‘Old School Climate Denial is Back’ (Droz, Martis: take a bow)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- November 29, 2022

“Obviously, climate/energy is not an intellectual issue for Amy Westervelt. But it is for Droz and Martis, two hearty volunteers speaking truth to power. She should personally sit down with both and understand their passion and logic. If so, maybe Westervelt could turn DRILLED into MACHINED to focus on industrial wind and solar arrays on the landscape and in the coastal waters.”

In a new article in the climate alarmist web site Drilled, Amy Westervelt claims to have made a big finding, along with a colleague:

Over the past month or so, thanks in large part to the work of reporter Michael Thomas, the Internet has rediscovered an effort that’s been underfoot for more than a decade: the coal-funded attack on clean energy. In a few viral Twitter threads, Thomas has focused on the work of two longtime anti-renewables campaigners, John Droz and Kevon Martis, who have spent the past 15 years or so fighting renewable energy projects at the local level (and convincing and training others to do the same).

Well, hats off in honor of two largely volunteer climate/energy realists: John Droz (author of our bimonthly newsletter) and Kevon Martis, who has been profiled many times here at MasterResource. Both are indefatigable foes of industrial wind turbines and a lot of other not-green pork. They are not well funded (just the opposite). And they speak from the heart with heady argument.

Strangely, Westervelt’s “Old School Climate Denial is Back” leads with a picture captioned, “Earth is getting greener.” Yes, Global Greening is a fact–a happy one.

The subtitle–“Two things the media and much of the climate movement tends to dismiss as long past—old-school climate denial and the coal lobby—are still around and having a bit of a renaissance”–misleads. The same unsettled science reigns as decades ago, as facts deviate from model predicted in both temperature and various weather extremes. And what does the old bogyman coal have to do with Droz and Martis? They both want to know.

Amy Westervelt’s recent piece (November 28, 2022) begins:

I first heard about Martis and Droz through Scott Peterson at Checks and Balances Project, back in 2018 when he was digging into the sudden, successful backlash against wind energy in Ohio and Michigan. They’re still going strong (Droz is now a member of the CO2 Coalition as well) and, according to Thomas, gaining steam. I suspect we’ll see a resurgence of anti-renewable activity as the fossil fuel industry looks to leverage the Inflation Reduction Act incentives for gas and dampen the benefit of the Act for renewables. So it’s a good time to look at where that work fits in the broader climate countermovement.

She then makes a jump from Droz and Martis to Steve Milloy, a person that Droz and Martis are hardly in regular contact with.

When I look at both Droz’s and Martis’s presentations, what I see are the fingerprints of a guy who predates both of them in the anti-climate battle: Steve Milloy. Which is interesting because Milloy also happens to be the highest-paid staffer at the same organization where Martis is a senior fellow: Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal), previously known as the American Tradition Institute—the organization that went after climate scientists like James Hansen, Michael Mann, and Katharine Hayhoe in the early aughts, trying to discredit them, and climate science in general. E&E Legal is also affiliated or sharing counsel with the Energy & Environment Action Team, the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Droz, Martis, E&E, and CEI turn up on all sorts of documents and letters together, too, and Milloy and Droz are both frequent speakers at Heartland Institute events.

“Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about two things the media and much of the climate movement tends to dismiss as long past—old-school climate denial and the coal lobby,” Amy Westervelt concludes. “Both are not only still around, but seem to be having a bit of a renaissance.”

Obviously, climate/energy is not an intellectual issue for Amy Westervelt. But it is for Droz and Martis, two hearty volunteers speaking truth to power. She should personally sit down with both and understand their passion and logic. If so, maybe Westervelt could turn DRILLED into MACHINED to focus on industrial wind and solar arrays on the landscape and in the coastal waters.