National Foundations Take Lessons Learned in MN and Bankroll Expensive Green Campaigns in Neighboring States (Part 3 of 3)
A Freedom Foundation of Minnesota (FFM) investigation has revealed an orchestrated $48 million campaign by the national RE-AMP Energy Network to target Minnesota policymakers, news media and the public with an aggressive global warming agenda. RE-AMP, which is comprised of well-endowed national foundations, directs its money to Minnesota groups that lobby on environmental issues. FFM’s tally excludes millions of dollars doled out by the same foundations to many of the same nonprofits for other environmental objectives not directly related to the comprehensive climate campaign.
At the same time, tens of millions of dollars in grants from the so-called “engaged philanthropies” to carry out RE-AMP’s agenda have filled the coffers of nonprofits and allies in eight target Midwest states, including Minnesota.
“If we’re pursuing authorization for cap-and-trade in different states, we can learn from each other and from our campaigns about what’s working and not working,” Keith Reopelle, a RE-AMP strategist with the nonprofit Clean Wisconsin said in a Monitor Institute report.
FFM did not calculate total RE-AMP funding to the scores of nonprofit recipients outside of Minnesota in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, North and South Dakota. An overview of RE-AMP grants, however, indicates a familiar pattern with millions of dollars of foundation money flooding nonprofits in all seven states.
“It’s a choice we make as a democratic society, getting engaged and trying to make it a better future for yourself and kids and your community. We’re in it for that,” said Rick Reed, a RE-AMP founder with the Massachusetts-based Garfield Foundation.
The 2008 Rockefeller Family Fund (RFF) annual report provides a typical roadmap of how green allies in neighboring states have also benefited from RE-AMP foundations’ enormous financial resources. In 2008, the New York City based foundation’s special RE-AMP Fund earmarked 23 grants for allied nonprofits in five targeted Midwestern states, including Minnesota. Wisconsin recipients got four grants worth $629,834, Illinois recipients got five grants totaling $532,750, Minnesota recipients got four grants worth $332,000, Michigan recipients got four grants worth $179,250 and Iowa recipients were awarded a $50,000 grant. The remaining five grants worth $560,000 went to recipients in three additional states to support RE-AMP projects in the Midwest.
The exorbitant foundation funding has enabled RE-AMP to duplicate Minnesota’s legislative and regulatory successes in the other states. A partial RE-AMP scorecard:
- Renewable energy standards mandated in five states (IL, MI, MN, OH, WI)
- Stopped the building of 30 new coal plants in four years
- Enacted politically correct utility pricing pilot programs that penalize ratepayers for using more than the government’s suggested allotment of energy in four states (IL, MI, MN, WI)
- Adoption of “Complete Streets” laws that give bikes and pedestrians priority status on roads while driving up construction and assessment costs in four states (IL, MI, MN, WI)
- Advocated policies to reduce the need for car travel and increase taxpayer spending on rail transit
- Laid the organizational groundwork to fight for building hundreds of miles of controversial wind energy power lines
- Established expensive energy efficiency resource standards established in five states (IA, IL, MI, MN, OH)
In a 2007 report titled “Increasing Payout,” the Garfield Foundation’s executive director acknowledged RE-AMP was targeting the governors of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Their stated objective was to “help set state-level global warming policies that meet or even exceed California’s ambitious legislation. Garfield realized that if RE-AMP does not act immediately, this opportunity might be lost.”
Indeed, such quick action led to what’s widely viewed as the nation’s most stringent cap-and-trade agreement adopted in 2007 passed by the Midwest Governors Association (MGA). Affiliated RE-AMP foundations wrote checks for $2.8 million to the Council of State Governments to help bankroll and promote passage of the far-reaching Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord (MGGRA).
Yet the climate compact once celebrated as RE-AMP’s signature achievement has now come to symbolize the potential vulnerabilities of trust fund environmentalism. As the governors who supported the regional cap-and-trade program left office, so did much of the support for their controversial agreement. Despite years of work and millions of RE-AMP dollars devoted to developing a Midwestern climate greenhouse gas market, the project was quietly shelved in 2011. The MGGRA website has gone dark, along with any momentum. The best spin RE-AMP's media arm Midwest Energy News could manage was to report ”obituaries for Midwest cap-and-trade are premature at best.”
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