Tech giants like Facebook and Google have severed any ties with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a right-wing, pro-corporate group that produces cookie-cutter laws designed to benefit corporations. Google cited ALEC’s outright “lying” about climate change.
In response, ALEC sent Google a letter saying “ALEC recognizes that climate change is an important issue. No ALEC policy model denies climate change.” According to the National Journal, ALEC “supports policy that distorts the scientific consensus on man-made climate change.” The distortions actually try to illustrate climate change as a positive thing.
According to ALEC’s model legislation:
The legislature finds and declares that: (A) Human activity has and will continue to alter the atmosphere of the planet. (B) Such activity may lead to demonstrate changes in climate, including a warming of the planetary mean temperature. (C) Such activity may lead to deleterious, neutral, or possibly beneficial climatic changes.
According to ALEC, climate change is real and humans are causing it, but there’s no need to worry because climate change is actually a good thing. This assertion is clearly not the case with nearly 100 percent of the peer-reviewed scientific community, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which has issued lengthy reports concerning the imminent and long-term dangers of climate change.
Although ALEC may appear to acknowledge climate change, the group is perpetuating and distributing gross misinformation about its effects. Rather than downplay the harmful effects, they outright insisted that there are positive effects.
Josh is a writer and researcher with Ring of Fire. Follow him on Twitter @dnJdeli.