Fossil Fuel Industries Outspend Environmental Lobbies Eight-Fold On Climate Lobbying

[hatrack]

EDIT

Sensing the unique opportunity to address global warming on a national scale, environmental interest groups 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.

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http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/08/pro-environment-groups-were-outmatc.html

[GliderGuider]

1. I hope everyone saw this coming. nt

[Nihil]

2. Most people here would have done. Elsewhere? Not so sure. (n/t)