How environmentalists do it when Congress fails them

When Congress won’t pass a Big Green-favored proposal, environmentalists turn to their buddies in the federal bureaucracy. That’s the game plan of environmentalists campaigning to remove oil and gas drilling from huge swaths of energy-rich western federal lands — killing jobs and raising consumers’ travel and heating costs in the process. They unsuccessfully lobbied Congress for more than two years using an unincorporated front group, Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development, which they started in 2007 with a $250,000 grant from the Hewlett Foundation. SFRED was jointly created by three major environmental groups, the National Wildlife Federation, Trout Unlimited and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. The TRCP in turn was created in 2002 by Trout Unlimited acting as a legal money funnel for $2 million from the Pew Charitable Trusts. The Moore Foundation (Intel founder Gordon Moore’s philanthropy) gave TRCP $600,000 specifically “to change the current course of energy development on public lands,” according to Moore’s 2005 IRS Form 990 tax return...more