THE NEW CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE:
ACCESS TO AFFORDABLE & EFFICIENT ENERGY

Address by Roy Innis, Chair, Congress of Racial Equality
To The 33^rd Annual Meeting of the
Resource Development Council for Alaska
June 4, 2008

It is so wonderful to be here in the great state of Alaska.  There is no other place in the nation – perhaps in the world – where the frontier spirit of America lives on.

Where people work every day to find a common sense balance between environment protection and economic opportunity and freedom;  where people know that, if you take care of the land, the land will take care of you;  where people prove every day that solutions locally devised and locally led always trump mandates from Washington, D.C.

I only wish we could export some of your “Alaskan common sense” to the Lower 48.  Believe me, we need it!

I want to talk today about an issue that doesn’t get much attention these days … but is one of the most serious threats to America’s future of any on the horizon.  That issue is civil rights.  Specifically, the erosion of civil rights that is underway right now, right here in Alaska, at the hands of extremist environmental groups and the extreme policies they are seeking to force on America

Let me explain what I mean by first putting this subject into context.  You see, I am something of a student of history.  As such, I can tell you this:  the great American civil rights revolution of the 50’s and 60’s was one of the greatest and most successful social and political liberations of a people in the history of mankind.  It was an extraordinarily unusual historical achievement.

Why?  Consider, for example, these facts:  (1)  it was achieved with relatively little violence;  (2) it was achieved in a relatively short period of time; and (3) and it was achieved during a time of relative peace and prosperity, when America was at a height of its military and economic power.

Contrast that with the French and the Russian revolutions.  Those movements were extraordinarily brutal and bloody affairs,  They dragged on for years.  They occurred at times of great national unrest and insecurity in those nations.

Why, then, did the leaders of the American civil rights revolution succeed in their great movement?  Because we wielded a very powerful weapon.  That weapon was a tenacious hold on the moral high ground that allowed us to appeal to the moral conscience of the American people. 

Yes, there is still antagonism and discrimination toward minority groups in America today.  But it is far less prevalent.  And it is no longer blatantly legal or consciously sanctioned by government.

Yet, a new challenge to our basic civil rights has emerged today.  The civil rights now under attack are not those we won with the Voting Rights Act of ’64 and the Civil Rights Act of ‘65. 

What is under attack is our ability to economically exercise the rights granted by these acts of Congress and by our Constitution.  What is under attack is our ability to transform constitutionally protected rights into civil rights that we actually enjoy: jobs, homes, transportation, healthcare, modern living standards, and other earmarks of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  What is under attack is the ability of tens of millions of Americans – many right here in Alaska – to afford to live and prosper in this great nation and continue to climb the ladder of economic opportunity.

The culprit of this new civil rights battle?  Environmental policies and laws that increase the cost of energy and economically enslave those Americans who most struggle to climb the ladder of economic success.

Let me put this another way:  the civil rights challenge of our time is to stop extreme environmental policies that drive up the cost of energy and disproportionately hurt low-income Americans and the working poor.

Why do I say that these policies disproportionately impact the poor?  Consider these simple facts.  (1) the average medium income family in America devotes about a nickel on the dollar to energy costs;  (2) the average low-income family must devote 20 cents on the dollar to energy;  (3)  truly poor families must spend up to 50 cents on the dollar; and (4) here in Alaska, because of the need to use diesel in many rural areas, families undoubtedly spend even more!

This means that higher energy prices truly hurt the poor the most.  And it means that those who force energy prices higher, by constricting the supply of energy, are guilty of waging a de facto war on the poor.

These extreme environmentalists don’t complain about higher prices.  They like higher prices.  They know that price pain makes folks turn down their thermostat and drive their car less.  They call this  “energy conservation.”  I call it economic enslavement.  Higher energy prices keep the poor from rising to the middle class, and the middle class from climbing the ladder of success as well.

You see, energy is the master resource of modern society.  It makes possible our ability to enjoy all civil rights  With abundant, reliable, affordable energy, much is possible. Without it, hope, opportunity and progress are hobbled.  

• Laws and policies that restrict access to America’s abundant energy drive up the price of energy and consumer goods.
• They cause widespread layoffs, leaving unemployed workers and families struggling to survive, as the cost of everything they eat, drive, wear and do spirals out of control.
• They threaten to roll back much of the civil rights progress for which civil rights revolutionaries and Dr. King struggled and died.

They also present a false choice to the American people.  They lead us to believe that energy and environmental policies are mutually exclusive.  That we cannot have one without the other.  That is a false dichotomy.  We do not need to choose between a clean environment and affordable and reliable energy.  We can have both.    Rather, we can find a common sense balance between the sometimes competing demands of these two great societal goals.

Modern-day environmental extremists don’t believe in this common sense balance.  In fact, they abhor it.  They want to hamstring economic opportunity, growth and prosperity because they believe these occur only at the expense of the environment.

