21 Jul 2009 NAACP Seeks to Impede Black Advancement By Endorsing Climate-Based Regulation
- Washington, DC – Contending with political realities such as the election of the first black president, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is understandably struggling to justify its continued existence. At its centennial convention, it clearly moved in the wrong direction by allying with environmental lobbyists to promote economically devastating climate policy opposed by the majority of black Americans.
“I’m all in favor of the nation’s oldest civil rights group redefining its mission and agenda; however this indicates that the NAACP continues to struggle with current realities that face the nation’s black communities by promoting policies they are opposed to,” said Project 21 member Joe Hicks, who is also a PajamasTV commentator. “If this group simply wants to be defined as another left-wing organization touting the weak science on climate change, then it is destined to face ever-growing irrelevancy.”
Project 21 fellow Deneen Borelli added: “It’s outrageous for the NAACP to place liberal ideology over the welfare of the nation. By aligning with the environmental activist lobby, the NAACP is now an official member of ‘Club Green’ – the exclusive club of elites waging war against fossil fuels. Tragically, the cover charge for their membership – job losses, reduced standard of living and high energy costs – will be borne disproportionately by the very people the NAACP claims to represent.”
At its New York City convention earlier this month, the NAACP entered into a partnership with the National Wildlife Federation to “ensure that the response to climate change can take a higher ground than business as usual.” President Obama, during his speech to the group, sought to equate his energy policy with civil rights. Additionally, NAACP president Benjamin Todd Jealous now characterizes the group as “a multiracial, multiethnic human rights organization.”
The NAACP’s newfound zeal for promoting further environment-based regulation of the American economy, however, is opposed by the vast majority of black Americans. In a recent poll of 800 black Americans, there was significant concern that climate change regulations – much like the Waxman-Markey “cap-and-trade” legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in late June – would have a harmful and disproportionately negative impact on black America.
For example, the poll found that 76 percent felt Congress should make economic recovery rather than climate change its top priority and that 56 percent believe Washington policymakers do not adequately consider the quality of life of black Americans when addressing climate policy. When asked how much they would pay for gas and electricity to reduce greenhouse emissions, 76 percent said they would be unwilling to pay more than $50 a year while 52 percent were unwilling to pay anything at all.
According to research from The Heritage Foundation, regulations created by the Waxman-Markey bill would raise electricity costs by 90 percent, gas by 58 percent, and natural gas by 55 percent by 2035 (an average of $1,241 more for a family of four by that time). Furthermore, the Congressional Budget Office reported in 2007 that “most of the cost of meeting a cap on CO2 emissions would be borne by consumers, who would face persistently higher prices for products such as electricity and gasoline… [and] poorer households would bear a larger burden relative to their income than wealthier households would.
Hicks added: “The NAACP shows how out of touch it has become by advocating Obama Administration policies on so-called climate change that impact the very population that claim to represent – poor, black Americans. Adding an increased burden of higher coast for essential things like gasoline and electricity at a time of economic hardship demonstrates that they have no independent course of leadership, but instead is blindly following this administration’s disastrous lead.”
The survey mentioned previously was conducted for The National Center for Public Policy Research by Wilson Research Strategies and has a margin of error of 3.4%. It can be viewed at: https://nationalcenter.org/BlackOpinion.html.
Project 21, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research, has been a leading voice of the African-American community since 1992. For more information, contact David Almasi at (202) 543-4110 x11 or [email protected], or visit Project 21’s website at http://www.project21.org/P21Index.html.