Fossil-fuel lobby: A history of bending the facts and winning elections

The planet still groans, not that we'd hear it

Article by: JAMES P. LENFESTEY
Star Tribune
June 21, 2012 - 10:15 PM

Under the headline "U.S. energy lobby hits the campaign trail," the Financial Times reported on June 6: "The American Petroleum Institute [API] has announced rallies in 15 states, most of them key battlegrounds for the presidential election, and has been advertised widely."

The API's so-called nonpartisan arm organizing these events, "Vote 4 Energy," is headed by Jack Gerard, a close friend of Mitt Romney and, should Romney win the presidency, a top candidate to be his chief of staff.

And, according to Kantar Media CMAG, "more than 80 per cent of the 16,991 negative ads broadcast across the U.S. in April concerned energy and overwhelmingly opposed Mr. Obama."

Others have reported that lobbying expenditures for energy-sector companies increased by 92 percent from 2007 to 2009, when climate-change bills were actively debated in Congress.

This is not to mention the constant chattering against climate science on Fox News, right-wing radio, websites and faux think tanks bankrolled by energy billionaires like David and Charles Koch and a few others.

Anyone still wonder why climate change is not at the center of the U.S. presidential campaign? Or why there is not one iota of optimism that the once-promising Earth Summit on sustainability underway in Rio de Janeiro this week will produce any agreement of substance?

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