Big Oil Spent Record $175 Million to Kill Climate Bills
Oil, Gas Industries Spent Record $175 Million to Kill Climate Bills
Opensecrets.org, Aug. 27, 2010
It was supposed to be their time.
With
significant majorities in Congress, a president promising action and
favorable public opinion all on their side, many environmentalists
believed their political stars had properly -- and finally -- aligned.
Sensing
the unique opportunity to address global warming on a national scale,
environmental interest groujps poured considerable capital into federal
lobbying expenditures in an effort to topple their significantly more
wealthy foes in the energy industry whose political standing appeared
uncharacteristically wobbly.
At
the height of the legislative push, during 2009, pro-environmental
groups spent a record $22.4 million on federal lobby efforts. That is
double the average expenditure between 2000 and 2008.
Advocacy
groups lobbied independently of, and in partnership with,
like-minded corporations. Industry leaders – the Nature Conservancy,
Environmental Defense Fund and World Wildlife Fund -- hit hardest,
investing more than $6 million. The US Climate Action Partnership, an
unprecedented conglomeration of leading advocacy groups, energy
businesses and some of the U.S. largest producers, spent $1 million
independently.
Yet
even as pro-environment groups seemed poised to capitalize on favorable
trends, moneyed opponents girded for a fight with more financial
capital than ever before.
Clients
in the oil and gas industry unleashed a fury of lobbying expenditures
in 2009, spending $175 million -- easily an industry record -- and
outpacing the pro-environmental groups by nearly eight-fold, according
to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis.
Some
of the largest petroleum companies in the world together spent hundreds
of millions of dollars in various attempts to influence politics during
the past 18 months
ExxonMobil,
the industry leader in 2009, spent $27.4 million in lobbying
expenditures that year -- more than the entire pro-environment lobby.
And in July, congressional debate on global warming stopped cold.
In other words, Goliath whipped David.
"The
way it turned out was a huge disappointment, to put it mildly," Nathan
Wilcox, the Federal Global Warming Program Director for Environment
America, one group that lobbied heavily on comprehensive climate change
legislation, told OpenSecrets Blog.
"The opposition outspent us, and they took it to a new level this time."
Momentum gives way to defeat
Though
only recently coming to a head, the battle over climate change policy
-- and subsequent dramatic increase in political spending -- began a few
years earlier for both of these groups.
Energy
and climate change became major issues for both groups following the
Democratic sweep of the congressional mid-year elections in 2006.
Environmental groups scored major victories in the 2008 election cycle,
betting heavily on a Democratic majority and the presidential candidacy
of Barack Obama.
Individuals
and political action committees contributed nearly $5.6 million to
political candidates in 2007 and 2008. Ninety-four percent of the total
went to Democrats.
These
same groups favored Obama, who campaigned on a promise to aggressively
tackle global warming, if elected. Pro-environment groups poured more
than $1.2 million into his campaign, donating to his campaign over
Democratic rival Hillary Clinton's by a seven-to-one margin.
Oil
and gas groups again outspent pro-environmental groups considerably,
and with their own partisan slant. With more than $35.6 million,
individuals and political action committees contributed far more, at a
more than six-to-one rate. Seventy-seven percent of contributions from
this industry went to Republicans during the 2008 cycle.
Still,
it was pro-environmental groups that backed the winning candidates. And
it was pro-environmental groups who carried the political momentum into
2009 and the first legislative battleground in the House of
Representatives.
Advocacy
groups pushed hard for a bill that would tackle global warming by
placing an economy-wide cap on carbon emissions. Major industry players
lobbied heavily in the first half of the year. Established leaders
favoring the legislation – the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural
Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club -- all lobbied heavily,
bringing the industry to more than $4.7 million during the first
quarter.
In
the American Security and Clean Energy Act (H.R. 2454), which passed
the House of Representatives in June 2009, most saw a serious victory.
Wesley
Warren, director of programs for the Natural Resources Defense Council,
, today calls the House's passage of H.R. 2452 "proof" that money isn't
the final arbiter in legislative matters.
"It's not only about the money," he told OpenSecrets Blog. "Having money helps, but the other side will always have more and they don't always win."
