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fossil fuel lobbying
'Parasitic Influences': Record 2,400+ Fossil Fuel Lobbyists Attend COP28
"The sheer number of fossil fuel lobbyists at climate talks that could determine our future is beyond justification," said one campaigner.
Dec 05, 2023
A record number of fossil fuel lobbyists have inundated the COP28 climate summit in the United Arab Emirates, with new research released Tuesday showing that more than 2,400 industry influence-peddlers were granted access to the critical U.N. talks—a 400% increase over last year.
The Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO) coalition tallied 2,456 fossil fuel lobbyists on the provisional list of COP28 participants, a likely undercount as the estimate doesn't include those who are attending the talks under a different professional title. A new U.N. rule approved earlier this year requires lobbyists at COP28 to declare their affiliation.
Representatives from ExxonMobil, TotalEnergies, and other oil and gas firms outnumber the delegations of nearly every single country at the summit except Brazil and the UAE, according to the new analysis. KBPO said that more fossil fuel lobbyists received attendance passes than all of the delegates from the 10 most climate-vulnerable nations combined.
"You don't bring arsonists to a firefighting convention—or the climate talks, for that matter—but that's precisely what is happening here at COP28."
"The sheer number of fossil fuel lobbyists at climate talks that could determine our future is beyond justification," said Joseph Sikulu, pacific managing director at 350.org. "Their increasing presence at COP undermines the integrity of the process as a whole. We come here to fight for our survival and what chance do we have if our voices are suffocated by the influence of Big Polluters? This poisoning of the process needs to end, we will not let oil and gas influence the future of the Pacific this heavily."
Climate Action Network International added that "you don't bring arsonists to a firefighting convention—or the climate talks, for that matter—but that's precisely what is happening here at COP28."
"Big Polluter interference in climate negotiations is costing millions of people their homes, livelihoods, and lives," the group wrote on social media.
Many of the lobbyists were granted access to #COP28 via fossil fuel trade groups.
👎 Nine out of 10 the largest hail from the Global North; notably the Geneva-based @IETA, which brought 116 people, including representatives from Shell and TotalEnergies. #KickBigPollutersOut
— Climate Action Network International (CAN) (@CANIntl) December 5, 2023
Ahead of COP28, KBPO estimated that fossil fuel lobbyists from some of the world's top oil and gas firms attended past U.N. climate summits more than 7,000 times.
Advocates said the sharp increase in lobbyist attendance at COP28 underscores the industry's commitment to preventing substantive climate action as greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, imperiling hopes of preventing catastrophic warming.
"Their agenda is crystal clear: safeguarding their profits at the expense of a livable future for all of us," Kathy Mulvey, accountability campaign director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement. "The urgency of phasing out fossil fuels demands a unified, unwavering commitment from global leaders, unencumbered by the fossil fuel industry's self-serving agenda."
Industry influence could help explain the inadequacy of climate commitments that have emerged from the summit this far. The Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter, spearheaded by the UAE and Saudi Arabia—two leading petrostates—has been called a "dangerous distraction" from efforts to phase out fossil fuels, and a new agreement on a global loss and damage fund has been criticized as badly inadequate to meet the needs of frontline nations.
COP28 president Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber—who is also CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company—has dismissed calls to phase out fossil fuels as his company plots a massive expansion that could make it the second-largest oil producer on the planet. Al Jaber has also used his role as the head of the summit to pursue new oil and gas deals.
"Oil and gas companies and their enablers—the climate arsonists fueling climate chaos—cannot be trusted to help put out the fire or deliver what we need: a full, fast, fair, and funded fossil fuel phaseout," said David Tong, global industry campaign manager at Oil Change International.
KBPO noted in its new analysis that lobbying at COP28 is hardly limited to the fossil fuel industry, pointing to the presence of finance, agribusiness, and transportation representatives.
"To share seats with the Big Polluters in climate change conversations is to dine with the devil," Ogunlade Olamide Martins, program manager at Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa, said in a statement. "This unholy matrimony will only endorse 'conflict of interest' and further facilitate the silence of honest agitation. COP's conclusions must be independent of industries' parasitic influences and must only address the concerns of the vulnerable masses."
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US Climate Groups Call on Multiple Industries to Fire Their Fossil Fuel Lobbyists
Eleven groups united on Thursday, "calling on lobbyists to pick a side in the climate fight."
