Repeat after me: COUNTERMOVEMENT COALITIONS -Climate Denialist Organizational Profiles - House Oversight Committee launches formal investigation into the aforementioned.
To be clear a lot of companies spend a ridiculous amount of money in lobbying. In addition a lot of law firms make a ton of money doing their clients bidding. Lobbing Capitol Hill and more broadly any lawmakers (applicable to State and local Governments) is how the sausage is made. It’s not pretty. This tends to be a dirty business, and exposing the deep underbelly of major companies lobbying tactics is something more Americans need to understand.
Data Source(s)
I’ve been in the DC for a long time. I’ve walked the halls of the Cannon, Longworth, Ford, O’Neil and Rayburn buildings countless times —similarly I’ve also walked the halls of the Dirkson, Rayburn and Hart buildings countless times. And yet there have been countless occasions that I found myself lost in the vastness of the US Capitol Campus, which includes 14+ buildings, including the Congressional Power Plant. Also have you ever wondered what the “tiny doors” are? Hint —below is a list of databases I used, again there’s nothing mythical or fancy about the facts that will be discussed throughout this article. You just need to know where and what to look for…
Did you really think that I was bluffing — my track record is pretty solid, I don’t bluff. If I say that I have the receipts, I do. I probably spent at least two weekends chasing down the receipts because I know how important facts are and I don’t make assertions that I can’t immediately back up with a file or three.
In order to set your expectations this article will be portioned into Four Distinct areas:
Area # 1 ExxonMobil Lobbying Funding -House & Senate Bills
Area # 2 Campaign donations (including PACs, SuperPACs & PAC straw-donations, State Representatives because ExxonMobil donations to local races in Pennsylvania and Texas is something that most MSM outlets consistently overlook)
ExxonMobil protracted and vexatious litigation
The prerequisite catalyst…
On June 30, 2021 Channel 4, Greenpeace Explosive Videos & Investigative Reporting
Last month Channel 4 published numerous videos and their investigative reporting was/is extraordinary. It is entirely uncomfortable to watch but you should take a few moments and at least watch their video
Mr McCoy claims:
the company secretly fought against legislative action on climate change using third-party organisations
he lobbied key senators to remove and/or diminish climate change measures from President Biden’s US $2 trillion infrastructure and jobs bill as it proceeds through the legislative process
he regards trade bodies like the American Petroleum Institute as “whipping boys” in order to avoid public scrutiny on Capitol Hill
During the virtual meeting held on 7 May, the investigators asked Mr McCoy questions about ExxonMobil’s current and historical lobbying on environmental issues.
“…aggressively fought science to deny climate change in order to maximise profit and shareholder return”
Keith McCoy - a senior ExxonMobil lobbyist named names… but the FEC Reports & LDA Reports…
buckle up because I’m about to help you fully understand just how awful and duplicitous ExxonMobil really is. Also see Greenpeace Unearth’s Vimeo account, the account has uploaded 8+ videos. And yes reading/watching reporting from other Countries should be mandatory. In America we tend to sequester our news sources. I personally find reading reporting from Canada, UK and Australia gives you a glimpse into how other Countries think/report about America.
ProTip from your ordinary file folder;
If you and your board of directors feel like you need to issue a public statement as it relates to your campaign largesse - perhaps you should “cool it” on your campaign donations. Lest we forget the position president Trump put your company in circa October 2020
Then perhaps ExxonMobil should reevaluate their January 13, 2021 public statement concerning the Jan 6th Insurrection and perhaps your shareholders should hold your board accountable for taking <3 months before you decided to let the campaign money spigot flow to the same Congressional Republicans who voted against our Democracy even after the deadly and bloody insurrection
Area # 1 lobbying funding House & Senate bills
I am restricting this to the 116th and 117th Congress —otherwise it might be information overload. Perhaps a few follow up articles might be warranted but for now let’s just focus on the 116th & 117th Congress
Keith McCoy names 11 senators stating that they were “crucial” to ExxonMobil’s policy endeavors. I’ve taken the liberty of embedding each FEC report of the Senators McCoy boast about. If you think I’m a partisan hack —then maybe you’re not reading my research correctly. I’m an equal opportunity rabble rouser and I don’t care what political party you are with, if your engaged in (albeit lawful) tawdry behavior, I’m going to call it out. Because the tsunami of special interest money that floods into lawmakers campaign coffers is disgusting. Don’t even get me started about Citizens United - it’s nonsense to think Corporations are “people”;
Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Senator Joe Manchin, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Senator Jon Tester, Senator Maggie Hassan, Senator John Barrasso, Senator John Cornyn, Senator Steve Daines, Senator Chris Coons, Senator Mark Kelly and Senator Marco Rubio
XTO ENERGY INC. FED PAC (terminated) FEC ID: ID: C00308718
Also your prerequisite disclosure, in my career I have previously engaged in lobbying activities for my employer and our clients. The distinction here is either that lobbying was done pro bono or it was for specific issues such as easement rights, water rights, the unlawful dumping of contaminates into navigational waterways, dumping heavy metal slurries into water ways, helping families with chronically sick children because they have heavy metals in their blood stream and/or air rights —but what ExxonMobil has done is unlike anything I or my employer would ever take money to do - for example ExxonMobil not only bragged about having various Senators “in their pocket” but they have also spent millions upon millions of dollars “lobbying” lawmakers and aggressively pursuing deregulation. And the Former Administration was happy to do their dirty bidding.
