The industrial money is used to promote regulations for the benefit of the companies doing the lobbying. There is normally an implication that such lobbying is a bad thing, axiomatically.
There was a list of money allocated to lobbying provided by Wharfie. I was surprised BP's contribution was so low. I think I would increase that to $40 million. It's important to get good environmental regulations and BP is in a position to promote good regulations because they have the expertise to know what good regulations are. BP also stands to benefit from sensible regulations because they depend on highly successful economies, with hordes of happy people buying BP products and services and lots of opportunities for capital investment to enable those sales:
<Let's look at the amount of money being spent on LOBBYING efforts by the fossil fuel industry compared to environmental groups to see their relative influence. According to Center for Public Integrity, there are currently 2,663 climate change lobbyists working on Capitol Hill. That's five lobbyists for every member of Congress. Climate lobbyists working for major industries outnumber those working for environmental, health, and alternative energy groups by more than seven to one. For the second quarter of 2009, here is a list compiled by the Center for Public Integrity of all the oil, gas, and coal mining groups that spent more than $100,000 on LOBBYING (this includes all LOBBYING, not just climate change LOBBYING):
Chevron $6,485,000
Exxon Mobil $4,657,000
BP America $4,270,000
ConocoPhillips $3,300,000
American Petroleum Institute $2,120,000
Marathon Oil Corporation $2,110,000
Peabody Investments Corp $1,110,000
Bituminous Coal Operators Association $980,000
Shell Oil Company $950,000
Arch Coal, Inc $940,000
Williams Companies $920,000
Flint Hills Resources $820,000
Occidental Petroleum Corporation $794,000
National Mining Association $770,000
American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity $714,000
Devon Energy $695,000
Sunoco $585,000
Independent Petroleum Association of America $434,000
Murphy Oil USA, Inc $430,000
Peabody Energy $420,000
Rio Tinto Services, Inc $394,000
America's Natural Gas Alliance $300,000
Interstate Natural Gas Association of America $290,000
El Paso Corporation $261,000
Spectra Energy $279,000
National Propane Gas Association $242,000
National Petrochemical & Refiners Association $240,000
Nexen, Inc $230,000
Denbury Resources $200,000
Nisource, Inc $180,000
Petroleum Marketers Association of America $170,000
Valero Energy Corporation $160,000
Bituminous Coal Operators Association $131,000
Natural Gas Supply Association $114,000
Tesoro Companies $119,000
Here are the environmental groups that spent more than $100,000:
Environmental Defense Action Fund $937,500
Nature Conservancy $650,000
Natural Resources Defense Council $277,000
Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund $243,000
National Parks and Conservation Association $175,000
Sierra Club $120,000
Defenders of Wildlife $120,000
Environmental Defense Fund $100,000
If you add it all up, the fossil fuel industry outspent the environmental groups by $36.8 million to $2.6 million in the second quarter, a factor of 14 to 1. To be fair, not all of that LOBBYING is climate change LOBBYING, but that affects both sets of numbers. The numbers don't even include LOBBYING money from other industries LOBBYING against climate change, such as the auto industry, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, etc. >
Earthjustice, Sierra Club and the like have no reason to act economically rationally. If they were to get absurd regulations adopted, they could take us back to the stone age with the population reduced [involuntarily] to 10% of the current level.
BP shareholders want a good environment, sensible regulations which enable highly profitable capital investment and sales and hordes of happy customers. If BP promotes dopey ideas which are environmentally harmful and economically damaging the public will give them the boot.
If I thought CO2 is a problem, I'd suggest BP lobby for tight carbon controls to cut CO2 emissions. That would mean huge investment opportunities in power stations without exhausts to the atmosphere, methanol fuel cells for cars, battery powered cars, superconductors, CO2 liquefaction and piping 400 metres under the ocean, more coal, oil, methane, shale, tars and crops for fuel.
I was pushing BP in the late 1980s to lobby for city-diesel and sensible environmental regulations. I sat in some EU environmental meetings - which were amusing because the environmental commissioners were all smoking but the BP people didn't. Another odd thing was that nearly all wore glasses [other than me and one other].
They were wanting to come up with a universal diesel specification for the whole of Europe.
Being socialists, they love grand, broad brush, lowest common denominator "big" thinking to standardize everything and to Hell with the details and individual concerns.
I was lobbying for rational rules. Europe ranges from Arctic conditions in Sweden in winter to 40 degree tropical weather in the south in summer. Technologically, vehicles differ from dirty great trucks rolling day and night in tropical heat across the hinterlands far from cities, to cute little commuting cars tootling around Stockholm in the cold winter nights. There are also huge earth-moving machines working in rural conditions where the cost of the fuel far exceeds the value of the engine and engine life is secondary to low fuel price.
One diesel fuel doesn't fit all. Not in an environmentally rational and economically sensible way.
The city car needs low asphaltene, low aromatic, low sulphur, high cetane number, low wax, cleaning burning easy starting diesel fuel. The heavy hauling truck running with a hot engine in hot conditions day and night could burn high sulphur, semi-tar goop with wax galore with the odd dead rat included. As long as they stay above the dew point, the sulphur wouldn't matter. The wax won't crystallize and block the fuel lines. The particulates would not be stewing in a city.
There is a macro issue of sulphur oxides and particulates and those macro requirements might mean even in the countryside, sulphur and particulates would need limitation.
There is also the problem of distribution. So the balance between individual vehicle and operator requirements and city atmospheric conditions and rural atmospheric conditions decides the balance and manufacturing and distribution costs decides the product specifications and availability.
My guess is that two diesel fuels is enough - one for city cars and one for heavy transport/off-road. But heating oil is another issue and there could be opportunities for methanol and water injection into heavy transport fuels to cut costs and improve combustion and exhaust emissions.
So you can perhaps now see that "lobbying" isn't necessarily to jam stupid things through political systems against the interests of the public and vehicle operators in favour of oil company shareholders. There are issues which need regulation. It's in the interests of BP to have rational regulations. The Sierra Club and co aren't necessarily the Good Guys and the Oil Industry not necessarily the bad. Neither are environmentalists necessarily ignorant stone age superstitious economically and technologically illiterate destroyers, and oil industry people saviours of the planet.
Wharfie's list of lobbying presumes that each oil industry dollar is a malevolent act. The lobbying seems too little if that list is a guide.
Mqurice |