Aug 17, 2023
Weeks after a public interest watchdog unveiled the deep ties the fossil fuel industry maintains to numerous industries in the U.S.—with universities, technology firms, and insurance companies employing many of the same lobbyists as the oil and gas sector—nearly a dozen climate justice groups on Thursday issued a call for governments and institutions across the country to "fire" their fossil fuel lobbyists.
F Minus, the research group behind a database released last month showing that more than 1,500 lobbyists have worked both for fossil fuel companies and local governments, schools, and other businesses, was joined by organizations including 350.org, Food & Water Watch, and the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) on Thursday in issuing the demand.
The groups warned that lobbyists employed by companies like Amazon and State Farm; cities including Minneapolis and Park City, Utah; and institutions such as Omaha Public Schools and the University of Washington are "playing both sides of the climate crisis by lobbying on behalf of oil, gas, and coal companies at the same time they are lobbying on behalf of communities and businesses being harmed by the climate crisis."
The lobbyists in question, they said, must choose between taking money from the industry international scientists agree is causing planetary heating, extreme weather, and other effects of the climate emergency, or working on behalf of the nation's communities.
"Hiring a fossil fuel lobbyist is radically at odds with fighting the climate crisis," said James Browning, executive director of F Minus. "It's time to talk to these lobbyists in a language they understand—money—and force them to choose between getting paid to work for the perpetrators of the climate crisis or its victims."
The group revealed last month that universities which have bowed to significant pressure in recent years to divest from fossil fuels are still employing lobbyists that work to promote the pollution-causing industry's interests.
Johns Hopkins University, for example, divested from coal in 2017 but still employs lobbyists for NRG Energy and Holcim Participation, which both have "substantial coal interests."
"Young people will live with the climate crisis the longest and experience some of its worst impacts," said the groups Thursday. "Yet hundreds of colleges and public school districts employ lobbyists whose work on behalf of fossil fuel companies is making the crisis worse. We call on educational institutions to cut ties with these lobbyists."
The groups also noted that a number of cities whose residents are at risk of climate impacts continue to work with fossil fuel lobbyists. Minneapolis' plan to cut city emissions by 80% by 2050 is at odds with the fact that it shares a lobbyist with Enbridge, the Canadian oil company whose pipeline in Wisconsin was ordered to be partially shut down in June due to its risk of causing an environmental disaster on tribal land.
Minneapolis and other cities that employ fossil fuel lobbyists "must end those relationships now—and throw all resources behind lobbying 100% for climate solutions and climate policy progress," said Deborah McNamara, co-executive director of ClimateVoice, which also signed the statement.
"The imperative to act on behalf of climate action and climate policy progress is clear," she added. "At every turn we must be proactive in building new systems, calling out the misalignments in our current systems, and ensuring that all of our activities align with climate leadership and action."
The groups also noted that Amazon has employed fossil fuel lobbyists in 27 states while signing onto an international industry pledge to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, and insurance companies including Liberty Mutual, Berkshire Hathaway, and State Farm work with lobbyists in dozens of states—even as the insurance industry has increasingly withdrawn from operating in states and communities facing extreme weather events.
"Liberty Mutual is sharing lobbyists with the fossil fuel industry and it shares a board member with Exxon," said Mary Lovell, energy finance campaigner at RAN. "They deny coverage for homeowners and businesses while providing coverage for fossil fuel projects in the same areas."
The lobbyists' ties to universities, cities, and companies relied on by millions of Americans enable them to "cloak a radical pro-pollution agenda in respectability," said the groups.
"All of these organizations and their constituents face a harrowing climate future unless we do more to check the power of the fossil fuel industry," they added. "Fire its lobbyists."
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Database Shows US Cities, Colleges, and Even Green Groups Are Employing Fossil Fuel Lobbyists
"You shouldn't be funding the person who is poisoning you," said one former mayor.
Jul 05, 2023
More than 1,500 lobbyists in the United States who work on behalf of the fossil fuel industry have also been hired by local governments, universities, and environmental organizations that claim to be addressing the climate emergency, a database published Wednesday by F Minus reveals.
To take just three examples highlighted by The Guardian, which first reported on the searchable database of state-level lobbyists for upstream and midstream oil, gas, and coal interests: "Baltimore, which is suing Big Oil firms for their role in causing climate-related damages, has shared a lobbyist with ExxonMobil, one of the named defendants in the case. Syracuse University, a pioneer in the fossil fuel divestment movement, has a lobbyist with 14 separate oil and gas clients... The Environmental Defense Fund shares lobbyists with ExxonMobil, Calpine, and Duke Energy, all major gas producers."
F Minus, launched this month, says its goal is to demonstrate the extent to which fossil fuel lobbyists "are also representing people, schools, communities, and businesses being harmed by the climate crisis."
“It's incredible that this has gone under the radar for so long, as these lobbyists help the fossil fuel industry wield extraordinary power," James Browning, the group's executive director, told The Guardian. "Many of these cities and counties face severe costs from climate change and yet elected officials are selling their residents out. It's extraordinary."
"The worst thing about hiring these lobbyists is that it legitimizes the fossil fuel industry," Browning said. "They can cloak their radical agenda in respectability when their lobbyists also have clients in the arts, or city government, or with conservation groups. It normalizes something that is very dangerous."
"When you hire these insider lobbyists, you are basically working with double agents. They are guns for hire. The information you share with them is probably going to the opposition."
As the group notes: "The fossil fuel industry is rapidly losing the social license needed to build new projects as the severity of the climate crisis becomes increasingly clear and the public embraces the energy transition. Nevertheless, the fossil fuel industry remains firmly embedded in state capitols because of positive or merely neutral public opinion about its lobbyists."
"Multi-client lobbyists are often described as 'gatekeepers' to state officials because of their personal relationships and broad range of expertise," F Minus explains. "State lobbying laws prohibit these multi-client lobbyists from lobbying on both sides of a particular piece of legislation or other governmental action, but nothing prohibits a fossil fuel lobbyist from also working for a company or an organization that is being negatively impacted by the climate crisis."
"Victims of the crisis and advocates for net-zero and other climate goals routinely hire lobbyists who are promoting further dependence on fossil fuels on behalf of their other clients," the group's research shows. "F Minus is disrupting this dynamic and calling on people to fire their fossil fuel lobbyists."
F Minus found that more than 150 U.S. colleges and universities employed oil and gas industry lobbyists last year. Many of the institutions that have taken steps to divest from fossil fuels in recent years—including Dartmouth and California State—have Big Oil lobbyists on their payrolls.
Additionally, the group identified "several national and dozens of local organizations who work for wildlife conservation, emissions reductions, and other solutions to the climate crisis employ lobbyists who also work for the fossil fuel industry."
"The motives for these conservation groups employing coal, oil, and gas lobbyists may vary," the group observes, "but the impact of this strategy is to help these fossil fuel lobbyists present themselves as environmentalists."
Moreover, "some of the country's most climate-conscious local governments—and communities being hardest-hit by the climate crisis—employ lobbyists who also work for the fossil fuel industry," F Minus laments. California is home to many of the "thousands of towns, cities, and counties whose employment of fossil fuel lobbyists is radically at odds with their own plans to deal with the crisis."
As The Guardian reported:
Meghan Sahli-Wells saw the pressure exerted by fossil fuel lobbying first-hand while she was mayor of Culver City, California, where she spearheaded a move to ban oil drilling near homes and schools. Culver City, part of Los Angeles County, overlaps with the Inglewood oilfield, and the close proximity of oilwells to residences has been blamed for worsening health problems, such as asthma, as well as fueling the climate crisis.
"It takes so much community effort and political lift to pass policies and then these lobbying firms come in and try to undo them overnight," said Sahli-Wells, who ended her second mayoral term in 2020. Oil and gas interests, which spent $34 million across California lobbying lawmakers and state agencies last year, mobilized against the ban, arguing it would be economically harmful and cause gasoline prices to spike.
"There was just a huge push from the fossil fuel industry," Sahli-Wells said. "It's not a good look to be funding lobbyists for fossil fuels, especially with public money."
"I hope that many people just don't know they share lobbyists with fossil fuel companies and that this database will bring transparency and allow leaders to better vet these companies," she added. "You shouldn't be funding the person who is poisoning you."
A study published in May showed that the fossil fuel industry is more likely than other industries to lobby and its spending on "climate policy obstruction" has increased as opposition to its life-threatening business model grows.
Timmons Roberts, an environmental sociologist at Brown University, told The Guardian that "the fossil fuel industry is very good at getting what it wants because they get the lobbyists best at playing the game. They have the best staff, huge legal departments, and the ability to funnel dark money to lobbying and influence channels."
"This database really makes it apparent that when you hire these insider lobbyists, you are basically working with double agents," said Roberts. "They are guns for hire. The information you share with them is probably going to the opposition."
"It would make a big difference if all of these institutions cut all ties with fossil fuel lobbyists, even if they lose some access to insider decisions," he added. "It would be taking one more step to removing the social license from an industry that's making the planet uninhabitable."
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