Sure looks like Anti-Environmental Corporate Kirk is not of recent origin

Mark Kirk has done a pretty good job over the years convincing folks with votes on bills where his vote is not critical that he is a champion of the environment. He's even a marcher in the virtual march to stop global warming. It's easy and cheap to sign up on the web and get a page with your picture on it to show to your constituents. Harder to live by it.

Lately, however, the pressure of being assistant majority whip and probably just from being part of the republican sinking ship, has caused him to be more up front with his anti-environmental votes earning him a 39% approval with the League of Conservation Voters. But isn't this new? Wasn't Kirk historically a champion of the environment?

A gentleman from the Illinois 5th recently sent several of us to a website that seems to counter the notion that Kirk is only caving to pressure in his anti-enviromental votes. The site is that of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. It's a free marketplace group with the goal of keeping business free from governmental regulation. In 1997, when the Clinton Administration was working on the Kyoto treaty, the CEI was rejoicing in a few days of chilly temperatures in Kyoto to make it seem that the idea of global warming was ridiculous and talking about seizing the moment by organizing a seminar:

We're titling it "A Contrarian Briefing on Global Warming Policy" and have pulled together a scratch team from among the tiny number of contrarians attending the conference: Science and Environmental Policy Project's Fred Singer on the scientific issues; the Hoover Institution's Thomas Gale Moore on the beneficial aspects of global warming; Mark Kirk of the House International Relations Committee on the politics of the climate talks; Charles River Associates' David Montgomery on the economic costs of carbon withdrawal; CEI's Fred Smith on climate change prevention versus adaptation/resiliency. We've invited the entire press corps to the event - and expect lots of hostile questions.

On another page of the CEI site, they discuss how Mark Kirk once again attended a "Contrarian Briefing" and helped CEI make a case against Kyoto with information suggesting that the treaty was going to help Saddam Hussein because he would have emission rights due to low emissions after the first Gulf War, a two-fer in the neo-con world of the late 1990s.

Is that referring to our Mark, Mr. LCV Environmental Champion still getting his dwindling number of supporters to write in letters to the editor to the Daily Herald touting him as such even thought the League of Conservation Voters no longer considers him so at a recent 39% rating? I thought I'd better make sure. From his own site:

Kirk began his career on the staff of his predecessor, Congressman John Porter. He later served in the World Bank, the State Department, the law firm of Baker & McKenzie, and the U.S. House International Relations Committee.

From Project Vote Smart we learn that Kirk was in fact Counsel for the International Relations Committee, United States House of Representatives, 1995-1999.

Yup, that was Mark, a contrarian against understanding global warming for CEI, the group that has argued in television commercials it has produced that there is no global warming and the ice is actually thickening.

I am no expert, but I've been to Juneau, Alaska twice and the Mendenhall glacier sure seemed smaller to me the second time, a lot smaller, scary smaller, and there is a lot of data backing up my casual observation. But don't go by me. Al Gore's movie about global warming is coming out in Chicago this week and you can see it at the Renaissance Theater in Highland Park on June 4th at 6pm and participate in a discussion afterward with Howard Learner, the Executive Director of the Environmental Law and Policy Center. Gore's movie is called An Inconvenient Truth. Inconvenient for CEI, Mark Kirk, their corporate buddies and the rest of us, but sadly, true despite Kirk's contrarian background.

See this Think Progress post on the current disinformation campaign on global warming. Set the thermostat to 65 degrees, gas up that SUV, don't worry, be happy... but be afraid of avian flu and Islamo-facism because in those cases, the money comes from the fear.