SAAB 2nd acronym assoc BuFfer

dark money API DAF peaks 2012-3, two years before Paris 2015? Waxman-Markey 2009 last serious effort at bill?

AFPM 23 tags

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ymail 4 24

In 2021, Congressional Democrats subpoenaed Big Oil for internal documents detailing the industry’s role in worsening the climate crisis.

Some of the documents have already been released. But today, we got some more.

The internal materials are from Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP, the American Petroleum Institute, and the Chamber of Commerce. They’re being released today as part of the Senate Budget Committee’s upcoming hearing on Wednesday morning, titled “Denial, Disinformation, and Doublespeak: Big Oil’s Evolving Efforts to Avoid Accountability for Climate Change.”

Source: X

Both the hearing and the documents mark the revival of the House Oversight Committee’s two-year investigation into the fossil fuel industry, and its role in misleading Americans about climate change. That investigation was put on ice when Republicans won back control of the chamber in late 2022.

Democrats say their new findings provide “a rare glimpse into the extensive efforts undertaken by fossil fuel companies to deceive the public and investors about their knowledge of the effects of their products on climate change and to undermine efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.”

HEATED got a chance to review the new documents prior to their publication today. And while we don’t think the revelations are necessarily all that “rare,” here are five things we found notable.

1. BP really, really loves Princeton

To influence academia, fossil fuel companies have spent at least $700 million on partnerships with U.S. universities. The longest-running of these partnerships is between BP and Princeton.

The new documents provide some insight into why: because Princeton gives BP unprecedented access to discussions about research. In 2016 emails, BP officials discussed cutting funding to Harvard and Tufts and boosting it for Princeton, because research discussions at Harvard and Tufts “are directed by the universities and much less relevant to BP.” They said “personality and structural issues” at Harvard and Tufts made it “difficult to achieve the same BP focus.”

Achieving a “BP focus” meant two things: pushing research about the benefits of carbon capture and methane gas. And that’s what Princeton’s Carbon Mitigation Initiative did.

In 2018, an internal BP presentation marked “confidential” recommended Princeton CMI director Stephen Pacala as a preferred expert in defending methane gas as a climate solution. And in a 2020 email, BP officials discussed an upcoming call with Pacala, in which BP would recommend developing a net zero plan “with emphasis on CCUS [carbon capture utilization and storage] — building ‘backbone’ of pipelines to transport carbon from emitters to the Permian and Gulf Coast sites.”

CMI did eventually develop a net zero study with an emphasis on carbon capture. BP officials celebrated, writing, “Princeton’s net zero study is expected to be a guide for the Biden Administration.”

Today, sure enough, the Biden Administration is making massive investments in carbon capture—just as BP’s vice president of U.S. policy and regulatory affairs predicted. In a 2020 email, he said BP’s relationship with Princeton was “becoming increasingly synergistic.” If Biden won, the VP said, “I would not be surprised to see some of our friends in senior government policymaking roles, as well!”

2. Oil companies know they can’t meet their public climate goals

While they publicly tout their efforts to fight climate change, oil companies privately say they don’t believe the world could ever reach a safe, livable climate.

For example: Exxon first publicly supported the Paris Agreement in 2015, but internally the company revealed that it did not believe the climate treaty’s goals were realistic. “We don’t yet see the world even approaching a 2°C pathway … let alone a 1.5°C pathway,” Exxon’s former manager of environmental policy and planning Peter Trelenberg wrote in a 2018 email. “Both 2°C and 1.5°C would require unprecedented changes to the global energy system and economy, at a rate and scale never before demonstrated, and with technologies not yet available and affordable.”...

ref

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This joint staff report on Big Oil’s decades-long deception campaign is the culmination of a nearly three year-long investigation by the Democratic staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability (House Oversight), which has worked with Democratic staff of the Senate Budget Committee staff during the 118th Congress.

The investigation, focused on ExxonMobil Corporation (Exxon), Chevron Corporation (Chevron), Shell USA Inc. (Shell), BP America Inc. (BP), the American Petroleum Institute (AI), and the Chamber of Commerce (the Chamber), provides a rare glimpse into the extensive efforts undertaken by fossil fuel companies to deceive the public and investors about their knowledge of the effects of their products on climate change and to undermine efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

This final joint staff report builds on the House Oversight Committee’s earlier hearings, public memoranda, and document releases, and it presents new findings from the investigation.

