The New Civil Rights Challenge
Niger Innis, National Spokesman, Congress of Racial Equality
2009 Executive Oil Conference
April 13, 2009, Midland, Texas
Ladies and Gentlemen. I want to thank the Executive Oil Conference for inviting me here and giving me the opportunity to be here tonight. I’ve learned that Midland is a special place when it comes to domestic energy development. I’ve learned that The Tall City sits on a region of Texas that produces 1/5 of our nation’s oil and natural gas. I submit to you that we could quickly solve America’s energy crisis in one swoop by transferring the collective knowledge in this room to the power elite in Washington, D.C.
My organization, CORE, was formed in 1942 and is one of the original U.S. civil rights organizations. In fact, our founder, James Farmer, is a fellow Texan, born and raised in Marshall. You can see the dramatized version of his early life in a great movie, The Great Debaters.
For over six decades, CORE has been at the forefront of every major civil rights issue. Today, we are fighting a new Civil Rights battle for all Americans. That battle is access to affordable and reliable energy.
We believe that 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. As my Chairman, Roy Innis wrote in his bestselling book, Energy Keepers, Energy Killers, Energy is the master resource, the indispensible resource. Energy makes possible the ability to enjoy the civil rights we fought so hard to win. Abundant, affordable and reliable energy makes exercising of our freedoms possible. Without it…. hope is hobbled, opportunity is ephemeral and progress is prevented.
Let me give you one statistic that shows why this is indeed a civil rights struggle. This finding was made in an analysis conducted by the American Gas Association.
The average median income family in America devotes about a nickel out of every dollar of income to energy costs.
The average low-income family has to devote about 20 cents on the dollar to energy.
And the average family below the poverty line has to devote as much as 50 cents of every dollar to buy the energy they need to survive.
When these Americans wake up in the morning, half their income is GONE. Not available for Healthcare, Shelter, Education, Food or clothing.
Therefore, rising energy prices discriminate against the poorest among us. It is a defacto regressive tax on the most basic activities of life.
In fact, those politicians and environmental extremist groups that push policies that raise the cost of energy are waging an outright war on the poor.
Tragically, some of the very politicians in Washington, D.C. who are pushing policies to raise the cost of energy are members of the Congressional Black Caucus. I hope that someday soon my brothers and sisters in the Caucus will wake up to what they are truly doing to minority populations across this nation. I also hope that POTUS will remember where he got his political start, as a community organizer, and the impact of these extreme policies on the communities he organized.
Now, How does all of this relate to our discussion today of climate change and climate solutions? Because the fact is our government is about to blow the price of energy through the roof with its so-called “climate solutions.”
Now, I don’t subscribe to the extreme theories of immediate climate catastrophe put forward by the political left. And I certainly don’t believe that fossil fuel energy use is the all-encompassing reason for climate change.
In fact, one recent finding puts that argument to bed.
Using the scientific assumptions and climate formula of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, if the United States were to shut down every single fossil energy power plant in the country, and keep them off for the next 100 years, we would reap a benefit of only seven one-hundreds of one degree Celsius in reduced global temperature.
This “benefit” is miniscule and irrelevant. On the other hand, I’m sure you can imagine the catastrophic costs that these climate policies will cost us. And remember, this calculation is based entirely on Al Gore’s science!
I think it is fair to say that most Americans believe it is a good thing to reduce the amount of all man-made emissions we pump into the atmosphere. That is, if we can do it while, preserving jobs, creating new jobs, revving our economy and maintaining our national security. But in Washington, D.C., they just don’t get it.
Right now, politicians, environmental extremists and even some suicidal industry leaders are positioning themselves for what will be the single largest feeding frenzy of tax dollars this nation has ever seen – all in the name of “climate solutions.” These people are preparing to raid consumers’ wallets for close to a trillion dollars through one of two policies: a cap-and-trade scheme or its close cousin, a carbon tax.
A cap-and-trade scheme is nothing more than a cap-and-tax on every American -- a tax that will hurt poor families the most. A carbon tax would so the same. As we all know, it will be the poor who will suffer the most under either of these policies. But guess what? We are in luck! Politicians in Washington are now saying that they intend to give back some of that money to the poor and to low-income families.
So, let’s get this straight.
First, they plan to tax the hell out of us.
Then they will give us back some of our own money so that we can pay for the higher cost-of-living that they themselves forced upon us.
You know what that’s called? It’s called ENERGY WELFARE. People of color and people with limited means DO NOT WANT ENERGY WELFARE!
We don’t want more handouts from the government to make up for the higher taxes they force on us .We want access to abundant, affordable and reliable energy. In a nation as blessed with resources and technology and know-how as America, is that too much to ask.?
We don’t need Green Socialism
We don’t need a cap-and-tax.
We don’t need a carbon tax.
We need a Third Way on Climate.
What we need government to do is to spark a true technology revolution so that we can grow our way to cleaner energy and lower emissions. We need incentive-based solutions to climate action, not government regulation.
My friend Newt Gingrich describes it this way:
"The morning you provide incentives, it’ll be 50,000 entrepreneurs figuring out how to get the money. The morning you try to do it by regulation, there will be 50,000 entrepreneurs hiring a lawyer to fight you. It’s a fundamentally different model.”
President Obama often compares the goal of transitioning to a Green economy to President Kennedy’s goal of putting a man on the moon. But I think the President should remember that JFK’s America didn’t achieve that technological leap because of government regulations and mandates. America achieved it because government gave the incentive to the private sector to develop the technological breakthroughs we needed to succeed. Government worked with the private sector in a true public-private partnership to build the most complicated machine ever made by man.
So, the answer is NOT government taxes and mandates. Government should provide powerful, long-term incentives to encourage the best and brightest in our nation to develop the technologies that can produce affordable and reliable energy with virtually no emissions. Companies that deploy these new technologies should get massive tax incentives for doing so. The earlier they reduce their emissions, the more of a tax break they should get. If by the year 2020, we haven’t reduced emissions enough, then we can look at comparable economies around the world and adopt the best efforts made to do the same. Of course, I think that by the year 2020, the American people are going to wake up to the fact that most of this extreme climate hysteria is just that ... hysteria.
A better path will help our government leaders tackle problems that actually make a difference to people in the here and now – like providing clean water to more of the world’s population, using science to eliminate real pandemics like malaria and increasing the productivity and efficiency the world’s agricultural sector to tackle hunger.
Let me sum up with one simple thought.
Today’s extreme environmentalists and their corporate and political slaves are equivalent to the old racists. Today’s bigots use “the environment” as an excuse to prevent poor Americans from achieving Martin Luther King’s dream of equal opportunity. These people, these politicians, these special interests must be swept into the ash-heap of history just as the Jim Crow was. And as CORE was committed to fighting Jim Crow in the past, we are equally committed to fighting Extreme Environmentalism now! We welcome your help and partnership with us and our comrades at Americans for American Energy. Join us as we keep fighting the good fight to save our country and our civilization. God Bless you and May God bless this great country!!
Thank you very much.