How Carbon Polluters Have Hijacked Part of California's "Green" Business Movement

An organization representing some of California’s biggest carbon polluters is working to alter the state’s global-warming law, while claiming to represent several "green" environmental companies that have since left the coalition after learning of its recent actions.

The coalition, calling itself the AB 32 Implementation Group, says it represents a broad section of California interests focused on global-warming regulations. The group, which is being managed by a large public relations firm, Woodward & McDowell, features photographs of white clouds and a field of flowers on its Web site.

But the organization itself includes 22 of the state’s biggest carbon polluters as ranked by the state Air Resources Board. Oil refiners, cement manufacturers, chemical companies, and trucking firms figure prominently. And, according to environmentalists and lawmakers, the Implementation Group has engaged in a steady campaign to undermine the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which mandates a 25 percent reduction in the state’s emissions by 2020.

California Watch found companies on the Implementation Group’s membership list that no longer exist or whose executives were surprised to learn of the group’s efforts to alter the global-warming law. Many of these companies are environmental-technology firms that had added a green luster to the Implementation Group’s big-business coalition, which includes more than 180 companies and associations.

The PR firm running the group has a history of clashing with environmentalists. In the 1990s, Burlingame-based Woodward & McDowell helped defeat Proposition 128, dubbed "Big Green," which mandated sweeping changes to environmental laws. Company associate Dave Fogarty said his firm helped the Implementation Group draft its mission statement and manages its public image, but they have promoted a variety of issues, from school bonds to transportation funding, over the years.

Environmentalists say the Implementation Group has yet to make major inroads into changing the law. But V. John White, the executive director of the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies and a lobbyist for the Sierra Club, said the Implementation Group and its allies are "trying to create a political juggernaut they can use to beat CARB into the ground."

For the past several months, the powerful California Air Resources Board has been writing detailed regulations that will set into motion the state’s global-warming law, signed with fanfare by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006. The law leaves numerous important decisions to the board, including the details of a first-in-the-nation "cap-and-trade" system that would require big polluters to limit their emissions while giving financial incentives to companies that make improvements.

The Air Resources Board’s final product could dramatically alter the bottom line for businesses in the state, and spur new industries designed to "capture," or clean up, global-warming emissions. While the board is writing these regulations, the Implementation Group has acted as the public face for its members while pressuring the board to lessen the burden on businesses. The board has multiple deadlines through 2011 to finalize the regulations.

Top officials’ comments at odds with group’s name

The AB 32 Implementation Group says it wants "regulatory certainty" and to "ensure greenhouse-gas-emission reductions are achieved."

Meanwhile, the group’s top official has publicly supported legislative proposals that would delay the rollout of AB 32, citing potential harm to the economy. In April 2008, Dorothy Rothrock, who is the co-chair of the Implementation Group and vice president of government affairs for the California Manufacturing and Technology Association, told a legislative hearing she favored a plan that involved suspending AB 32 for a year.