"Michigan agencies staffed by fellows from climate advocacy group"
"State sought ‘hundreds’ of members in future years"
This is a short post, but it’s well worth getting out to the public. Michigan Capitol Confidential published an article this morning that looks at how climate change activist groups have been quietly providing funding to parachute consulting staff into state government agencies in Michigan. Once they’re in place, these climate "fellows" are being tasked with achieving the state's net zero climate and energy goals.
FOIA’d documents indicate that government agencies love having these people come into their offices and have asked for a lot more. “Would love to find time to chat about additional opportunities for climate funders to invest in Michigan,” explained Kara Cook of the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy in one FOIA’d email.
“In future years, the network and corps would scale to hundreds of members with more defined project verticals, such as building decarbonization and expand to cover other Americorps programs working on climate-related or climate-adjacent projects across Michigan,” Cook said.
Supporters argue the program is wholly aboveboard, but admit that the optics are questionable. “Although the program is completely transparent and ethical, it may engender backlash,” according to Skip Pruss of the consulting firm 5 Lakes Energy.
There’s good reason the program “may engender backlash.” Imagine for a second the progressive green response if federal funding went to the NRA, who then had sufficient funding to parachute staff in Dana Nessel's office to work "on [firearms]-related or [firearms]-adjacent projects across Michigan"?
What if API or the US Oil and Gas Association received federal funding and then paid for consultants to work in MI’s Department of Environment Great Lakes and Energy implementing energy or "climate-related or climate-adjacent projects across Michigan"?
The CapCon report shows that that sort of thing is happening right now. However, the funding went to climate change activist organizations, which then paid to embed climate change and green energy activists into state agencies.
Funding for the fellows comes from a federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant to the climate alliance, according to a memo of understanding between the University of Michigan and the Office of Climate and Energy of the state’s environmental department.
Fellows supported by the grant would help implement new clean energy legislation, siting legislation, and clean energy grant proposals if the clean energy bills failed, according to an email from Cathy Cole to Michael Byrne, both of the state licensing department.
You can read the full Michigan Capitol Confidential article, "Michigan agencies staffed by fellows from climate advocacy group" on the CapCon website.
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