obama tells anti cap n trade epa scientists to shut it

[old82]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009...ing-cap-trade/


EPA Employees Silenced for Criticizing Cap and Trade
by William La Jeunesse , FOXNews.com
When Zabel and Williams released a video on the Internet expressing their concerns over the Obama administration’s plans to use a cap and trade program to fight climate change, they were told to keep it to themselves.

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Laurie Williams and husband Alan Zabel worked for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for more than 20 years, and they know more about climate change than most politicians. But when the couple released a video on the Internet expressing their concerns over the Obama administration’s plans to use cap-and-trade legislation to fight climate change, they were told to keep it to themselves.

Williams and Zabel oppose cap and trade -- a controversial government allowance program in which companies are issued emissions limits, or caps, which they can then trade -- as a means to fight climate change.

On their own time, Williams and Zabel made a video expressing these opinions.

VIDEO: EPA Employees Speak Out Against Cap and Trade

"Cap-and-trade with offsets provides a false sense of progress and puts money in the pockets of investors," Zabel said in the video. "We think that these restrictions might not be constitutional," he said.

Their bosses in San Francisco approved the effort by Williams and Zabel to release the tape, but after an editorial they wrote appeared in the Washington Post, EPA Director Lisa Jackson ordered the pair to remove the video or face disciplinary action.

Specifically, the administration's chief environmental official did not want Williams or Zabel mentioning their four decades with the EPA -- time spent studying cap and trade.

"The people who understand the problems with the cap and trade with offsets bill are not being heard," Williams told Fox News.

The EPA issued a statement saying it welcomes free expression provided employees adhere to ethics rules. The agency reportedly doesn't object to the content of the video but requires Williams and Zabel to make it clearer that they are speaking for themselves and not the EPA.

But some Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee want an investigation into what – if any -- regulations Zabel and Williams violated.

Critics argue the action contradicts the president's support for open government.

"It's censorship," Jeff Ruch, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, told Fox News.

"If the Obama administration believes in transparency it is precisely in these cases they need to prove it."

[Mccordrm]

Hmmm... interesting.
As long as what they said wasn't false/lying, I don't think it should have been
covered up.

[old82]

do you think that perhaps fox news was over reacting to this? it's bad the they were told to shut it.....

but then again, that over reaction may just keep them in fear of really sticking it to someone.

[Meridian]

The paper quote uses the word "worked", but do I take it that they still work for the EPA? If they do not, the EPA can shove it, if they do, then they do what their boss tells them. Employees being silenced by managers after they speak up against company policy is as old as the existence of companies. And where exactly is the evidence that Obama even knew about this before it happened, as the thread title would like to suggest? Far more likely the EPA boss was trying to please him before he found out.

I'm sorry, but I really don't see that this merits any kind of fuss. If you don't like the official policy of the people you work for, leave or shut up. If you criticise from within you can hardly be surprised if you are gagged or sacked.


M

[otoc]

The paper quote uses the word "worked", but do I take it that they still work for the EPA? If they do not, the EPA can shove it, if they do, then they do what their boss tells them. Employees being silenced by managers after they speak up against company policy is as old as the existence of companies. And where exactly is the evidence that Obama even knew about this before it happened, as the thread title would like to suggest? Far more likely the EPA boss was trying to please him before he found out.

I'm sorry, but I really don't see that this merits any kind of fuss. If you don't like the official policy of the people you work for, leave or shut up. If you criticise from within you can hardly be surprised if you are gagged or sacked.


M

I tend to agree with you, however, the situation is not as extreme as the depicted by Murdoch's mouthpiece in the opening paragraph. But such is the bias in Fox reporting these days.

From the Washington Post, it is clear that the YouTube video was approved and an EPA ethics probe was triggered after they published an additional OpEd in that paper. The EPA lawyers were told to remove reference to the EPA, that's all. Since they are lawyers and not climate scientists, and I still wonder from what left field the Fox reported substantiated their claim that these lawyers "know more about climate warming". For there is no substantiation there. Nor is there anything in what they write that concludes climate warming doesn't exist. I wonder if Fox would make the same claim if the EPA cleaning crew simply published anti-Obama policy critiques, too.

