Goulder

I’ve blogged before on the LA Times’s one sided coverage of AB 32, California’s first-in-the-nation climate change mitigation law. In a nutshell, the LA Times is a big cheerleader for the legislation, with a record of publishing favorable stories and ignoring negative ones.

Case in point: Today, the Times ran an opinion piece, “A Green Jobs Generator,” by two economists who claim that their economic analysis of AB 32 is being distorted by opponents of the legislation. The LA Times allowed them the space to set the record straight, and thus its editorial page again reassured readers that “doing something” about climate change will be easy because it will reduce energy costs and create “green jobs.”  Of course, this is baloney-in fact, “doing something” about climate change will make energy more expensive and thereby kill jobs-but the LA Times has an agenda to push, so why sweat the details.

Also today, E&E ClimateWire broke the news that Larry Goulder, the lead author of a recent AB 32 economic analysis commissioned by the state, is on the board of directors of a non-profit that has given money to a political campaign to defeat a ballot initiative that would suspend AB 32. So it’s not surprising that he concluded that AB 32 would create jobs. Naturally, the LA Times covered Goulder’s favorable economic analysis when it was released a few weeks ago. But it has yet to report on his association with a pro-AB 32 political organization. Perhaps it will tomorrow, but I doubt it.

Goulder told ClimateWire that nothing is amiss, but it sure seems like a conflict of interest to me. If an Exxon staffer punched up an economic report suggesting that AB 32 would harm California’s economy, environmentalists would throw a hissy-fit. And the LA Times, no doubt, would try to discredit the report as “industry funded.”