Rightwing lobby group Alec driving laws to blacklist companies that boycott the oil industry

[Jilly_in_VA]

The influential rightwing lobby group the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec) is driving a surge in new state laws to block boycotts of the oil industry. The group’s strategy, which aims to protect large oil firms and other conservative-friendly industries, is modelled on legislation to punish divestment from Israel.

Since the beginning of the year, state legislatures in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Indiana have introduced a version of a law drafted by Alec, called the Energy Discrimination Elimination Act, to shield big oil from share selloffs and other measures intended to protest the fossil fuel industry’s role in the climate crisis. A dozen other states have publicly supported the intent of the legislation.

Texas has already begun compiling a list of companies to target for refusing to do business with the oil industry after the state passed a version of the law last year. Top of the list is the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock.

The push to blacklist firms that boycott the oil industry follows a meeting in December between politicians and Alec, a corporate-funded organisation that writes legislation for Republican-controlled states to adopt and drive conservative causes.

At that meeting in San Diego, members of Alec’s energy taskforce voted to promote the model legislation requiring banks and financial companies to sign a pledge to not boycott petroleum companies in order to obtain state contracts. The wording closely resembles that of laws drafted by Alec and adopted in more than 30 states to block support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/08/rightwing-lobby-alec-blacklist-companies-boycott-oil-industry
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I remember back in the 00s, Randi Rhodes and Rachel warning us about ALEC. Nobody listened then either.

[SWBTATTReg]

1. Talk about a lobbying group that's very partisan. You can't get any more partisan than this group.

What's next on their boycott list? States that push for windmill or solar power generation stations. At least here in Missouri, we passed legislation that a certain chunk of MO power had to be generated by solar and/or wind sources. ALEC (or republicans in other words) is also involved w/ efforts to stifle efforts on:

--snip--
Missouri’s electricity generation mix hasn’t changed much in nearly two decades. Coal provided the vast majority of power generated in the state between 2001 and 2019, declining only modestly during that time as older coal-fired plants went offline or switched to burning natural gas.

Missouri will require utilities to get at least 15 percent of the electricity they sell from renewable sources by 2021, including a small amount from solar power. Other efforts by republicans led to banning the cities from imposing clean energy goals (and natural gas/use of coal).

But there are numerous efforts by Missouri republicans to suppress the rights of Missouri citizens in many ways. It's disgusting.
Republicans have over-rode voter support for a higher minimum wage, over-rode or suppressed voter support for better animal rights, they relented finally in allowing STLMO the right to maintain their own police force (an edit dating from the Civil War, go figure).

Preventing cities from banning plastic, prevented cities from imposing their own gun laws (there are efforts to segregate the gun law into two tiers or such, so in the rural areas gun laws would be different than in urban areas (where there are more people living)). Also, Missouri republicans prevented the state from embracing federal gun laws too, causing headaches in law enforcement from tracking the history of guns used in committing a crime (already is causing issues in prosecuting cases).

Also, Missouri republicans are trying to impose their restrictions on Missourian's first amendment rights to hear about their history, via
at least a dozen bills seek to regulate the teaching of controversial topics, including racism, sexism and LGBTQ-related content.

--snip--

The above stats on the power generation came from a nice state by state analysis of how they generated their power (through 2019) at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/28/climate/how-electricity-generation-changed-in-your-state-election.html. It's a nice summary (although somewhat outdated, but still neat to read).