EPA tells workers to tone down YouTube clip about climate bill
By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Two Environmental Protection Agency lawyers who made a YouTube video calling current climate legislation a "huge mistake" were told by the agency to remove the clip and edit out some references to their employer, one of them said.

Allan Zabel and Laurie Williams, a husband and wife who have worked in the EPA's San Francisco office for more than 20 years, have been outspoken in their opposition to a "cap and trade" system for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

That system -- in which companies may buy and sell the right to pollute -- is at the heart of a climate bill passed by the House this summer, and another under consideration in the Senate.

On Oct. 31, the two made their case in an opinion piece in The Washington Post, saying the bill was fatally flawed by the inclusion of unreliable "carbon offsets," and would "lock in climate degradation" instead of solving it.

A few days later, Williams said, they were approached by EPA ethics officials. She said the officials demanded they take down a YouTube video they had posted in September that made many of the same points.

In the video, Zabel says none of their statements should be construed as an official position of the EPA or the Obama administration. But Williams said the EPA wanted them to further play down their federal connections. The officials said they could repost the video, she said, if they removed a mention of the length of their experience at EPA.

Another comment, in which Zabel said he oversees a cap-and-trade system for smog-causing pollutants in California, also had to go, she said. In addition, the agency said they had to take out a photo of the EPA's San Francisco office building.

The EPA cited a federal regulation that says government employees may note their official position when making statements on their own time -- as long as their title is "given no more prominence than other significant biographical details."

Williams said the pair have taken down their video, although it was reposted by an environmental group.

She said they intend to make the required edits over Thanksgiving -- when the 19-year-old who helped them make the video is home from college.

This seems to be much to do about nothing other than creating the illusion that this couple in any way speaks for EPA policies.

For reference, that OpEd trigger from the Washington Post...

Cap-and-trade mirage
By Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel
Saturday, October 31, 2009

Supporters of the climate bill passed by the House and the similar bill under consideration in the Senate -- including President Obama and Democratic congressional leaders -- say that the cap-and-trade approach would guarantee greenhouse-gas reductions. But this claim ignores the flaws inherent in both bills that would undermine even their weak emissions-reduction targets and would lock in climate degradation.

We are speaking out as parents, citizens and attorneys, but our analysis is informed by more than 20 years each at the Environmental Protection Agency's San Francisco Regional Office, including Allan's extensive experience overseeing California's cap-and-trade and offsets programs for the EPA.

Cap-and-trade means a declining "cap" on total emissions, while allowing trading of pollution permits. Confidence in the certainty of declining caps is based on the mistaken assumption that cap-and trade was proven in the EPA's acid rain program. In fact, addressing acid rain required relatively minor modifications to coal-fired power plants. Reductions were accomplished primarily by a fuel switch to readily available, affordable, low-sulfur coal, along with some additional scrubbing. In contrast, the issues presented by climate change cannot be solved by tweaks to facilities; it requires an energy revolution through investments in building clean-energy facilities.

The biggest obstacle to this revolution is that uncontrolled fossil fuel energy remains much cheaper than clean energy. Cap-and-trade alone will not create confidence that clean energy will become profitable within a known time frame and so will not ignite the huge shift in investment needed to begin the clean-energy revolution. In recent interviews, even the economists who thought up cap-and-trade have said they don't believe it's an appropriate tool for climate change.

What guarantees failure of the proposed climate bills, however, are their provisions for carbon offsets, a concept not used in the acid rain program. Both bills allow all required greenhouse-gas reductions for almost 20 years to be met with carbon offsets rather than actual reductions in use of the capped sources. Offsets -- considered indispensable to keeping cap-and-trade affordable -- are supposed to be "additional" reductions beyond what is legally required. But experience with offsets in Europe and California has shown that ensuring real "additionality" is not an achievable goal.

Suppose, for example, that a landowner is paid not to cut his forest so that it can continue capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Purchasing this offset allows owners of a coal-fired power plant to burn extra coal, above the cap.

