Greens launch ad campaign to back EPA climate rule

The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) launched an advertising campaign to promote the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) rules to limit carbon pollution from power plants and attack the proposal’s opponents.

The $250,000 ad buy is meant to precede next week’s public hearings at which the EPA will gather input on the proposal.

{mosads}The league is specifically targeting the Chamber of Commerce, which released an analysis of the proposal before it was announced. The actual proposal differed from the Chamber’s assumptions, but some Republicans still used its findings.

“The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s phony analysis of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan should be shelved under ‘fiction,’ ” LCV President Gene Karpinski said in a statement.

He said politicians who have cited the Chamber’s study, such as House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), “should be ashamed for doing the bidding of polluters and pedaling its proven lies to just help their campaign contributors make even more money.”

The LCV accused the Chamber of knowingly pushing the false claims about the rule. The study said the cost of the rules could exceed $50 billion a year and 224,000 jobs.

The television ad that the LCV produced calls the Chamber “dirty, desperate and dangerous,” and said the group and its allies “are blowing smoke, trying to kill EPA’s Clean Power Plan, a plan that will prevent thousands of asthma attacks, save lives and protect public health.”

The ads will air in and around Atlanta, Denver, Pittsburgh and Washington, where the EPA is planning hearings.

According to the LCV, about 72 percent of voters favor the EPA’s proposal.