The key findings include: Documents demonstrate for the first time that fossil fuel companies internally do not dispute that they have understood since at least the 1960s that burning fossil fuels causes climate change and then worked for decades to undermine public understanding of this fact and to deny the underlying science.

In fall 2015, blockbuster reporting by Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times revealed that Big Oil companies such as Exxon knew that burning fossil fuels was a major contributor to climate change. Companies publicly rejected the reporting at the time, but new documents corroborate the reporting and show that fossil fuel companies internally did not dispute the findings but tried to dismiss them as “hyperbolic” and “journalistic malpractice.” Big Oil’s deception campaign evolved from explicit denial of the basic science underlying climate change to deception, disinformation, and doublespeak.

The fossil fuel industry evolved from denying climate science to spreading disinformation and perpetuating doublespeak about the safety of natural gas and its commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

New documents demonstrate that Big Oil companies: seek to position natural gas as a “bridge fuel” between coal and cleaner, renewable energy, while enmeshing natural gas in the U.S. energy economy for the long-term; seek to portray natural gas as a green, climate-friendly fuel, while internally acknowledging that there is significant scientific evidence that the lifecycle emissions from gas are as bad as coal and are incompatible with scientific emissions reduction targets;

make public pledges to support the Paris Agreement and to achieve net zero emissions while internally recognizing that they could not achieve those goals or referring to them as outside of their business plans;

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY2

privately lobby—either directly or through their trade associations— against pro-climate legislation and regulations that they publicly claimed to support;

publicly celebrate carbon capture technologies to help reduce harmful emissions while privately acknowledging that the technology is expensive and claiming that it cannot be scaled without federal government investment;

and publicly promoted algae-based biofuels as an innovative low-carbon technology while investing little in its research and development and then cancelling the programs entirely.

The fossil fuel industry relies on trade associations to spread confusing and misleading narratives and to lobby against climate action. Fossil fuel companies use trade associations, think tanks, and other nonprofits to influence public policy proposals and messaging, including API and the Chamber, as well as the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, Natural Gas Supply Association, and Western States Petroleum Association.

New emails between fossil fuel executives and these groups demonstrate how the companies influenced and leveraged the associations and other organizations to control their messaging and use them to lobby for unpopular proposals that they do not want to be associated with.

The fossil fuel industry strategically partners with universities to lend an aura of credibility to its deception campaigns while also silencing opposition voices. Fossil fuel companies establish funded partnerships with academic institutions to enhance their credibility, shape academic research programs to provide studies supportive of a prolonged life for oil and gas, leverage the resulting research to their advantage, and bolster access to policymakers.

New documents reveal previously unknown funding levels and show how companies condition their funding on academics’ cooperation and alignment with companies’ business needs.

Additional documents demonstrate that companies actively tracked individuals and organizations critical of the industry and monitored their social media. All six entities—Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP, API, and the Chamber—obstructed and delayed the Committees’ investigation.

Despite valid subpoenas, the entities refused to fully comply with the investigation, making baseless legal arguments and flouting longstanding congressional practices and norms for investigations.

The companies further obstructed the investigation by significantly redacting or entirely withholding more than 4,000 documents without any valid basis

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nice overview:

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/**2021/02**/biden-climate-change-actions-anger-big-oil/

President Joe Biden signed executive actions last week prioritizing solutions to the “existential threat” of climate change, drawing the ire of many key players in the politically powerful oil and gas industry.

Biden’s actions pressed pause on the leasing of federal lands and waters for oil drilling, set a goal of keeping 30 percent of federal lands for conservation purposes and announced the electrification of the federal government’s fleet of vehicles. The move comes a week after Biden revoked the permits for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline just hours after his inauguration, following through on a campaign-trail promise.

Leading up to the 2020 election, the oil and gas industry contributed around $1.6 million more to former President Donald Trump than to Biden. Trump painted himself as an ally to the industry on the stump and throughout his presidency — though industry insiders told Politico in 2020 that the Trump administration was “a mixed bag” and “more like ‘meh’” than the windfall they had hoped for in 2016.

The oil industry spent millions in 2020 to try to keep a GOP majority in the Senate. Valero, Chevron and ConocoPhillips, among the few corporations that give to super PACs, gave at least $1 million each this election cycle to the Senate Leadership Fund, a conservative super PAC that spent $271 million to campaign against Democrats vying for the Senate.

