Two big issues dogged Hillary
Clinton during the Democratic primary: the Trans-Pacific
Partnership trade agreement (TPP) and fracking.
She had a long history of supporting both.
Under fire from Bernie
Sanders, she
came out against the TPP and took
a more critical position on fracking. But critics wondered if this was a
sincere conversion or simply campaign rhetoric.
Now, in two of the most
significant personnel moves she will ever make, she has signaled a lack of
sincerity.
She chose as her vice
presidential running mate Tim Kaine, who voted
to authorize fast-track powers for the TPP and praised the agreement just two
days before he was chosen.
And now she has named former
Colorado Democratic Senator and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to be the
chair of her presidential transition team — the group tasked with helping
set up the new administration should she win in November. That includes identifying,
selecting, and vetting candidates for over 4,000 presidential appointments.
As a senator, Salazar was
widely considered a reliable friend to the oil, gas, ranching and mining
industries. As interior secretary, he opened the Arctic Ocean for oil drilling,
and oversaw the botched response to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Since returning to the private sector, he has been an ardent supporter of the
TPP, while pushing back against curbs on fracking.
The TPP would enhance the
ability of corporations to sue to overturn
environmental regulations, but Salazar helped
a pro-TPP front
group, the “Progressive Coalition for American Jobs,” argue the opposite.
In a November 2015 USA Today
op-ed that Salazar co-wrote with Bruce Babbitt, the two men argued that
the TPP would be the “the
greenest trade deal ever” by promoting sustainable energy. Both Salazar and
Babbitt cited their former positions as interior secretaries to boost their
credibility.
The following month, Salazar
authored a Denver Post op-ed with two former Colorado governors also
affiliated with PCAJ, arguing that
the agreement would protect the state’s scenic beauty: “And as a state rich
with natural wonder and a long history of conservation, Colorado can be proud
that the TPP includes the highest environmental standards of any trade
agreement in history.”
Shortly after leaving his post
at the Obama administration, Salazar appeared
at an oil and gas industry conference to argue in favor of fracking.
“We know that, from everything
we’ve seen, there’s not a single case where hydraulic fracking has created an
environmental problem for anyone,” Salazar told
the attendees, who included the vice president of BP America, another keynote
speaker at the conference. “We need to make sure that story is told.”
The EPA acknowledged
in 2015 that fracking has contaminated drinking water wells. And methane, a gas
with a climate impact 86 times that of carbon dioxide, is known to leak from
fracked gas infrastructure.
Salazar is on
the leadership team of a business group in Colorado fighting against a
pair of ballot
initiatives that could limit fracking. The Denver Post referred to the
group as the “political equivalent of a tested military reserve unit that the
[Denver Chamber of Commerce] calls into action when it believes business
interests in the state face a serious threat.”
Environmentalists are alarmed.
“If Clinton plans to effectively tackle climate change, the last thing her team
needs is an industry insider like Ken Salazar. Salazar’s track record
illustrates time and again that he is on the side of big industry, and not of the
people,” Greenpeace USA Democracy Campaign Director Molly Dorozenski
said in a statement.
Salazar currently works as
partner at WilmerHale, a D.C.-based law and lobbying firm. His clients are not
public, but his firm lists his job as giving “policy advice to
national and international clients, particularly on matters at the intersection
of law, business and public policy.” Staff at the firm have been involved in
TPP negotiations.
Members of the presidential
transition team are not required to disclose their finances — meaning we may
never know if and how much Salazar is paid for all of the advocacy outside
his salary at WilmerHale.
Salazar has long been
criticized for his connections to the industries he regulates. For example, in
a 2010 Salon post, Intercept
co-founding editor Glenn Greenwald highlighted Salazar’s connections to BP,
noting that “even as BP continues to spew oil in unfathomable quantities into
the Gulf,” Salazar was waiving environmental reviews and approving new
wells in the Gulf of Mexico.
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