The American Petroleum Institute, the Big Oil industry’s chief lobbying organization, will start directly backing political candidates in the second quarter of this year. WonkRoom has the story.
API, whose membership includes oil giants like Exxon-Mobil and Chevron, already spends tens of millions of dollars every year on lobbying, advertisements and Astroturf campaigns to support the the oil industry agenda. As CAP’s Dan Weiss wrote, API “wants to drill in fragile, sensitive places, keep government tax breaks, expand offshore drilling without reforms, and block global warming pollution reduction requirements.”
“This is adding one more tool to our toolkit,” Martin Durbin, API’s executive vice president for government affairs, told Bloomberg News.
“At the end of the day, our mission is trying to influence the policy debate.” As Bloomberg pointed out, oil-supported political action committees like the Independent Petroleum Association of America overwhelmingly donate to Republican candidates.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, API spent $6.7 million on lobbying alone last year, after clearing $7 million in 2009. In 2010, API was the seventh most prolific spender in the oil and gas industry, following ConocoPhillips, Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, Shell, Koch Industries and BP.
API’s turn toward direct political donations is doubly problematic because, in addition to acting as the industry’s chief lobbyists, the institute runs technical committees that set standards for the oil industry. In its official report, the commission that investigated the BP oil spill found that API was too “compromised” to be setting industry standards. “Because they would make oil and gas industry operations potentially more costly, API regularly resists agency rulemakings that government regulators believe would make those operations safer, and API favors rulemaking that promotes industry autonomy from government oversight,” the commission found. And this was before API decided to begin directly supporting candidates!
In its proposed 2012 budget, the Obama administration suggested, once again, removing the billions in subsidies that taxpayers give oil companies every year. API has been at the forefront of the lobbying fight to preserve Big Oil’s subsidies, demonizing the removal of them as new “energy taxes,” even while admitting that cutting the subsidies and plowing the money back into clean energy technology would create “a lot more jobs.”
– Pat Garofalo, in a WonkRoom cross-post.
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Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
His arguments were similar too: A cap-and-trade scheme means volatility, bigger government, and a government picking winners and losers. Companies investing tens of billions of dollars a year don’t like volatility. Without steady investment, technology will suffer, and without technology, the energy—and environmental–future looks bleak.
But when the boss of Exxon attacks climate-change legislation, skepticism is usually in order. “We think it’s fair to view Exxon’s opposition to cap-and-trade – Tillerson’s reasonable critiques notwithstanding – as a tactic meant to delay passage of meaningful legislation,” argue the folks at Green Energy Reporter.
Mr. Tillerson addressed that head on:
Now, some people have suggested that a revenue-neutral carbon tax has no chance of gaining sufficient support in Congress to become law. They say a carbon tax is too politically sensitive and that it is easier and more politically expedient to support a cap-and-trade approach, because the public will never figure out where it is hitting them. They will just know they hurt somewhere in their pocketbook.
I disagree with this assessment. I believe the American people want climate policy to be transparent, honest, and effective. Economists generally agree that achieving a given emissions target costs less under a tax or fee approach than under a cap-and-trade system. I firmly believe it is not too late for Congress to consider a carbon tax as the better policy approach for addressing the risks of climate change. Indeed, there has never been a more opportune time for Congress to pursue this course of action.
A movement, like the call for a carbon tax, that can gather Al Gore, James Hansen, Rex Tillerson, Peter Orszag and Greg Mankiw under one roof must have something going for it.
Is it time, as Mr. Tillerson suggests, for Congress to give up on cap-and-trade and take a carbon tax seriously?
http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/10/02/exxons-tillerson-forget-cap-and-trade-carbon-tax-is-the-answer/
* o 10:24 pm January 11, 2009
o Michael wrote:
A tax needs to be high enough so that significant emissions reductions are achieved. A low tax means business as usual.
http://climate.columbia.edu/blog/
http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/01/08/exxons-tillerson-give-me-a-carbon-tax-not-cap-and-trade/
It makes perfect sense for the API to do this.
More bang for the buck, cut out the pimp, umm… middleman, etc.
And hey, it’s legal, so how could anyone complain, right?
Right…?