Pausing land and water leases ‘to the extent possible’

Biden’s decision to halt future leases of federal land, pending a comprehensive review of the climate impact, caused an uproar among oil and gas companies and trade associations. Just hours after Biden formalized the order, the Western Energy Alliance announced it would :{sue:(style="background-color:#ff6600;"):}: the Biden administration, alleging the move violates existing law.

Most drilling occurs on private land, rather than federal property. In 2017, approximately 24 percent of oil and 13 percent of natural gas extracted in the United States came from federal lands. According to analysis by the U.S. Geological Survey, around a quarter of U.S. emissions come from the combustion and extraction of resources from federal lands.

Oil and gas companies rushed to stockpile drilling permits during Trump’s lameduck period — doubling the number of permit requests over the same period in 2019, according to an AP report.Under Biden’s order, oil and gas companies can continue to obtain new permits to drill on land that has already been leased.

Experts say the executive action likely won’t immediately impact rates of oil extraction in the U.S. As of 2019, there were 38,294 leases active across the country, concentrated mostly in the American West. Once a lease has been issued, companies have 10 years to begin production on the land before the lease terminates.

The oil and gas industry’s leading trade association, the American Petroleum Institute, came out against the order. API President Mike Sommers criticized Biden’s suspension of federal agencies’ authority to issue leases of federal land to drilling companies in a Jan. 21 statement.

“Restricting development on federal lands and waters is nothing more than an ‘import more oil’ policy. Energy demand will continue to rise—especially as the economy recovers—and we can choose to produce that energy here in the United States or rely on foreign countries hostile to American interests,” Sommers said.

In 2020, API’s PAC spent $88,200 to support Republican candidates, giving $5,000 to the Great America PAC, a Trump-aligned Carey committee. API also dropped $5.3 million to employ 40 lobbyists, reporting lobbying 66 individual bills. The institute’s lobbying spending fell during Trump’s administration after trending upward throughout former President Barack Obama’s two terms in office.

Another leading oil and gas industry association, the Independent Petroleum Association of America, has also come out in opposition to the action.

“We think it was really misguided,” Senior Vice President for Government Relations Dan Naatz told an Arkansas TV news team. “It impacts jobs and economies through the inner-Mountain West, all the way through the country.”

In 2020, the organization’s PAC spent $215,300 in campaign contributions, giving $10,000 each to Sens. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), and former Sens. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and Martha McSally (R-Ariz.).

Biden framed the executive action as a jobs package,remarking, “today is climate day in the White House which means today is jobs day at the White House,” just before he signed the executive actions. Labor leaders say they are waiting to hear how exactly Biden will replace jobs lost in energy sectors.

“It’s too glib and easy to say someone working in the mines can get a solar job. That is too simplistic,” Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, told the Washington Examiner. “There is a mismatch between where energy jobs are getting lost and where they are created. We have to close that gap, but we also have to be real and help economies diversify their economies in ways based on their own assets.”

Oil corporations emphasize that gap. The Global Energy Institute, a subsidiary of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, came out against some of Biden’s climate actions, claiming it would lead to widespread unemployment.

“Without the prospect of future leases, investment and planning will begin to dry up immediately, thwarting job creation and the economic growth at the worst possible time,” the Institute’s President Marty Durbin said in a statement.

The Chamber of Commerce perennially favors Republicans and dropped $5.7 million in outside spending in 2020.

Keystone canceled, frustrating some oil companies

The Chamber of Commerce also condemned Biden’s action to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline, a project widely opposed by environmental advocates, indigenous communities and scientists.

“This is a politically motivated decision that is not grounded in science. It will harm consumers and put thousands of Americans in the building trades out of work,” Durbin said.

The Keystone XL pipeline was proposed in 2008, vetoed by Obama in 2015 and promptly re-initiated by Trump in 2016 along with another controversial project, the Dakota Access Pipeline. Environmental and indigenous rights advocates are now calling on Biden to cancel the latter pipeline, which abuts the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.

That pipeline is owned by Energy Transfer Partners, an oil and gas conglomerate that gave more in campaign contributions than any other company in the industry. Ninety-nine percent of its donations went to Republican candidates and committees. In 2020, the company’s co-founder and board chair, Kelcy Warren, donated a whopping $10 million to America First Action, a Trump-affiliated super PAC.

