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TechnoratiLobbyist Ranks Swell With Advent of Climate Bill
WASHINGTON - Nearly 140 new businesses and interest groups have joined in the intense lobbying in Washington on climate change, according to the Centre for Public Integrity (CPI).
A new analysis of lobbying disclosure forms filed with the U.S. Senate, ‘The Climate Lobby's Nonstop Growth,' shows that a total of 880 companies and interest groups reported that they lobbied on climate change in the first quarter of 2009, a 14 percent increase from the same period last year.
CPI started looking closer at climate change lobbying last year "knowing that this was pivotal for climate legislation," said Marianne Lavelle, author of the analysis.
Microsoft, Google, and eBay are among the technology firms that helped drive the increase, though the lobby is still dominated by big energy producers and users. More than half are manufacturers, power companies, or firms in the oil and gas industry.
CPI found that just 10 lobbying firms, led by Alpine Group and Ogilvy Government Relations, represent nearly 100 of the businesses and interest groups seeking to influence the bill.
"The difference between this year and last year is that, with George Bush sitting in the White House, nobody thought there was going to be a bill passed," said Deborah Sliz, leader of the lobbying firm Morgan Meguire, LLC, which represents consumer-owned water and electric utilities from across the country.
California Democrat Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and his energy subcommittee chairman, Massachusetts Democrat Edward Markey, move forward this week with a mark-up of the American Clean Energy and Security Act.
Their legislation seeks to curb the global warming threat through a complex ‘cap and trade' system that would gradually reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that utilities, steelmakers, oil refineries and other companies could emit.
Under cap and trade, an ever-decreasing number of emissions permits would be available, and companies that still lack the technology to meet the lower pollution requirements could buy more permits from companies that no longer need their full quotas.
In its analysis, CPI found that the interests weighing in on this issue are more diverse than ever. Companies including technology firms Sun Microsystems and eBay and consumer brand names Nike, Levi Strauss & Co., and Starbucks are engaged in an organised lobbying push this year.
Their new coalition, Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy (BICEP), established after the presidential election last November, seeks even more aggressive limits on carbon emissions by 2020 than the Waxman-Markey legislation envisions.
"Typically, the voices from business you hear on Capitol Hill are the big emitters," said Marcy Scott Lynn, director of corporate sustainability and responsibility for Sun Microsystems, a founding member of BICEP. "We have a different voice to bring to this conversation. We have a real desire to see climate change legislation that makes sense."
According to the analysis, companies in the food business also showed an increased interest in climate change in the first quarter of 2009. New entries include Land O' Lakes, Tyson Foods, the American Beverage Association, and the American Meat Institute.
Food processors are wary of a possible increase in energy costs under any programme to limit the carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning. Some have facilities large enough that they might be required to secure pollution permits from the federal government in order to do business under a cap and trade programme.
The Waxman-Markey bill would give away many of these permits for free to the power industry, and agreements also have been struck to bestow these permits on the ailing auto industry and certain manufacturers like the steel industry. But the food industry has seen no similar special provisions worked into the legislation thus far.
"It is unclear whether new players are going to have the kind of clout of the old ones," said Lavelle. "A lot of changes that have been made in the process address those interests that have been at it for a long time."
Refuting Big Oil's influence, American Petroleum Institute (API) president Jack Gerard told CQ Politics on Monday that the climate change proposal was "unacceptable as drafted" because the emissions permits allotted for oil refineries are lower than those allotted for other sectors.
"We probably didn't have a front-row seat in the dialogue," he said.
With so many agendas to address, the climate bill has grown nearly 50 percent, to more than 900 pages, since the draft was originally floated on Mar. 31. The increasing number of interests makes the job of devising climate policy more difficult.
"Because there are so many efforts to appease all of these different interest groups, (policymakers) have to balance that with the goal of doing something to reduce this global warming pollution," said Lavelle. "Anything to distract policy makers from the goal is going to be problematic
Most large environmental organisations still strongly support the package that Waxman and Markey have put together, viewing the compromises as the inevitable price of getting critical legislation passed - although they have vowed to work hard to strengthen the bill.
The deal-making has frayed any green group unity. Friends of the Earth and Public Citizen have raised concerns on the deals struck while Greenpeace said it could not support the measure in its current form.
"Despite the best efforts of Chairman Waxman, this bill has been seriously undermined by the lobbying of industries more concerned with profits than the plight of our planet," said Phil Radford, executive director of Greenpeace USA, in a statement.
8 Comments so far
Show Allsnydly
Fossil fuel corporatists---stand away from the trough.
For readers who haven't seen my prior posts for the documentary film, "Who Killed the Electric Car?", I'll repost the links again.
"Who Killed The Electric Car?"
1:32:40 is what Google says the length is.
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com
(url broken over 2 lines)
http://video.google.com/
videoplay?docid=-6437080948273722203
User TruthWorld at Youtube had this doc. film posted with 10 clips recently enough. Still does and a simple index of the clips is immediately loaded when doing a search in the following YT Channel page using the title at the top of this post; for people who prefer short clips, instead of a long one.
http://www.youtube.com/user/truthworld
http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/223
I only quickly looked at the PBS page and bookmarked it, haven't gone into it more; but it has some text and a video, and maybe there's a review (?).
