NBC News reporter David Gregory admits that while Enron gave President Bush and Republicans big contributions, there’s no evidence they got anything for their money. That’s certainly the case with Bush and the global warming treaty. Enron was a big backer of the treaty, also called the Kyoto Protocol, and yet Bush has abandoned it because of questions about the science behind the theory and the cost.
So it turns out that the company we are led to believe was exercising influence over the Bush Administration through campaign contributions doesn’ t have any influence at all on this issue. This fact makes a mockery of implications that Bush did the bidding of Enron.
In an April 23 article in Business Week, Paul Raeburn noted that "big corporate names" were disagreeing with Bush on global warming. One of them was identified as Enron. Enron became a member of the International Climate Change Partnership and the Pew Center’s Business Environmental Leadership Council. These companies bowed to environmental demands to endorse the treaty. At the same time, Enron was involved in a United Nations conference to develop Communist China’s coal resources.
The Washington Post described some of Enron’s lobbying on behalf of the treaty in a January 13 article. Reporter Dan Morgan said Enron chairman Kenneth Lay, a member of President Clinton’s Council on Sustainable Development, had a meeting with Clinton and Vice President Gore where he advocated a "market-based" approach to the problem of global warming." This was a strategy identified in an Enron memo as "good for Enron stock."
Morgan added, "The Clinton administration’s interest in an international agreement to combat global warming also dovetailed with Enron’s business plans. Enron officials envisioned the company at the center of a new trading system, in which industries worldwide could buy and sell credits to emit carbon dioxide as part of a strategy to reduce greenhouse gases. Such a system would curtail the use of inefficient coal-fired power plants that emitted large amounts of carbon dioxide, while encouraging new investments in gas-fired plants and pipelines – precisely Enron’s line of business." Morgan added that Enron officials were elated with the Kyoto Protocol and said it would "do more to promote Enron’s business than almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring the energy and natural gas industries…"
The radical environmentalists claimed Enron, which staged many "Earth Day" activities, as a true friend. At a dinner in Kyoto during treaty negotiations, Enron chairman Lay was given an award by the Climate Institute. Enron also received an award from the EPA. Writing in the journal of the Hoover Institution, Bruce Yandle noted that Enron endorsed President Clinton’s $6.3 billion plan to fight global warming by subsidizing the production and purchase of renewable energy and related technologies. Yandle added, "Kyoto-justified taxpayer subsidies will make life easier for firms like Enron." Clinton gave them the subsidies in exchange for campaign contributions. Bush gave them nothing.
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