Biden’s climate actions are also drawing criticism from Republican lawmakers from oil-rich states who have benefited from industry contributions. Sens. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Jim Risch (R-Idaho), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) and John Hoeven (R-N.D.) announced Jan. 22 that they would introduce legislation to overturn Biden’s executive action and re-issue permits to the Keystone XL Pipeline, which was slated to pass through Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska before connecting to an existing pipeline in Kansas.

“We came so far during the last administration – from prioritizing American energy development to ending the far-left’s war on fossil fuels,” said Inhofe in a statement announcing the legislation.

Throughout his career, Inhofe has received in excess of $2.2 million in campaign contributions from oil and gas companies. Daines and Barrasso have each received $1.2 million from the industry.

The group’s bill is a symbolic gesture to the industry and its supporters without any real hope of passing the Senate, where Democrats wield a majority, albeit narrowly. The oil and gas industry spent heavily to prevent the upper chamber from swinging blue, giving around $600,000 each to Republican Senate candidates in Georgia Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who both lost narrowly to Democratic challengers in January runoffs. The American Petroleum Institute donated $5 million to the Senate Leadership Fund in late November, after every Senate campaign had concluded save the two ultra-expensive Georgia races.

Faced with pressure from Washington, other corporations look to adapt

Some energy companies are taking a different tact, announcing plans to adapt their business model to thrive in a Biden administration that prioritizes conservation and climate action.

Industry giant Exxon Mobil announced Feb. 1, just days after Biden’s executive order, that it would initiate massive investments in carbon capture technology aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The company, whose employees favored Biden over Trump in 2020 campaign contributions, will spend $3 billion over the next five years to build up a new subsidiary business: ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions.

General Motors has committed to only manufacturing zero-emissions vehicles by the year 2035, inline with Biden’s commitment to electrifying the government’s fleet. Ford’s new CEO has also pledged to restructure production plans, prioritizing the addition of electric vehicles to its portfolio, which currently features only one fully-electric model.

The American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, an oil-refining trade association that spent $3.2 to lobby the government in 2019, responded to that provision by reaching out to an unlikely ally: biofuel manufacturers. AFPM reportedly hopes to create an alliance with the competitor industry to lobby Biden to revise his fleet electrification plans in order to include cars powered by low-emission gasoline made from a mix of gasoline and ethanol.

not BP akin gump?

no lnx many

BUSINESS

CLIMATE CHANGE

GREENHOUSE GAS

Revealed: BP And Shell Back Anti-Climate Lobby Groups Despite Pledges

An Unearthed and HuffPost investigation identified at least eight trade associations the companies failed to disclose in transparency reports.

By Zach Boren

Alexander C. Kaufman

Lawrence Carter

Sep. 28, 2020,

BP and Shell omitted anti-climate groups from their public reviews of lobbying by their trade associations, demonstrating what one researcher said was the oil giants' "standard business practice."

Earlier this year, oil giants BP and Royal Dutch Shell assessed the climate lobbying done by trade associations they have been involved with, and publicly quit a handful of high-profile industry groups campaigning to undermine regulations to reduce greenhouse gases.

The effort was part of a vow to increase corporate transparency and bring planet-heating emissions to net zero over the next few decades.

But Shell and BP ― the second- and fourth-largest oil companies by revenue last year ― are still active members of at least eight trade organizations lobbying against climate measures in the United States and Australia, an Unearthed and HuffPost investigation has found. These groups were not disclosed in the public reviews.

Reviews of leaked and publicly available documents show those groups are part of the sprawling network of state and regional trade associations that have, in at least one case, boasted about quashing the very carbon-reduction policies the oil giants publicly claim to support.

The companies said they either hoped to reform the trade groups, including the eight identified here, of which they are still part, or planned to review their membership going forward. But both BP and Shell refused to disclose full lists of trade associations where they have ongoing involvement.

“Our approach is that where policy differences arise, we will seek to influence from within ― and this may take time,” BPsaid in a statement. “If we reach an impasse, we will be transparent in publicly stating our differences. And on major issues, if our views and those of an association cannot be reconciled then we will be prepared to leave.”

A Shell spokeswoman said its next review would “select the additional industry associations because their climate-related policies have brought them to the attention of investors and non-governmental organisations, and because they operate in regions or countries where we have significant business activities.”

“We were one of the first companies to publish an industry associations report and we are pleased that other companies have since published reports,” she said by email. “Our next update will assess our alignment with the 18 industry associations featured already, as well as others.”

