Editor’s note: This commentary is by Steven Gorelick, who lives off the grid in a solar-powered home in Walden.
[O]urs is a TV-less household, so aside from the glossy ads that periodically fill up our mailbox (and then our recycling bin), I’ve been spared the worst of the political advertising other Vermonters have endured for months now. But the other day I caught a World Series game at our local tavern, where the between-innings barrage of smartphone ads was occasionally broken by slick commercials for Sue Minter. (I don’t know why her campaign decided to plunk down big bucks for a slot during the World Series, unless she’s trying to siphon off Bill “Spaceman” Lee voters.)
The sound was off, but the imagery, title cards and closed-captioning made it clear that these were mud-slinging attacks on Minter’s opponent, Phil Scott. The combined message was that Scott is little more than a tool of the Koch brothers, a typical Republican ideologue who is not only plotting to take away women’s right to choose, but any environmental protections the state of Vermont still has left.
To be fair, I should point out that these attacks are not technically a product of the Minter campaign, but of the Super PACs that support her, and campaign finance laws (such as they are) don’t allow “coordination” between a candidate’s campaign and the PACs. But even without formal coordination there seems to be an unwritten rule nowadays that a candidate’s official campaign will be positive – touting the candidate’s virtues and capabilities – while PACs do the dirty work of heaping mud on the opponent.
As time goes on this pattern is becoming more entrenched and predictable, but the ads purporting to link Phil Scott to the Koch brothers establish a new low. The rationale for this claim is that the Kochs contributed $2 million to the Republican Governors Association, whose aim is to support the 12 Republican candidates running for governor nationwide, one of whom is Phil Scott.
In a blue state like Vermont, the Koch brothers are an easy target: They’re not only a symbol of climate change denial, they’re emblematic of the corrupting influence of big money on our political institutions. But Vermont voters don’t need to look so far afield to have their concerns about money in politics confirmed. Just last week, the multinational corporation Iberdrola announced its plan to give individual cash payments to the citizens of Windham and Grafton – so long as a majority of the towns’ voters approve the company’s proposed wind project.
But Vermont voters don’t need to look so far afield to have their concerns about money in politics confirmed.
Minter has failed to denounce Iberdrola’s brazen attempt to exchange cash for votes. And VPIRG – the supposed watchdog of Vermont’s environment and political process – has been similarly silent about this particular example of political corruption. Perhaps this is because both Minter and VPIRG support a build-anywhere policy for industrial wind, including on the mountain ridges Iberdrola has chosen. (Both claim to support only “well-sited” projects, which apparently means mountain ridgelines, sensitive bear habitat, and the headwaters of flood-prone streams and rivers.) Alternatively, maybe Iberdrola’s corrupt behavior gets a pass simply because – unlike the coal-stained Koch brothers – the corporation is a green, climate-saving, socially responsible renewable energy company.
Or is it?
Not exactly. Iberdrola’s portfolio features plenty of dirty fossil fuels and nuclear power. For example, Iberdrola owns the UK’s fourth largest electricity provider, Scottish Power, whose Longannet coal-fired power plant was (until it was shut down this year) Scotland’s biggest polluter, and one of the most polluting power stations in Europe: according to Greenpeace, Longannet was responsible for 4,210 lost life-years in 2010 alone. In Spain, Iberdrola runs three more coal-fired power plants, as well as five nuclear power plants. Meanwhile, the four U.S. companies that Iberdrola acquired to gain its initial foothold in the U.S. are natural gas companies. How green is fracking?
If Iberdrola’s fuel supplies tend to be dirty, so does its corporate behavior: Taking a page from the Enron playbook, Scottish Power abused its dominant position in electricity generation by “deliberately shutting their plants down when supplies are tight in order to receive a higher payment to start up again,” British energy regulators claimed in 2008.
Are Iberdrola’s wind projects in Vermont a way to relieve our nation’s dependence on foreign energy supplies? Keep in mind that Iberdrola is a Spanish-based multinational corporation. Its largest shareholder? Qatar Investment Holdings.
Vermonters are rightfully averse to seeing outside corporations determine what happens in our state, but too often that aversion is relaxed when a corporation drapes itself in green and portrays its profit-maximizing activity as a noble, planet-saving endeavor. We need to be more discerning than that; we need to actually weigh all the costs and benefits of proposed energy development, rather than simply handing the keys to some of our most sensitive ecological areas to energy corporations, renewable or otherwise.
