An effort funded by a major left-wing environmentalist group is looking to appeal to conservative and libertarian thinkers through an initiative that proposes center-right solutions to environmental problems.
The Meridian Institute’s “Twelve Big Ideas for 2012″ is funded by the Environmental Defense Fund, a group that uses its massive lobbying footprint – it has spent more than $6.3 million on lobbying efforts since 2009 – to push primarily for cap and trade legislation and bills related to Gulf Coast cleanup efforts, among other initiatives.
EDF is fond of referring to cap and trade schemes as mechanisms of the free market, and hence it styles itself a market-friendly environmental organization.
Of course given that cap and trade would create a new market for carbon credits out of thin air, it is hardly a laissez faire proposal. Indeed, while EDF adamantly denies that cap and trade amounts to a carbon tax, even the policy’s proponents have admitted as much.
The EDF is an in-house organ of The Tides Foundation, which operates a green money-laundering service. They take tax-deductible ‘charitable donations’ and for a fee will ‘structure’ the donation to support specified ‘campaigns’ and make the source of the money anonymous. A PR agency and tax dodge, one-stop shopping.
Tides takes the money left over (the IRS doesn’t call it ‘profit’) and invests it in commercial real estate, which it then rents out to tenants like — you guessed it — the EDF and its other in-house organs.
Sweet deal!