But the findings cast a dim light over the oil behemoths’ ballyhooed new climate pledges, raising questions about how seriously they can be taken when the companies are still funding lobbying operations that undermine their new commitments.

[BP CEO Bernard Looney speaks during an event in London on Feb. 12, where he declared the company's intentions to achieve "net zero" carbon emissions by 2050.]

In the United States, both Shell and BP support groups such as the Alliance of Western Energy Consumers, which crusaded against Oregon’s efforts to put a price on carbon emissions, and theTexas Oil & Gas Association, a trade group in the nation’s top oil-producing state battling rules to restrict output of methane, a super-heating greenhouse gas.

In Australia, the two giants back the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association and the Business Council of Australia, two groups fighting to undercut the country’s contributions to the Paris climate accords. Shell, meanwhile, quietly held its seat on the Queensland Resources Council, a key advocate of building the world’s largest coal mine.

“This is a standard business practice,” said Robert Brulle, a climate denial researcher and professor at Brown University’s Institute at Brown for Environment and Society. “They’re trying to have it both ways, being socially responsible without changing their actual positions.”

Undisclosed Groups

Shortly after taking the helm in February, BP CEO Bernard Looney began a review of lobbying by the company’s trade groups. He billed the effort as a “small but important step towards rebuilding trust in BP.” He promised a new era on climate change, where the company that a decade earlier rebranded as “Beyond Petroleum” would eliminate its carbon footprint and direct its powerful lobbying machine toward “advocacy for policies that support net zero.”

Shell published its own review in 2019, which it updated this year as part of what CEO Ben van Beurden called “a first step towards greater transparency around our activities with industry associations on the topic of climate change.” Yet the reviews covered only a narrow slice of their memberships.

Shell acknowledged its membership in hundreds of industry groups worldwide, but said its review assessed only 19 organizations selected “because their positions on climate-related policy have brought them to the attention of investors and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).”

BP declined to provide a ballpark estimate of how many trade associations it affiliates with, but said its review focused on 30 groups “on the basis that they are actively involved in energy policy discussions and salient to stakeholders.”

“BP and Shell’s disclosures focus on a narrower selection of industry associations,” said Faye Holder, an analyst at InfluenceMap, a British research outfit that analyzes the fossil fuel industry’s finances. “These groups tend to be the larger and more visible ones that already disclose their corporate membership, while the smaller, regional and sometimes less transparent ones are more likely to be left out.”

United States Of AstroTurfing

Among the more jarring examples of groups the companies omitted from the reviews are two regional organizations whose names suggest they represent coalitions of ordinary citizens concerned about energy prices.

In fact, the groups represent some of the biggest companies in the world, a tactic known in politics as “AstroTurfing,” wherein powerful industry players create front groups meant to appear like grassroots organizations with Average-Joe followings.

In February 2019,Alliance of Western Energy Consumers,which represents heavy industry on the West Coast, boasted that it had “defeated all carbon pricing bills” in Oregon ― describing efforts to drive “grassroots opposition” and coordinate “vote counts” during the state legislative session, emails obtained by the Climate Investigations Center show.

[Royal Dutch Shel CEO Ben van Beurden listens to a question during a news conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.]

Both companies claim to strongly support carbon pricing, including in Oregon. Yet several employees of both BP and Shell at the time are listed as recipients of these emails. Shell confirmed that it is a member. BP declined to comment.

Though the companies failed to disclose it in their reviews, BP and Shell are also listed as top members of the Consumer Energy Alliance. The group bills itself as the “voice of the energy consumer,” but is actually run by the Republican-linked consultancy HBW Resources.

After running campaigns to oppose President Barack Obama’s rules to limit emissions of methane from oil and gas operations and pollution from coal power stations, the Consumer Energy Alliance turned its attention to state-level fights. The group was party to a lawsuit seeking to overturn Oregon’s clean fuel program, which aims to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport fuels. The case concluded unsuccessfully in March 2019.

In a statement, the Consumer Energy Alliance said it fought Oregon’s clean fuel program because it would have raised prices without achieving significant environmental outcomes.The group said it opposed the Obama administration’s methane rule because it “would have interfered with the successful performance of state rules that were already reducing methane emissions.”

Methane Haze

When President Donald Trump moved to roll back the methane rule shortly after taking office, BP and Shell publicly opposed the move.