Few environmental extremists bear the resultant burden of those policies, but minority groups, and the working poor, do.

I’ll tell you a secret that few truly understand.  Many of the originators of the environmentalist movement were trained in the civil rights movement.  Most of their leaders studied our tactics and strategies.

Above all, they understand the power of the most important weapon that was used in our liberation: the tenacious hold on the moral high ground that allowed us to appeal to the moral conscience of the American people. 

But there is a fundamental difference in the use of this hallow instrument of liberation and its use by the radical environmentalists.  The radical environmentalists do not have a true claim to the moral high ground, because they use this instrument to deny access to available energy.  The environmentalists’ claim to the moral high ground is illusory, immersed in hubris and cloaked in pseudo-science.

Extreme environmentalists prey upon the good intentions of the general public. These laws and policies that they sponsor have consequences.   They turn endangered species acts, land use and zoning regulations into obstacles to economic development for minorities.  They threaten to keep minorities impoverished and laboring at menial jobs, deny them a seat at the energy lunch counter, and send them to the back of the economic bus.

This is wrong. We must begin here and now to stand up for energy and economic civil rights.

There is an excellent example of this attack on economic civil rights right here in Alaska:  the recent listing of the Polar Bear under the Endangered Species Act.

Almost everyone agrees that the polar bear populations have been sharply on the rise in recent years.  In spite of this, environmental extremists pressured the  Bush Administration to list the bear under the ESA.

The reasons this listing is bad for Alaska and bad for America are many.  Let me just summarize the seven deadly sins of the Polar Bear listing.

1. It is based on faulty data and highly speculative science.
2. It will hurt the polar bear as a species, because it will tie up locally led polar bear conservation efforts into the straightjacket of the highly inflexible Endangered Species Act.
3. It will deal a body blow to consumers because of it will constrict energy supply and raise prices on virtually everything that we buy.
4. It will deal a body blow to our economy because of the flood of destructive lawsuits it will unleash.
5. It will visit the worst economic harm upon the low-income families and further handcuff the poor into the bondage of poverty.
6. It will put environmental groups and radical lawyers in charge of America’s climate change policy instead of our duly elected political representatives.
7. It will weaken America by limiting our ability to provide American energy to Americans.  That makes us more dependent on foreign nations that are downright hostile to our nation and who give our petro-dollars to terrorists who target and kill Americans.

Let me expound on these points.

First of all, virtually everyone agrees that the population of polar bears across its range has grown substantially over the last four decades.  A U.S. Geological Survey study of wildlife in the Arctic Refuge Coastal Plain concluded that polar bear populations "may now be near historic highs."  Even the World Wildlife Fund, which pushed for the ESA listing, agrees that, quote, the general status of polar bears is currently stable, unquote.

I know of no listing under the ESA of a species whose population trend has been sharply up in recent years like the polar bear.  It just doesn’t stand to reason.

The science underpinning this listing is also speculative at best.  Let me quote from a recently issued report from one of the world’s most highly respected polar bear biologists, Dr. Mitchell Taylor.  Dr. Taylor worked on polar bears for the past 30 years, and was the polar bear biologist for the Northwest Territories and Nunavut Territory, Canada for over 20 years. Dr. Taylor has been a continuing member of the IUCN/SSC Polar Bear Specialists Group and Canada’s Federal Provincial Polar Bear Technical Committee. Dr. Taylor has published over 50 scientific papers on polar bear related topics, has worked in the field on most of the world's polar bear populations.

Here is what Dr. Taylor found in his recent analysis entitled, “Demographic and Ecological Perspectives on the Status of Polar Bears.”

“Based on the assumption of a linear relationship of population numbers to sea ice habitat, extrapolation of [UN report’s] sea ice predictions over a thirty-six year interval does not support the contention that polar bears are threatened with extinction over the next three generations. Extrapolation of [UN report’s] sea ice predictions over a hundred year interval does not support the contention that polar bears are threatened with extinction in the foreseeable future.

He goes on to write:

“The concern that polar bears will decline if the climate continues to warm is valid. However, the assertion that polar bears will become extinct unless immediate measures are taken to curb greenhouse gas emissions is irrational because it is inconsistent with the long-term persistence of polar bears through previous periods of warming and cooling; and because the United Nation’s climate model predictions 50 and 100 years into the future do not suggest a future with insufficient sea ice to support polar bears as a viable species. “

Now, the extremists – and the Anchorage Daily News – is fond of painting those who oppose this listing as “global warming deniers.”  The people are clearly playing on the “Holocaust deniers” expression.  Shame on them.  Virtually no climatologist disputes that the globe has been warming over the past several decades.  Of course, the globe both heats and cools periodically.  Climate change has been a fact of planet Earth for billions of years.