Disinformation and Misinformation campaigns by Big Oil, PACs, Lobbyists, and Congress feigns ignorance for decades…
I suppose better late than never, right?nOn September 16, 2021 the House Oversight Committee announced a new investigation into that industry’s multi-decade long disinformation and misinformation campaigns..
And for once I’m genuinely delighted to see Congress finally going there because as you’ll note in recent batch of letters…
…22 reported billion-dollar climate disasters across the country in 2020…
…Just four fossil fuel companies—BP, Shell Chevron, and ExxonMobil—reported nearly $2 trillion in profits between1990 and 2019. During this same period, the global climate crisis became increasingly dire, and its deadly impact on Americans increased. The world experienced 19 of the warmest years on record between 2000 and 2020. In each of the last six years, the United States has faced more than ten weather and climate disasters—including storms, wildfires, and heat waves—costing over $1 billion each. There were 22 reported billion-dollar climate disasters across the country in 2020.
In one recent study between 2003 and 2010, over think-tanks and advocacy organizations, which heavily downplayed the known science and data concerning global warming impact1 . These “reports” 2 were later determined to have been heavily funded by ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, DonorsTrust, and other well known industry groups…
Reports indicate that fossil fuel companies continued their climate “counter movement” by contributing millions of dollars to academic and policy groups to influence 3rd-party promotion of climate misinformation. Throughout the 1990s, ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, and Shell all joined API and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in one such trade group, the Global Climate Coalition 3 (GCC), which lobbied the U.S. government in an effort to derail international action to reduce carbon pollution emissions. The GCC’s successful campaign led to the United States’ leaving the Kyoto climate agreement in 2001. Documents prepared for then-Under Secretary of State Paula Dobriansky’s 2001 meeting with the GCC stated, “POTUS rejected Kyoto, in part, based on input from you.”
At a 2014 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Chamber official Karen Harbert claimed misleadingly that global warming “is caused by lots of different things, and you can’t say that climate change is only caused by humans.” In 2017, a senior vice president at the Chamber’s Institute for 21st Century Energy described climate change in public remarks as based on “religion,” not “scientific facts.”
$1 BILLION to promote climate disinformation
Beyond the documents requested - each of the aforementioned individuals and companies, the House Oversight Committee has requested that the executives testify at a Committee hearing on October 28, 2021.
…Between 2015 and 2018, the five largest publicly traded oil and gas companies reportedly spent $1 billion to promote climate disinformation through “branding and lobbying”… Chevron 4 paid for advertising that celebrates the company’s investments in renewable energy but spent only 0.2% of its annual capital expenditure budget on lower-carbon energy resources… Under the Trump Administration, the Chamber continued to lobby to repeal Obama-era regulations, including methane standards. It funded a misleading study stating 2.7 million jobs would be lost 5
In researching this article I stumbled upon this Brown University 2018 Report and I would highly recommend you take the time to read this report
Of the many factual assessments contained in the Brown University Research Paper - this info graphic is incredibly condensed but detailed with a lot of facts and it helps you visualize the horizontal and vertical lobbying efforts..