“We don’t usually tell governments how to do their job but we’re ready to break with that and say, ‘Actually, we want to tell you how to do your job,’” Shell’s U.S. Country Chair Gretchen Watkinstold Reuters at a March 2019 conference, urging the Trump administration “to put in a regulatory framework that will both regulate existing methane emissions by also future methane emissions.”

When the Environmental Protection Agency finalized plans to gut the methane rule in August, David Lawler, the head of BP America, issued a statement saying the company “respectfully disagrees with today’s decision by the administration.”

Both companies remain members of the American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s largest and most influential lobby in the United States and a fierce proponent of the Trump administration’s changes to the methane rule. Yet perhaps even more influential on the rollback were the state-level organizations whose smaller members claimed the biggest benefits from the deregulatory effort.

BP remains a member of the New Mexico Oil & Gas Association, the Texas Independent Producers & Royalty Owners Association, and the Petroleum Association of Wyoming. Shell and BP are members of the Texas Oil & Gas Association.

All of the groups campaigned aggressively for changes the New Mexico Oil & Gas Association said brought the federal regulation in line with what’s “appropriate” to “emphasize flexibility and innovation.” None of the groups’ names appeared in either company’s reviews.

[A slogan is seen on a protective face mask of an Extinction Rebellion climate action group protester as she demonstrates against multinational gas and oil firm Shell in London last month.]

Meanwhile, the Petroleum Association of Wyoming ― on whose board a BP executive sits ― joined a lawsuit last year to allow the leasing of public lands for oil and gas drilling without assessing the climate impacts.

Among the other major groups BP and Shell left off their reviews was theNational Ocean Industries Association, which successfully lobbied the Trump administration to open up the United State’s entire continental shelf to drilling.

The move would open up areas containing up to 45 billion barrels of oil ― 21 billion barrels of which are estimated to be economically recoverable ― and jeopardize chances of meeting the Paris climate goals. A report released by the campaign group Global Witness last year found that any investment in new oil and gas fields is incompatible with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial norms, an average temperature roughly half a degree warmer than today.

NOIA has also lobbied the Trump administrationto exclude the wider climate impacts of oil and gas projects from being assessed as part of the process of approving major infrastructure. Earlier this year Unearthed reported that BP has lobbied in support of these changes.

“We think it’s important that we continue to responsibly explore for and develop U.S. offshore resources to counter the natural decline of existing fields,” a Shell spokeswoman said. “It’s equally important that regulators ensure sound science can be gathered from prospective new areas to inform potential leasing and future exploration decisions.”

Australia’s Climate Loophole

The key condition that BP and Shell say they have placed on trade groups is support for the Paris climate accord, which means backing the goal ― and policies to reach it ― of keeping global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees celsius. This has led Shell to walk away from one of its lobby groups and BP to quit three. Both companies have said they will seek to change some trade associations from within and identified others as being fully aligned with them on climate policy.

But two powerful lobby groups that BP and Shell publicly support ― the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association and the Business Council of Australia ― back the use of a controversial loophole that could slash Australia’s contribution to the Paris goals.

“Our approach is that where policy differences arise, we will seek to influence from within ― and this may take time.”

The loophole involves using surplus carbon credits from Australia’s overachievement in meeting weak emissions reduction targets it secured under the Kyoto protocol. According to an analysis of the Australian government’s plans, using the credits would effectively cut the country’s 2030 climate target from 26% to 14%.

The European Union has banned member states from doing this on the grounds that it threatens the integrity of the Paris Agreement and no country other than Australia is openly planning to do so. But during last year’s general election, both the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association and the Business Council of Australia challenged the Labor Party for refusing to use the credits if they won.

Despite this, both oil majors insist they are aligned with these groups on climate policy.

“Despite Australia’s horrific summer of bushfires, the government has not retracted its support for Kyoto carryover credits, and nor have APPEA [or] the BCA,” said Dan Gocher, an analyst for the nonprofit Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility.

Norwegian oil major Equinor― another member of Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association ― has also criticized the loophole, and said in a review of its own lobby groups that the use of Kyoto credits could reduce the ambitions of the Paris climate agreement.

Equinor added that it would “encourage APPEA to take a clear stand on ... not supporting carryover of credits from the Kyoto protocol to the Paris Agreement.”

