As climate change accelerates and environmental disasters proliferate around the world, a Big Oil-funded business lobbying group has decided to attack financial firms that are taking their money out of fossil fuel companies, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has learned.
Today at the annual States and Nation Policy Summit of the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a pay-to-play organization that brings together corporate lobbyists and mostly Republican state lawmakers to author model legislation, members of the group’s energy task force voted unanimously to approve a new model policy that would prevent financial companies that end investments in oil, gas, and coal companies from receiving state government contracts or managing state funds.
The bill, the Energy Discrimination Elimination Act, directs state treasurers or comptrollers to maintain a list of firms that boycott fossil fuels. Each government contract with a business that has more than 10 employees must include a verification that the company does not boycott fossil fuel businesses.
The act and its backers claim that fossil fuel divestment will hurt workers and state pension funds, yet it ignores the growing U.S. renewable energy industry and its lucrative
— source exposedbycmd.org | Alex Kotch | Dec 3, 2021
