Press statement on Carly Fiorina

*FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE*
Contact: Jenesse Miller, (510) 844-0235 or jmiller@ecovote.org

September 29, 2010
Statement of Warner Chabot, CEO, California League of Conservation Voters

Carly Fiorina Keeps Earning League of Conservation Voters “Dirty Dozen” Ranking

Big Coal and Big Oil Back Carly’s Plans to Kill California’s Clean Air and Climate Law

In today’s debate with Senator Barbara Boxer, failed businesswoman Carly Fiorina continues to demonstrate she is out of touch with Californians, who overwhelmingly support the state's leadership on clean energy and climate change. She is also out of touch with the facts, which show that California’s clean energy law AB 32 is creating the one bright spot in California's economy and attracting the majority of the nation's venture capital investment in clean energy technology.

A few weeks ago, in her first televised debate with Senator Boxer, Fiorina stumbled over her answers to questions about climate change and whether or not she supports Prop 23, which would repeal California's landmark climate law (while insisting she wasn't being "evasive").

Days later, she finally figured out her official position on the "Dirty Energy Proposition" on the November ballot. Fiorina endorsed the oil-company funded ballot initiative that seeks to indefinitely suspend—in other words, kill—California's landmark clean energy law. Relying on a handful of anecdotes and famously discredited studies, Fiorina calls California's 2006 law a “job killer”.

Fiorina's announcement of her support for the clean job-killer Proposition 23 came shortly before receiving more contributions from the fossil fuel industry. The Koch brothers (owners of another out-of-state Big Oil entity, this one based in Kansas) co-hosted a Washington DC fundraiser for Fiorina last week. The billionaire Koches are kingpins of funding climate change denial and Tea Party activists. As of September 1, Fiorina had received about $63,000 in donations this year from out-of-state coal interests and $76,850 from oil and gas companies.

Fiorina has rightfully earned her spot on the national League of Conservation Voters’ “Dirty Dozen,” a program that targets candidates for Congress — regardless of party affiliation — who consistently vote or speak out against clean energy and conservation. Fiorina’s positions on climate change (she questions the science and compares climate change to the weather), offshore oil drilling (she continues to be in favor) and environmental groups (she calls us “extremists”) are out of step with mainstream Californians.

Over the next several days and weeks before the election, the national League and the California League of Conservation Voters are spreading the word: Carly Fiorina’s Senate campaign and Prop 23 both threaten California's environment and air quality, our clean energy future, and our economy. Both are supported by out-of-state, polluting fossil fuel interests. We should reject them both at the ballot box in November, and re-elect environmental champion Barbara Boxer to the US Senate.

For more on CLCV’s endorsement of Senator Barbara Boxer, visit: http://www.ecovote.org/page/press-statement-clcv-endorses-senator-boxer