The Right’s most Influential Spokesman on Climate Change on KGVO

A man described as ‘the right’s most influential spokesman on climate change’, Myron Ebell, Director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, was on the Wednesday Talk Back show to answer questions from KGVO listeners, and there were plenty.

Ebell recalled his youth on a farm in Oregon, where he experienced the effects of government controlled lands.

“What I learned growing up is that the federal lands which in my county are about 50 percent,”  began Ebell. “It's Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service that most of the environmental problems that we face in the rural West are caused by federal land mismanagement, and that includes the threat of catastrophic fires.”

Ebell, who faces constant criticism from environmental groups, said the Green Movement is very big business.

“In my experience, the environmental movement is very big business,” he said. “Now, it's not little grassroots groups, although there are a lot of little grassroots groups and most of them do really good things, but the ones that dominate Washington and in state capitals, the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense Fund and Natural Resources Defense Council, these are organizations that have budgets of well over $100 million a year. Some are over $200 million a year.”

Ebell coined a phrase for these groups, ‘the Climate Industrial Complex’.

“It has become the climate industrial complex,” he said. “There's a huge number of companies in the renewable energy industry that need government support in order to make their product viable, and the way to do that is to sell them as environmentally good. And so the climate industrial complex is now a huge promoter of the environmental movement. So this is a multi billion dollar movement, which spends almost all of its money not on producing or selling goods, but it spends it all on lobbying in Washington.”

Ebell posited a question for all Americans to consider regarding government and the environmental movement.

“Is climate change more of a risk for the future, or are these climate policies and these energy policies that will raise the price of energy tremendously, double, triple, quadruple, quintuple the price of energy?’ he asked.  Are those policies more of a threat than the alleged climate problem? I think the policies are much riskier than some climate change.”

Sierra Club President Michael Brune wrote that “Myron Ebell is…one of the single greatest threats our planet has ever faced.”

During the Talk Back show, Ebell extended his visit from one hour to the entire 90 minute program, as all of the lines were full for most of the program.