“BP and Shell have announced ambitious cuts to their carbon emissions,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said in an interview, “but if they were serious about addressing climate change, they’d give big trade groups an ultimatum: support serious climate legislation or we’ll quit.”

RELATED TOPICS:

CLIMATE CHANGE

BUSINESS

GREENHOUSE GAS

OIL INDUSTRY

Zach Boren

Investigations Reporter, Unearthed

Alexander C. Kaufman

Senior Reporter, HuffPost

Lawrence Carter

Senior Investigations Reporter, Unearthed

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bp-shell-climate_n_5f6e3120c5b64deddeed6762

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/10/big-companies-are-funding-campaign-kill-climate-bill/620278/

no lnx

SCIENCE

Big Business Is Bankrolling an Effort to Kill the Democratic Climate Bill

The trade group that represents Apple, Walmart, Nike, and dozens of other companies is trying to kneecap the U.S.’s final chance to meet its 2025 climate goals.

By Robinson Meyer

OCTOBER 1, 2021

Four years ago, when President Donald Trump announced that he would take the United States out of the Paris Agreement, the world’s largest companies leapt into action.

Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, personally beseeched Trump to remain in the pact. Bob Iger, Disney’s chief executive, resigned from a White House advisory council in protest. Goldman Sachs’s CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, sent his first-ever tweet just to denounce the exit. Within days, hundreds of U.S. companies had signed their own Paris Agreement pledge, promising to cut their climate pollution more than 26 percent by 2025, as compared with 2005 levels.

Today, many of those same companies—including Apple, Amazon, Walmart, Nike, Target, and dozens of others—are funding efforts to kill the Democratic reconciliation bill, which contains significant climate provisions that would allow the U.S. to meet its Paris Agreement goals.

This campaign is a quieter one. The companies are financing it through their membership fees in pro-business trade groups such as the Business Roundtable, a coalition of CEOs that lobbies for corporate-friendly policy.

That campaign seems to violate those same companies’ climate commitments. The bill would eliminate nearly 1 billion tons of carbon in the next decade, according to an analysis from the Rhodium Group, an energy-research firm. Its climate provisions “would be the largest single portion of a comprehensive plan for the U.S. to meet its nationally determined contribution” under the Paris Agreement, Trevor Houser, a partner at Rhodium, told me.

Because of the long timelines involved in actually building zero-carbon infrastructure—it can take several years to permit, construct, and connect a solar or wind plant to the power grid—the bill almost certainly represents the country’s final chance to meet those 2025 goals, Jesse Jenkins, a mechanical-engineering professor at Princeton, told me. “We’re already talking about 2022 spending, which leaves just three years ’til 2025. If this bill doesn’t pass now, the window to move the needle has closed,” he said.

“It’s either this [bill] or no federal policy, and that means that we would miss the 2025 Paris goals, and the 2030 ones too, probably,” he said.

The Business Roundtable is one of the leaders in the fight against the bill. It has dispatched C-suite executives to meet with lawmakers, and it has orchestrated an expansive opposition campaign that includes TV and radio commercials, in-person lobbying, and more than $150,000 in Facebook ads displayed to users in purple states. In one such ad, the group warned that the reconciliation bill would be “bad for Montana workers and the economy.”

If a worried Montanan went to see who ran that ad, a list of the Business Roundtable’s well-credentialed members was only a few clicks away. It includes Tim Cook, the Apple CEO; Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google’s parent company; Doug McMillon, Walmart’s president and CEO; and the leaders of Target, Nike, 3M, and more.

The Business Roundtable says that it opposes the bill because it would raise taxes on companies and some high-income spending. “Congress has unnecessarily tied climate action with $1 trillion in tax increases on job creators, which we strongly oppose, and trillions in non-climate-related spending,” Joshua Bolten, its president and CEO, told me. “There is no policy reason to link strong action to address climate change with unrelated, harmful tax policy and substantial spending, which would not only worsen Americans’ already dangerous debt burden but also undercut the competitiveness of the U.S. economy, businesses, and workers.”

It’s true that Democrats are pursuing their entire domestic agenda in a single bill, as a procedural move to avoid some of the strictures of the Senate filibuster, which Senate moderates such as Joe Manchin of West Virginia have said that they will not alter. Because that move can only be used several times at most during a session, the party’s program has been crammed into one piece of legislation.