(Why yes, I did accidentally take an extra, jagged little cynicism pill this morning. Why do you ask?)
ExxonMobil predicts growth of natural gas by 2030
Global energy demand will increase by about 35 per cent in 2030 from 2005 levels as natural gas becomes the world’s second-largest energy source behind oil, ExxonMobil Corporation said as it released its latest yearly energy outlook.
Use of gas and other less carbon-intensive forms of energy, combined with greater energy efficiency, will help mitigate the higher demand’s environmental impacts, it added.
“The forecasts show a shift toward gas as businesses and governments look for reliable, affordable, and cleaner ways to meet energy needs,” ExxonMobil Chief Executive Officer Rex W. Tillerson said. “Newly unlocked supplies of shale gas and other unconventional energy sources will be vital in meeting this demand.”
The outlook, which the multinational oil company develops each year to help guide its global investment decisions, indicated that gas supplies will expand, especially in the US, where unconventional supplies (shale gas, tight gas, and coalbed methane) are expected to meet more than half of total US gas demand by 2030. http://www.compassnewspaper.com/NG/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=74310:-exxonmobil-predicts-growth-of-natural-gas-by-2030-&catid=111:energy&Itemid=712
Power Plant CO2 Emissions Set Growth Record for 2010
24 February 2011, http://uk.ibtimes.com/articles/20110224/power-plant-co2-emissions-set-growth-record.htm
PLN to spend $15b to build gas-fired power plants http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/02/24/pln-spend-15b-build-gasfired-power-plants.html
SYDNEY—Seeking to prevent delays on a US$35 billion natural-gas project, the Australian partner of ConocoPhillips said it will allow the U.S. oil company to defer a major milestone payment tied to the venture.
Origin Energy Ltd. said Thursday that Conoco may not need to make a $1 billion payment when the two companies expect to approve construction of the Queensland state project. That approval is expected later this year; the project aims to deliver its first liquefied natural gas to customers in 2015.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703842004576163531781218912.html
Models guiding climate policy are ‘dangerously optimistic’
http://www.facebook.com/ permalink.php?story_fbid=183445291696562&id=139434822741700
“The output from today’s models is politically palatable,” said Anderson.
“The reality is far more depressing, but many scientists are too afraid to stand up and speak out for fear of being ridiculed. Our job is not to be liked but to give a raw and dispassionate assessment of the scale of the challenge faced by the global community.”
In a recent paper in Philosophical Transactions, Anderson and his colleague Alice Bows of the Sustainable Consumption Institute at the University of Manchester warn that “there is now little to no chance of maintaining the rise in global mean surface temperature at below 2°C, despite repeated high-level statements to the contrary”.
This, they say, is because of a lack of contextual thinking. For example, Anderson and Bows found that several models assumed that fossil-fuel carbon-dioxide emissions from developing nations would exceed those from industrialised nations as late as 2013–2025, despite the actual date being around 2006.
“Too many models use an extrapolation of old data and this gives results that are too optimistic,” said Anderson. “When I present my findings I am often pulled apart for taking away people’s hope. But what these models are giving us is false hope. Surely that is worse?”
He believes that this false hope that the output from these models has been spreading is one reason why policymakers and the general public have not engaged with the sweeping changes necessary for industrialised nations to drastically reduce their emissions. “This requires radical changes in behaviour, particularly from those of us with very high energy consumption,” said Anderson. “But as long as the scientists continue to spread the message that we will be ok if we all make a few small changes, then climate change will never be on top of the policy agenda and we will fail to meet our international commitments to avoid a 2°C rise.”
It’s great to see how the Republican majority which controls the Supreme Court is making sure the voice of Americans is heard during elections and for that matter every other time. Unfortunately the number is restricted to those who attend private events sponsored by the likes of the Koch brothers.
Slowly the US is becoming a country with all the outward manifestations of a democracy but none of the substance.
The ‘Right’ is herding Americans to the brink. Collapse is inevitable.
Small comfort that eventually this will be recognized by their followers, because we are all victims.
I’m not cranky, I’m depressed, and scared.
Even the Democrats have been captured by the notion that a company’s mission to maximize profits for its shareholders is sacred. RFK Jr. said as much in a speech a few years ago in San Francisco, and even wagged his finger.