A review, the following article is. It's good, certainly interesting anyway.
"Profit over the environment
Who Killed the Electric Car?, written and directed by Chris Paine",
by Jay Stock, Nov 25, 2006
(url broken over two lines)
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/nov2006/
ecar-n25.shtml
That, imo, is [important] history and the documentary is striking, certainly leaving an impression that this was an impressive invention. The above review, which is not by Jay Stock, actually, but a reader who wrote and submitted it to WSWS, provides good words on the vehicle or invention, as well as presenting some cons or negatives in terms of what the filmmaker omitted to say in terms of the "killer" politics and corporate racket that caused this invention or product to be [terminated].
I'll excerpt some of the review.
EXCERPT:
Chris Paine has crafted a provocative exposé of General Motors’ cancellation of its electric vehicle program in 2004. Filmed in the style of a murder mystery, the documentary investigates the death of the EV1, an electric vehicle developed by GM in the 1990s in response to the visionary, but ill-fated, zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate of the California Air Resources Board (CARB).
At its essence, Who Killed the Electric Car? is a case study in how the profit system has interfered with material human progress -- .... The film successfully reveals how, in collusion with the auto industry and oil companies, the federal government and the CARB betrayed the long-term interests of the American people in order to cater to the short-term profitability of big corporations.
But even as it heaps up mounds of infuriating evidence, the film fails to draw broader political conclusions about the contradictory nature of the profit system itself. The film suffers from one of the principal flaws plaguing Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth: by laying at least some of the blame for the EV1’s death at the feet of consumers, Paine suggests that consumers should avert environmental disaster by making enlightened purchases, rather than by confronting the class antagonisms and corporate profiteering that propel global warming.
Paine’s film falls into two parts. The first describes the development of the EV1 in response to the CARB’s mandate, the reversal of the mandate in 2003, and the impounding and destruction of all leased EV1s by GM. In the second part, the film switches gears to examine the factors influencing the CARB’s withdrawal of the mandate and the resultant death of the EV1 -- the auto industry, the oil industry, the federal government, consumer demand, battery technology, the hydrogen fuel cell alternative, and the CARB itself -- and renders a verdict on each party to the crime: Guilty or Not Guilty. Interspersed throughout are interviews with drivers of the EV1, environmentalists, ....
END OF EXCERPT
Hmmm, this should be a very appealing topic to most people; let alone only Americans. Based on what the film reveals about actual use of the EV1 on U.S. highways, this was a very impressive vehicle alright!
What the 2:38 pm post said.
With or without more lobbyists, it really feels like Waxman, Markey and the key environmental players in the administration have been working on this for a long time. Its quite a package.
The dems have the majority in Congress, and with Spector and the ladies from Maine can probably even bust a filibuster. Its time to go for it.
Time to ban lobbying. Even the good ones. A liberal SCOTUS majority could make the difference. It's the legalized bribery that corrupts our reps. Call for publicly funded elections instead of ridiculous billion dollar elections.
Though I'm a donor to Greenpeace, let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. It's big progress to get even a watered down bill passed. Remember that despite how settled the scientific debate is, in political terms one of the two big parties is as convinced as ever that global warming is a hoax. Most of the public still thinks there's still a debate over whether it's real and man-made, and they're right, but the debate is purely political. Getting this legislation into law and actual action, even if inadequate, will change the debate, just like we don't have to keep proving particulate emissions cause smog.
Rather than coming down on the supporters of the bill for compromising, come down on deniers for believing fantasy, and come down on the provincial congressmen who would let the planet rot if it spared mild discomfort to their districts.
Big surprise! This whole thing is turning into a money maker for the Corporations. Thats all its going to be.
Cap and Tax is just that and all the cries to the contrary are watering the wind. This is one I'd bet money on and give odds.
I forgot to mention about the only thing Waxman does is serve himself.
PEOPLE, lobbyists, politicians
Thus should the hierarchy be because even lobbyists have more class than politicians because they go to the politicians for power in a straightforward manner and right out in the open and no shame
The people should be at the forefront for the premise of a functioning democracy; it seems that this should be the case and yet it has been that the people start at a zero position in in their desire to get redress or a matter before politicians that would be just and right for all the peoples in the US of A and the world too.
Lobbyists have the advantage in starting any matter they wish before the politicians at the other end of the scale with 100% because the politicians cannot see past their greed and all the green possessed by said lobbyists and all the people have are petitions, letters, demonstrations and all they get from politicians is a machine answer and might get to 50% of attention from said pols and which is considered by them a sacrifice for the people and lobbyists have never been the same.
Lobbyists can work for business, other governments, and any other entity that has money and it has been shown that politicians and lobbyists start any process or procedure that might affect the bottom line of any client of a lobbyist the pols and lobbyists start dead even at 100% and the people at zero which is why the clients get pretty much what they want and we the people end up in the loo.
Tony 5/16/2009