Republican activists, the coal industry and much (but not all) of West Virginia’s business community are continuing their disinformation campaign about the American Clean Energy and Security Act.

This time, they’re focused on an article by a libertarian blogger for CBS Interactive, based on information promoted by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a fossil-fuel funded group that campaigns against any action on climate change.

Yesterday, Roger Nicholson, general counsel for International Coal Group, tweeted the story, calling it a “stunning revelation of what we already knew.” The industry front group Faces of Coal also tweeted to promote the story, and the West Virginia Red blog (run by one of Massey Energy President Don Blankenship’s former political operatives — Updated: Had a nice call from Massey general counsel Shane Harvey, a regular Coal Tattoo reader, who wanted everyone to know that West Virginia Red blogger Roman Stauffer, while a former political operative for Blankenship, is no longer affiliated with the Massey president) also pitched the story. I was absolutely shocked to pick up this morning’s Charleston Daily Mail and not see this story on the front page.

But these folks aren’t telling anywhere near the full story, which isn’t surprising, given the willingness of the coal industry and its supports to bend the truth to try to avoid any action on the biggest environmental threat facing our planet.

What’s the big deal?

Well, the Competitive Enterprise Institute gave blogger Declan McCullagh documents it claimed were a previously secret Treasury Department analysis that, according to the blog’s summary, showed a cap-and-trade law “would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent.” According to the blog:

A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration’s estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.

In addition, the blog said:

A second memorandum, which was prepared for Obama’s transition team after the November election, says this about climate change policies: “Economic costs will likely be on the order of 1 percent of GDP, making them equal in scale to all existing environmental regulation.”

OK, sounds pretty bad, right?

When I did a quick read of the documents in question, one thing jumped right out at me.

One paragraph in  McCullagh’s piece read this way:

One odd point: The document written by Jaffee includes this line: “It will raise energy prices and impose annual costs on the order of XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.” The Treasury Department redacted the rest of the sentence with a thick black line.

But, without indicating he did so, McCullagh left out a very key clause that started the sentence he quoted. That clause reads:

While such a program can yield environmental benefits that justify its costs … 

Kind important, huh? Changes the meaning of the sentence, huh? Yeah.

Well, that was my very amateur effort at checking out the story.

Brad Johnson at The Wonk Room has a more detailed debunking of this story posted here. noting among other things that “official estimates from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Congressional Budget Office, and the Energy Information Administration of about a postage stamp a day.”

You can read for yourself — a summary of the EPA analysis of the bill is here,  the CBO report is here, and the EIA review is here.

As Johnson explained:

To come up with false claim that Obama’s plan was “the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent,” McCullagh ignored where the money would come from — polluting industries with billions of dollars in annual profits — and where the money would go — tax cuts for working people.

In reality, President Obama’s proposal would have amounted to tax cuts worth hundreds of dollars for working families, with the added benefits of greatly reduced dependence on toxic oil and coal, billions of dollars of investment in clean energy, and the avoidance of catastrophic climate change.

Opponents of clean energy reform are inflating the costs of action by 1,000 percent, while minimizing that the threat of climate change and our dependence on fossil fuels. Ironically, these lies may actually aid the political prospects of action, as the American public grow more disgusted with the unethical tactics of polluters and their right-wing allies.

Joseph Romm at Climate Progress has more, pointing out these problems with the documents cited by the CBS blog post:

• What this Treasury document actually analyzes: Potential revenues from a hypothetical climate plan that auctions 100 percent of the pollution permits and returns none of the proceeds to consumers or to another public purpose.  As a colleague from the Environmental Defense Fund pointed out, the claims repeated by CBS News would only be true if all revenues from a climate plan were simply piled up on the White House lawn and set on fire.
• What this Treasury document doesn’t analyze: Anything even vaguely resembling the American Clean Energy & Security Act passed by the House or any live clean energy and climate proposals now under discussion in the Senate.  Applying this so-called analysis to the climate plans now being debated in Congress would be like applying an analysis of a hypothetical single payer health care bill to the health reform plan now being devised by the Senate Finance Committee.
• Consider the messenger–Big Oil: This story is being pushed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the organization at the center of global warming denial machine.  CEI has received funding from ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, and foundations controlled by the Koch brothers.  You may recognize Koch Industries and its founders as the money behind Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks, and much of the right-wing attack machine that continues to attack clean energy legislation, health care reform, and the rest of President Obama’s agenda.  Another group pushing this story, the American Energy Alliance, is also a front group for Big Oil.
• John Boehner’s Fuzzy Math Machine: Opponents of climate change legislation are now firing up the fuzzy math machine again, dividing a figure representing potential revenues from a hypothetical climate plan by the number of people in the country and concluding that climate legislation will mean high costs for households. Sound familiar? That’s how House Minority Leader John Boehner arrived at his roundly dismissed $3,100 figure.  That same $3,100 figure that Boehner and other Republicans continue to cite, despite being repeatedly told it is incorrect and asked to stop using by the very MIT professor who authored the study they purport to cite.

And Dave Hawkins, the respected climate policy expert with the Natural Resources Defense Council, had this to add:

Other actual analyses have projected total cumulative impacts on GDP over a 30-40 year period at 1% or less.  And, what does that size impact mean?  It means that 40 years from now the average household will have an income level twice today’s average but it will be reached in June of 2050 rather than in January of that year.

Updated:

Politico cites this statement from the Treasury Department about the reporting by CBS Interactive:

The reporting on the Treasury analysis is flat out wrong. Treasury’s analysis is consistent with public analyses by the EIA, EPA, and CBO, and the reporting and blogging on this issue ignores the fact that the revenue raised from emission permits would be returned to consumers under both administration and legislative proposals. It is time for an honest debate about how to solve a long-term challenge and deliver comprehensive energy reform – not for misrepresentations of the facts.

Are there issues with the climate change bill that folks who live in West Virginia and other parts of the nation’s coalfields need to be concerned about? Sure. No legislation is perfect, and as Paul Krugman has written in The New York Times, it’s unlikely that protecting the planet is going to be “all gain, no pain.”

But how does it help anybody for the coal industry and other major business leaders in our region to mount all-out opposition to any bill, based on completely misleading information?

Massey’s Don Blankenship gets a lot of attention for comments on this issue.  But the more “mainstream” elements of the business community are right there with him … In a new policy book for 2010, just posted on its Web site, the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce had this to say about action on climate change:

So-called “cap and trade” legislation would have a devastating economic impact upon West Virginia’s energy producers and consumers, possibly more so than any other state in the nation.

The Chamber quoted — and took way out of context — President Obama’s campaign statements that his greenhouse gas reduction plan would bankrupt anyone who tries to build a coal-fired power plant without capturing the carbon dioxide emissions. And remarkably, the Chamber added:

The West Virginia Chamber of Commerce adamantly opposes HR 2454 and any other measures resembling it.

Other voices from West Virginia’s business community and the coal industry are taking a more progressive position, seeking a seat at the table to try to work on a climate and clean energy plan that deals with the problem and at the same time tries to protect West Virginia’s economy.

They include American Electric Power and the United Mine Workers of America union …  who else wants to have a more honest discussion?