Calls out their discredited study ahead of EPA hearings
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) today launched a $250,000 ad campaign ahead of next week’s hearings on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed Clean Power Plan, highlighting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its allies’ attempts to kill the proposal with false attacks. The ad, “Desperate,” which calls out the Chamber for its debunked report on the EPA’s safeguards, begins airing this week in the Atlanta, GA; Denver, CO; Pittsburgh, PA and Washington, DC media markets – the sites of the hearings.
“The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s phony analysis of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan should be shelved under ‘Fiction.’ Politicians like Speaker Boehner should be ashamed for doing the bidding of polluters and pedaling its proven lies to just help their campaign contributors make even more money,” said Gene Karpinski, President of the League of Conservation Voters.
The ad highlights the efforts by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its allies to kill the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, endangering public health just to protect their profits. The Chamber published a “study” of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan before the proposal was even released, using false assumptions about an imagined proposal that was nothing like what EPA actually proposed. In reality, the EPA’s proposal would protect public health and mark our biggest step yet to tackle the challenge of climate change.
Many of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s largest donors are fossil fuel companies. Its Board of Directors includes senior officials from large polluting companies, including ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66, big coal producer Alliance Resource Partners, CONSOL Energy, and Southern Company.
Independent fact checkers have rated the Chamber analysis “false” and gave “four Pinocchios” to those that cite the Chamber’s report. In addition, fact checkers have debunked an ad by the National Mining Association that also made false claims about the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. But that hasn’t stopped polluting special interests or their political allies in Washington from quoting the phony figures in the fictional report. Groups like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS and the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, along with the Chamber itself, have continued to use the discredited Chamber study to attack the EPA’s proposal. Backup for the ad is available here.
These attacks on the EPA’s Clean Power Plan are out-of-touch with the American people. Polling conducted for LCV shows significant support nationwide for the EPA’s proposed standards, a core pillar of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan. Following the release of the standards, independent, nationwide polling showed strong support for the plan, including a Washington Post-ABC News poll that found that a “lopsided and bipartisan majority of Americans support federal limits on greenhouse gas emissions.”
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