home owners, who get paid retail energy pricing for any excess power. Utilities are mandated to do this by state renewable energy policies, when they could buy the same power at much cheaper wholesale prices in the open market.

The late Roy Innis, National Chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, one of America’s oldest civil rights groups, authored the 2008 book Energy Keepers Energy Killers: The New Civil Rights Battle. He explained how eco-elitists’ zeal to demonize fossil fuel usage in the false cause of controlling global climate change has a disparate impact upon the economic health and well-being of minorities world-wide.

Paul Dreissen’s Eco-Imperialism: Green Power Black Death (2010) and Alex Epstein’s The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels  (2014)   explore similar themes justifying fossil fuel usage as the low cost, reliable energy source.

Now Koch Industries, a private multinational corporation much maligned by the Progressive Establishment, has stepped up to the plate, and is actively engaging this same minority target audience to help them understand how fossil fuels are their key to economic and physical prosperity.

According to Hiroko Tabuchi’s January 6, 2017 NYT article “Kochs’ Efforts on Fossil Fuels Woo Minorities,” Fueling U.S. Forward  is a public relations group for fossil fuels, funded by Koch Industries.  Its launch was announced in August 2016.  Its objectives as stated on its website are:

“Fueling U.S. Forward is a non-profit organization dedicated to educating the public about the value and potential of American energy, the vast majority of which comes from fossil fuels. Energy shapes everything we do, every moment of our life —so much so that we often take it for granted. No longer. The story of energy is one worth telling, and one best told by the people who have the most at stake. 

That’s why we’re going to take the conversation out of Washington, D.C. and into local communities. We’ll talk to people of diverse backgrounds —industry employees, small business owners, community leaders, and low-income families —and share their stories.” 

This is a forward looking, educational effort at the grass roots level to deliver the message to the people most impacted by higher energy costs resulting from mandated use of renewable energy sources. Reliably, eco-activist groups are denouncing such efforts, and resort to race-baiting language.

For all of us working to promote the sensible generation and use of fossil-fueled energy, this courageous and needed initiative by Koch Industries is a welcome event.