I am not a global warming denier.  I don’t’ think it is good for us to continue to spew an abundance of any gas, including carbon dioxide, willy nilly into the atmosphere.  What I reject are the apocalyptic cries of the extremists who say that we face global catastrophe unless we stop all carbon emissions immediately.

I was trained as a chemist.  But you don’t have to study organic chemistry to know that we are carbon-based life forms and that making carbon a pollutant is a bit silly, at least on this planet.

Charles Krauthammer recently summed up my views on the global warming scare much more elegantly than I can say in a column last week.  He wrote:

“Predictions of catastrophe depend on models. Models depend on assumptions about complex planetary systems -- from ocean currents to cloud formation -- that no one fully understands. The models are inherently flawed and forever changing. The doomsday scenarios posit a cascade of events, each with a certain probability. The multiple improbability of their simultaneous occurrence renders all such predictions entirely speculative.”

This is why I say that the scientific underpinning of the polar bear listing is unsound and speculative.

My second objection to this listing is the almost certain likelihood that this listing will not help the species it is intended to help.  How can I say this?  For two simple and indisputable reasons.

1. The ESA will tie up locally led polar bear conservation efforts into the the straightjacket of the highly inflexible Endangered Species Act.  Conservationists and biologists in the field have much less ability to help a species after a listing is made.  That is why nearly all Governors in the West and other serious thinkers oppose virtually every ESA listing of a species in their particular state.  When it comes to successful species and habitat conservation, there is no denying that locally led and locally executed efforts work best.
2. The ESA is a badly flawed law that has failed miserably at helping troubled species recover to health.  Consider this undeniable fact:  Over its more than 30-year history, the ESA has succeeded in helping listed species recover to biological health and earn a de-listing in less than 1 percent of all cases.

In other words, the ESA fails at its central mission of species recovery 99 percent of the time.  Why in the world would we subject this proven failure of a statute on any species, much less one that the American people feel so strongly about?

My third major objection is that this listing will deal a body blow to our economy because of it will constrict energy supply and raise prices on virtually everything that we buy.  This is not a prediction;  it is a certainty.  Once this listing is in full force, environmental radicals will begin suing virtually every economic activity they don’t like – from power generation to mining to forestry to you-name-it – claiming that such activity releases greenhouse gases, which contribute to climate change, which is melting the polar ice cap, which is harming polar bear habitat which is now illegal under the ESA.

Can you imagine what these destructive lawsuits will do to the economy of Alaska.  Of our nation?  In raising prices, this listing will also visit the worst economic harm upon the low-income families and further handcuff the poor into the bondage of poverty.

This is the outcome that is the most insidious.  As I mentioned, this amounts to a war on America’s poor.  I frankly do not understand how these people sleep at night, knowing that the result of their actions will hurt so many people who are already begging for our help.

Finally, this listing will weaken America and make us more enslaved to energy imports from foreign nations.  This outcome is perhaps the most dangerous of all.  Just take a minute and think through what this means.

1. The less American energy we produce, the most foreign energy we must import.
2. Much of that imported energy comes from nations led by foreign dictators that hate America and all that we stand for.
3. Some of the dollars we send to those foreign dictators end up in the hands of terror groups that try every day to kill Americans wherever they can find them.

So, those who push this listing, and many other extremist environmental policies, are doing the following:

• Further enslaving us to dangerous foreign energy.
• Weakening America at the hands of hostile foreign dictators.
• Lending aid and assistance to terrorists who want to wipe  America off the face of the earth.
• Preventing the poor of this state from being able to afford to climb the ladder of economic opportunity.
• Enslaving the poor polar bear into a bureaucratic jail from which it may never be released.

Does it surprise you, therefore, why I feel strongly about leading a national campaign against this ESA listing?

The Congress of Racial Equality will challenge this listing in the courts and through other processes because we feel a responsibility to stand up and defend the tens of millions of families all across America who will be hurt by this policy.  I hope those of you in this audience today will lend your support to this campaign.

In summary, let me say this.

For forty years, I have led the Congress of Racial Equality in fighting for social, political and economic civil rights for all Americans.  I am not about to stop now. I am not about to surrender our civil rights progress to pressure groups and legislators who seem to have no compassion, and no ability to recognize the terrible toll that these anti-energy policies are taking on our economy, opportunities, and civil and human rights.

I call on every one gathered here today, and every caring, thoughtful citizen in our great nation to join with me in challenging these Energy Killers, these modern day Bull Connors and George Wallaces, who are standing in the door, trying to prevent poor Americans from achieving Martin Luther King’s dream of equal opportunity and true environmental justice.

We must tenaciously hold on to the moral high ground as we appeal to the moral conscious of the American people. 

They are good people; they want to do the right thing.

Together, with them, we can make it happen.