But if the landowner wasn't planning to cut his forest, he just received a bonus for doing what he would have done anyway. Even if he was planning to cut his forest and doesn't, demand for wood isn't reduced. A different forest will be cut. Either way, there is no net reduction in production of greenhouse gases. The result of this carbon "offset" is not a decrease but an increase -- coal burning above the cap at the power plant.

Or consider the refrigerant HCFC-22, the manufacture of which creates an extremely powerful greenhouse gas as a byproduct. This byproduct is relatively easy and cheap to destroy, and governments could require refrigerant manufacturers to do just that. But offset investors have persuaded regulators to approve destruction of the byproduct as a carbon offset, making it twice as profitable to sell byproduct destruction as it was to sell the refrigerant.

Some have even fought to keep release of this byproduct legal because, otherwise, destruction of the byproduct would no longer produce offsets as it would no longer be "additional." The situation also creates incentive for some to make unneeded refrigerant to profit from byproduct offsets.

Carbon offsets create the illusion of "additional" greenhouse-gas reductions, but we are just getting business as usual. Untrackable shifting of economic activity and perverse incentives such as these are inherent problems for carbon offsets and cannot be solved by certification or verification processes. Since the most flawed offsets will be the cheapest, they will also be the most popular.

The House and Senate climate bills are not a first step in the right direction. They would give away valuable rights in cap-and-trade permits and create a trillion-dollar carbon-offsets market that will not lead to needed reductions. Together, the illusion of greenhouse-gas reductions and the creation of powerful lobbies seeking to protect newly created profits in permits and offsets would lock in climate degradation for a decade or more. The near-term opportunity to create an effective international framework would also be lost.

Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel are lawyers with the Environmental Protection Agency. The views expressed here are their own and not those of the EPA. Their discussion paper and video on climate change solutions are online at www.carbonfees.org/home/.

Note the reference to their website, http://www.carbonfees.org

I see nothing mentioned about shutting their website down.

If the administration or the EPA truly wanted to stifle this couple, then why allow this website to remain?

Fox News, fair and balanced my a$$.

[AeroSim]

A thing to keep in mind is that NDAs are in effect until they are "de-classed". For example- I can quit and leave my company, but I am bound by an agreement I signed when I was hired to not disclose their secrets. Leaving an organization doesn't greenlight anything without authorization.

That said- if I can prove that the disclosure was to expose illegal activities within the company, THEN I would be legally protected from repercussions.

However, once something hits the public web, it becomes public domain. The cat is out of the bag.

As far as government goes- IMO- unless it is military or LE related, it is open book to the people who put them into office. This closed room BS for TARP packages, ESP, cap n' trade, healthcare is fertile ground for the corruption that will likely ruin us shortly.

[otoc]

A thing to keep in mind is that NDAs are in effect until they are "de-classed". For example- I can quit and leave my company, but I am bound by an agreement I signed when I was hired to not disclose their secrets. Leaving an organization doesn't greenlight anything without authorization.

That said- if I can prove that the disclosure was to expose illegal activities within the company, THEN I would be legally protected from repercussions.

However, once something hits the public web, it becomes public domain. The cat is out of the bag.

As far as government goes- IMO- unless it is military or LE related, it is open book to the people who put them into office. This closed room BS for TARP packages, ESP, cap n' trade, healthcare is fertile ground for the corruption that will likely ruin us shortly.

On this topic, as lawyers for the EPA, they are bound by more than NDAs covering company secrets. And since the OpEd was allowed, the YouTube video will be with the exclusion of EPA reference in light of it's political statement regarding a bill in process, and more importantly, their website is up there...

I see no closed room BS regarding cap and trade. None in this case.

[AeroSim]

You're referring to attorney-client privilege. Something I personally think shouldn't apply in this case because the information should not be considered confidential.

This is just another politically motivated gag order.

[AeroSim]

I see no closed room BS regarding cap and trade. None in this case.

Do you really think they want you to see them all the time? Moreover, this one has plenty of smokescreen to go with it.

I don't care what it is, there is ALWAYS things going on that we don't know about...that maybe we should.