Far
from united on the issue, however, many environmental activist groups
cried foul over perceived carve-outs for special interests, citing
massive amounts of carbon offsets given to energy and coal companies,
which would exempt large parts of the industries from a cap on carbon
emissions.
Greenpeace,
a group that is well-known for its environmental activism and which
also lobbied on the bill in 2009, went on record as not supporting the
legislation. It called H.R. 2454 a "victory" for lobbyists from
industries of oil, coal and others.
Indeed, looming over the negotiations throughout the first half of the year was the oil and gas industry's influential shadow.
During
the first half of the year, oil and gas groups spent more than $86.5
million on legislative influence. Some of the largest oil companies in
the world -- who double as industry spending leaders -- lobbied heavily
on H.R. 2454. ConocoPhillips, Chevron Corp., ExxonMobil and U.S.
petroleum conglomerate Koch Industries each individually spent millions
of dollars lobbying Congress that quarter . Each listed H.R. 2454
repeatedly on their federally mandated lobbying reports in 2009.
"It
was a major job-killer," Bill Bush, a spokesperson for the American
Petroleum Institute, a trade association that represents oil and gas
interests, told OpenSecrets Blog. "It wasn't an efficient way to
go about the problem of climate change -- it would have placed a great
burden on those Americans who use and are employed by oil and natural
gas companies."
The
fight between pro-environmental and oil and gas groups would only grow
more bitter as the fight shifted to the notoriously slow-moving Senate.
Negotiations
over legislation to reform the nation's health care system had inflamed
an already deep partisan divide between Democrats and Republicans. It
was the perfect situation for opponents of climate change legislation:
As Democrats wrangled with the moderate factions of their party over
health care, oil and gas groups hammered away in the background.
In
the year following the House's initial passage of H.R. 2454, the oil
and gas industry lobbed about $163 million at Congress, bringing their
18 month total to nearly $250 million. Many of the same leading oil and
gas interests lobbying on H.R. 2454 also focused on the Senate versions
of the legislation – the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power
Act (S.1733), sponsored by Senators John Kerry (Mass.) and Barbara
Boxer (Calif.), and which later became known as the American Power Act.
By
the time it was over in July of this year, with legislation stalling
out in the Senate, the oil and gas industry had outspent environmental
interests more than seven-to-one.
Environmental Groups Reflect
What's next for environmental groups isn't completely clear.
Some
of the largest groups, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council
and the Sierra Club, are turning their attention to the oil spill
disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and the fight to hold oil giant BP
responsible for the incident.
On
the fight for comprehensive climate change legislation, opinions are
mixed as to what it will take to move legislation forward, but many
groups argued they've already made progress.
Nathan
Wilcox at Environment Americal said he believes environmental groups
will "undoubtedly" have to spend more money. But he also notes that in
the process of a long debate, pro-environmental groups succeeded in
bringing together many organizations that don't always agree with one
another -- something that he thinks helped move legislation forward to
some degree.
"An
unprecedented number of groups [came] together in support of climate,"
he said, including the renewable energy and national security fields.
"We really raised the profile of the issue."
Such
partnerships, notes Bob Bendick, government relations director at the
Nature Conservancy, can also help break a standard narrative in the
climate change debate: that the issue pits jobs against the environment.
Bendick
cited Nature Conservancy's work with the US Climate Action Partnershp
as one example: USCAP, he said, "presented to the American people that
this isn't about: 'Jobs versus Climate', but that climate can be a very
important part of the future of our economy."
Another advantage groups cited was an ability to bypass Congress and take its message directly to the American people.
Joe
Smyth, a spokesperson for Greenpeace, said environmental groups need to
pressure Congress from the bottom-up, rather than relying on buying a
seat at a committee room through federal lobbying.
"We
as a community are not going to be able to out-lobby [oil and gas], or
other industries," he said. "We need to take our fight elsewhere. There
needs to be grassroots pressure on members of Congress."
And
grassroots pressure is one thing that advocacy groups do particularly
well. With millions of members among them, such an effort may help them
outflank oil and gas interests in the next debate.
As Smyth puts it: "It's the only way that we are going to break out of the stranglehold they have over the issue."