That model- which assumes counterbalancing opposition from politicians and judges- is no longer valid. The oil and coal companies control Washington, and want to tighten their grip. The media surrendered a long time ago. And trade groups are typically a lot worse than the members they represent when it comes to focusing on more money at any cost.
That means it’s up to the people, and whatever leader shows up to actually fight. Clearly, it’s not Obama, or any of the other top Democrats. I don’t know how the people regain their souls, and their courage, and stop allowing themselves to be manipulated while drifting in a haze of television, beer, and consumer goods.
Tillerson should be encouraged here. Sometimes leaders and visionaries arise from unexpected places. He hasn’t proved anything yet, but his recent statements are cogent and appear to be sincere.
The Citizens United decision needs to be reversed. A constitutional amendment can do this. Last year “Sens. Tom Udall, D-N.M., and Chris Dodd, D-Conn., … introduced a constitutional amendment to reverse the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling.” So did Senator Max Baucus. Does anyone know about the status of these or other efforts?
i chuckle in a sad way when i read of these Big Oil execs planning their plundering of the planet into the next 20 years or so. We aren’t going to be around that long precisely because they’re completely ignoring the effects of their industry, as the tobacco industry did for far too long (and they’re still at it)! It’s pretty much a lock that things are only going to get continually worse climatically, financially and socially – not to mention all the interconnectedness of it all.
Best enjoy the moments we have left while we keep fighting the good fight.
@5 That Anderson & Bows paper is available here for free: http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1934/20.full
It was published last month as part of the royal society 4C degrees special issue – Joe did an extensive report on it
Only way to beat Big oil is to avoid buying their products for the sake of the planet and democracy… Imagine what Egyptians think of America’s democracy when they read this post.
“The best goddamn little democracy money can buy’. Actually, at Murdoch’s ‘The Fundament’ (aka ‘The Australian’) where they are going bonkers over PM Dullard’s announcement of a ‘carbon price’, and stacking the Comments, as ever, one of the barkers had a little rant about ‘demoncracy’, and, thought I, how apt. Rule by demons. Or as one Chinese reactionary around the time of the May 4th Movement said (almost) ‘Demon-crazy’. As for carbon taxes, of course they are superior to ‘trading’ schemes, ie volatile (the more volatile the better for the financial grifters)betting-shops, but that’s what we’ll get, in obeisance to the ‘Market God’. The collapse will be swift, though, as the chaos in the Middle East spreads, food prices soar, southern Europe is inundated under refugees and our masters continue to obstruct any action that will threaten their money, power and dominance over humanity. The raw hatred unleashed by Dullard’s meek and mild, equivocal and useless carbon price proposition yesterday shows, yet again, that the Right will react with outrage to any measure that questions their ideological dominance. And as Paulm #5′s post shows, it is already too late.
Fossilized Corporate Fascism resulting in political capture and collapse here we come. Glad to know the president has put the head of a military industrial conglomerate and investment banksters at the helm of US Economic Titanic. Everything is good now, especially the Koch Supremes.
Future trends are toward gas. I’m feeling some now.
Corporatocracy.
#9 Mike: Free Speech for People is working on the Citizen’s United decision. A number of states have introduced resolutions stating that they don’t agree with the Citizen’s United decision and that they request a Constitutional Amendment to reverse this. So the goal now is to work state by state getting these resolutions introduced and passed. If enough states take such a stand, it will compel the US Congress to address the issue.
I don’t know what state you live in, but I’m in MA, where a state Senator has introduced such a resolution. What you can do is ask your state Rep/Senator to either introduce or support such a resolution in your state.
API has been at the forefront of the lobbying fight to preserve Big Oil’s subsidies, demonizing the removal of them as new “energy taxes”
Ah, the gall it takes to rebrand stopping subsidies as new “energy taxes”. Who pays for subsidies anyway?
War is peace. Freedom is slavery.
Your politicians are now just a ‘parcel of rogues’ as Robert Burns put it in his poem:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Such_a_Parcel_of_Rogues_in_a_Nation
The key phrase could now read:
“We’re bought and sold for CORPORATE gold-
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!”