[otoc]

You're referring to attorney-client privilege. Something I personally think shouldn't apply in this case because the information should not be considered confidential.

This is just another politically motivated gag order.

No I am not. There are numerous ethical guidelines for lawyers.

Client-Lawyer Relationship
Rule 1.6 Confidentiality Of Information

(a) A lawyer shall not reveal information relating to the representation of a client unless the client gives informed consent, the disclosure is impliedly authorized in order to carry out the representation or the disclosure is permitted by paragraph (b).

Now, again, all it will take is for the couple to remove the EPA reference in the YOUTUBE video and all is OK for it to be placed back up.

And really, if there was a gag order, then why did the EPA allow their website to remain? Their OpEd to be published?

[otoc]

Do you really think they want you to see them all the time? Moreover, this one has plenty of smokescreen to go with it.

I don't care what it is, there is ALWAYS things going on that we don't know about...that maybe we should.

I think you are blending topics here and seeing more to this than there is. Nothing has gagged this couple from publishing a large amount of material.

Has there been obfuscation in the past by our government? Of course. But that isn't seen here. At least not by me.

To the contrary, I think what has been allowed should make you happy based on this statement. At least for this situation and topic.

Look at this couple's website and tell me that there is either a smokescreen or something you shouldn't know that could be stopped by the EPA if they wished.

[AeroSim]

No I am not. There are numerous ethical guidelines for lawyers.


Now, again, all it will take is for the couple to remove the EPA reference in the YOUTUBE video and all is OK for it to be placed back up.

And really, if there was a gag order, then why did the EPA allow their website to remain? Their OpEd to be published?

otoc, you just quoted an attorney client privilege and you're deliberately missing the point simply to be argumentative. IMO this sort of government information should NOT be considered confidential because the government is supposed to be a public organ. The information or opinions given should have no restrictions in the first place. IMO, unless there is criminal activity being prosecuted in a case (an LE issue), Americans of whatever class should be allowed to discuss it and give their opinion on it.

There is nothing holy about being a lawyer outside of what common sense agreements dictate. They are people with opinions like everyone else. And I don't see a lot of that here. And this is not about their website- it's about the content. PCPer would still be a website even if they had to take down all their technical reviews. Of course, what would it be worth then?

[otoc]

otoc, you just quoted an attorney client privilege and you're deliberately missing the point simply to be argumentative. IMO this sort of government information should NOT be considered confidential because the government is supposed to be a public organ. The information or opinions given should have no restrictions in the first place. IMO, unless there is criminal activity being prosecuted in a case (an LE issue), Americans of whatever class should be allowed to discuss it and give their opinion on it.

There is nothing holy about being a lawyer outside of what common sense agreements dictate. They are people with opinions like everyone else. And I don't see a lot of that here. And this is not about their website- it's about the content. PCPer would still be a website even if they had to take down all their technical reviews. Of course, what would it be worth then?

There has been no gag regarding their statements. Look at their website and tell me who is being argumentative as if that even makes a difference in TLR.

And my point was very pointed, not to a global Attorney/client privilege regarding disclosing information. It was regarding the consent (which was given in many cases- based on all the slew of other information you seem to sidestep in your need to be argumentative) to give it out.

And in one case out of three it wasn't approved by their client, and could be, if they only remove the association with the EPA so that the dummies of the world don't get confused that the EPA is against the bill going through the Senate.

Really. There are better axes to grind on this subject than this situation. But that is my opinion. And if these lawyers were mine? I'd have them remove all mention of me on everything if I was not in agreement with their position. And they would, if they followed the Ethics policies of the ABA.

[AeroSim]

....
Really. There are better axes to grind on this subject than this situation. But that is my opinion....

To prove that I'm not trying to be combative, I will agree with this statement and ignore the rest.

[otoc]

To prove that I'm not trying to be combative, I will agree with this statement and ignore the rest.

Fair enough. I'm sure we both have more important things to do. But to the argument against Cap&Trade and for changes that should be incorporated in the Senate bill, this couple has put together a convincing argument that is out there for us to read. You really should check it out.