It’s Getting Hot In Here

Here in Oregon, the Uncover Intel Secrets campaign is still pressuring our local branch of Intel Corporation to make good on its green rhetoric by lobbying for renewable energy and solutions to global warming. Thanks in part to those of you who responded to an earlier post on this site by inviting Intel Government Affairs manager Jonathan Williams to the clean energy party scheduled to start in Oregon in 2009, Williams responded to my phone calls on behalf of Uncover Intel Secrets.

The gist of what he said is that Intel is committed to working on clean energy issues, and looks forward to working with Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski to implement a bold agenda in 2009. Well, that sounds good; but it’s important to remember that Intel is also a member of Industrial Customers of Northwest Utilities—a lobbying group that has consistently opposed the most important global warming and clean energy laws in Oregon. If Intel is going to make up for this dubious connection to anti-environmental industry, they’re going to have to work pretty hard to prove their good intentions. Please ask them to join the Cascade Climate Network in lobbying for clean energy in Oregon in February, 2009.

If Intel really wants to stand among the leaders in renewable energy development in Oregon, there can be no better way to prove their intent than by allying with the youth of this region who are calling for massive investment in renewable energy, and for definitive limits on greenhouse emissions. In February of 2008, a group of students from the Cascade Climate Network lobbied our legislators in the capitol, pushing for passage of the only global warming bill up for discussion during Oregon’s 2008 “special session.” In Salem that day, I listened to three college students speak eloquently to a legislative committee, asking them to move forward on global warming for the sake of our generation. However the bill in question—House Bill 3610—sparked vigorous opposition from industry groups like Industrial Customers of Northwest Utilities (ICNU). HB 3610 died in committee during the three-week special session, and never passed into law.

Jonathan Williams of Intel claims his company had no opinion on HB 3610—that Intel neither stood in its way nor lobbied for its passage. As a member of ICNU, however, Intel lent a certain credibility to one of the groups opposing HB 3610. In 2009, the company needs to be better than neutral on the most important energy bills that will come up for passage that year. And there can be no better way to do this than by joining students in the Cascade Climate Network when we return to the capitol to push for clean energy in February. Ask Intel to join us here.

What if, instead of claiming “neutrality” on the only global warming bill up for passage last February, Intel representatives had gone to Salem with the Cascade Climate Network, to lobby in support of HB 3610? What if the largest private employer in Oregon stood up with the student activists of our state to demand a clean energy future for our region and solutions to global warming? Now that would look like a “commitment to working on clean energy issues.”

Ask Intel to Support Clean Energy with the Cascade Climate Network this February!