..the coal industry, automobile manufacturers, utilities, and oil and gas giants - have been highly successful in creating front groups, astroturf campaigns, and lobbying organizations to manufacture the appearance of public support for deregulation, and to remind politicians of how much they have to lose by opposing corporate interests. An analysis of the financial and political ties among these 12 groups has not existed before this report; this is the first compilation of these groups’ tactics, relationships, and continuing legacy.
…denial coalitions have held highly influential positions in the Republican Party…
the fact is the overt disinformation and misinformation nexus puts Big Oil 6. lobbying Groups and politicians into a symbiotic relationship where lawmakers are often manipulated by Big Oil and other “advocacy groups”…
Nearly all of these coalitions have engaged in public misinformation campaigns about climate change and pollution, and many had tactics of disseminating misinformation directly to policymakers and members of congress.
Understanding the successes and failures of these strategies is essential to exposing these groups and their undue influence today, as is calling attention to the ways in which these patterns have played out throughout the history of corporate denial coalitions. The integrity of our institutions relies on our ability to understand their shortcomings and vulnerabilities; the success of climate denial coalitions in infiltrating these institutions exemplifies the urgent need for a critical examination of their history, strategies, and legacies.
“As worsening natural disasters linked to global warming devastate communities in the United States and globally, one of Congress’s top legislative priorities is combating the increasingly urgent crisis of a changing climate.. To do this, Congress must address pollution caused by the fossil fuel industry and curb troubling business practices that lead to disinformation on these issues.”
The Committee requests that the recipients produce documents and communications by September 30, 2021, related to their organization’s role in supporting disinformation and misleading the public -thus thwarting and in many cases preventing any meaningful action to be taken to address the growing climate crisis. As the House OverSight Committee astutely observed;
The strategies of obfuscation, distraction and subterfuge span for decades and sadly continue today. From 2015 thru 2018, the five largest publicly traded oil and gas companies reportedly spent $1 billion to promote climate disinformation through “branding and lobbying.”
Not to belabor the point but you really should read the 2015 Report .
This report presents seven “deception dossiers”—collections containing some 85 internal company and trade association documents that have either been leaked to the public, come to light through lawsuits, or been disclosed through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. While many of these documents have been analyzed by others (Oreskes 2011; Oreskes and Conway 2010; Gelbspan 1998), these dossiers offer the most complete and up-to-date collection yet avail- able. Excerpts of the documents are provided in the report’s appendices; the complete dossiers—totaling some 336 pages— are available online.
Each collection of internal documents reviewed here reveals a separate glimpse of a coordinated campaign underwritten by the world’s major fossil fuel companies and their allies to spread climate misinformation and block climate action. The campaign began decades ago and continues today.
The fossil fuel industry—like the tobacco industry before it—is noteworthy for its use of active, intentional disinforma- tion and deception to support its political aims and maintain its lucrative profits.
…four oil majors violated the District’s Consumer Protection Procedures Act by engaging in misleading acts and practices around the marketing, promotion, and sale of fossil fuel products, which produce globe-warming pollution. The D.C. lawsuit alleges that these companies knew since at least the 1950s about the harmful consequences of burning fossil fuels and that they engaged in a campaign to deceive the public about those risks
Additionally in late 2020 ExxonMobil is facing numerous lawsuits which alleged the Company’s deceptive advertising and misleading consumers, including from the city and county of Boulder, Colorado, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, an environmental organization called Beyond Pesticides, and most recently the state of Minnesota —deceived voters and likely stymied meaningful enforcement actions.
So for now I’d wait and watch what documents are produced to Congress and I genuinely suspect that Kevin McCoy (see July 26, 2021 letter from Congress) , ExxonMobil has already submitted to a transcribed Congressional “interview”
And as per usual if you have questions, please feel free to leave a comment
May/June 2005 Some Like It Hot Forty public policy groups have this in common: They seek to undermine the scientific consensus that humans are causing the earth to overheat. And they all get money from ExxonMobil. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2005/05/some-it-hot/ -last accessed on September 16, 2021
chevron supports well-designed climate policy - “Chevron supports the Paris Agreement and is committed to addressing climate change while continuing to deliver energy that supports society. Climate policy should achieve emissions reductions as efficiently and effectively as possible, at the least cost to economies” see https://www.chevron.com/sustainability/environment/climate-policy -last accessed September 16, 2021
It pains me so to click that <3 button when the words you've written make me furious...