But while the substance of the Business Roundtable’s concern seems to dwell on the reconciliation bill’s new tax measures, the group is not distinguishing between its climate programs and its tax measures in its advertisements.Its intent is to kill the partisan reconciliation bill while preserving the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which does not contain the same robust climate policies.

The reconciliation bill’s tax provisions—which would finance some of the climate spending—are also opposed by ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute, a fossil-fuel trade group. Those oil giants have run hundreds of thousands in Facebook ads opposing the reconciliation bill’s tax hikes, according to Axios.

The Business Roundtable’s opposition is surprising because, in 2019, the group issued an influential statement rejecting the idea that corporations are accountable solely to their shareholders. Companies should also “protect the environment” and respect their workers, suppliers, and communities, the statement said.

Some members of the Business Roundtable have distinguished the climate programs in the bill from its tax policy. Lisa Jackson, a vice president at Apple and a former EPA administrator, has said that Apple supports a clean-electricity standard, a mechanism in the bill that would require utilities to generate more of their electricity from zero-carbon sources every year. After receiving an inquiry related to this story, Amazon announced that it supported “investments in the infrastructure and [reconciliation] bills to lower emissions in key sectors like energy and transportation.” (Earlier this year, it also endorsed raising the corporate tax rate.)

Netflix, LinkedIn, and 3M, three other members of the Business Roundtable, have also explicitly endorsed a clean-electricity standard.

But none of those companies has left the Business Roundtable, meaning their membership dues are still funding an effort to kneecap the bill. “We can engage with organizations—even when we might have differing perspectives on certain issues—to raise awareness and understanding on issues of importance and drive collective action,” Sean Lynch, a spokesperson for 3M, told me.

Apple declined to comment on the record for this story. Target and Nike did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Other members of the Business Roundtable said that the group does not speak for them. “Walmart continues to support the Paris Agreement and advocate for strong and cohesive U.S. climate policy, but has not taken a position on any specific bill,” a spokesperson told me in an email.

Jenkins, the Princeton professor, said that these comments didn’t go far enough when those companies remained in the Business Roundtable, which is “actively working to sink the whole thing.”

“It’s one thing to say, ‘We have legitimate, serious concerns about the corporate-tax increase, but we support the climate provisions’—but that’s not how [the Business Roundtable] has approached the reconciliation bill at all,” he said.

“A bunch of firms have been publicly supportive of this bill or some federal climate policy. They’re stepping out and trying to lead. But I don’t think you can do that while supporting trade groups that are actively trying to tank the policy.”

Jenkins contrasted the Business Roundtable with the Edison Electric Institute,the trade group that represents investor-owned utilities. Like the Business Roundtable, its membership is divided on the bill: Some, such as Exelon, the country’s largest utility, have enthusiastically endorsed it; others, such as the Ohio-based American Electric Power, are more skeptical or openly opposed. As such, the institute had stayed “lukewarmly neutral” on the bill, Jenkins said.

It’s not 2001 or even 2009 anymore. With rare exceptions, the largest companies in America no longer bankroll explicit climate denial as they once did, either directly or indirectly. Dozens of powerful firms have committed to reducing their climate pollution in the next decade and achieving net-zero by 2050 or earlier. Many executives have also pledged support for some sort of ideal, though curiously unspecified, federal climate policy.

But that hypothetical support isn’t enough to reduce emissions, and with climate change so far advanced, delay and procrastination amount, in practice, to a kind of denial. As much as executives might want to wait for a perfect climate bill, packed only with inexpensive provisions and stripped of all inconveniences, 40 years of federal inaction on climate change should make it clear that no such bill is coming. Climate change is a difficult problem and it will require powerful people—the ones who care, at least—to compromise. If this reconciliation bill fails, then the history of climate action in the U.S. suggests that lawmakers will not try again until 2032. By that time, the world’s average temperature will have likely already cruised past 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Executives may not like some aspect of the reconciliation bill, and they should say so: That’s life in a democracy. But if this bill fails in its entirety—which is the outcome that the Business Roundtable hopes to achieve—then that would be a damning indictment of U.S.-style liberal capitalism.It will be clear to people at home and abroad that American society circa 2021 cannot sufficiently organize itself to actually fight climate change, and the CEOs’ platitudes about the Paris Agreement will be revealed as just that. The hotter, angrier, and poorer world that will result will not take them seriously, and neither should we.

Robinson Meyer is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of the newsletter The Weekly Planet, and a co-founder of the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic.