Big Oil

And the ‘Climate Balls of Steel’ award goes to …

A new report penned by the environmental movement's genius uber-strategist Daniel J. Weiss of The Center for American Progress and his alliterative sidekick Anne Wingate examines exactly how big Big Oil's influence on individual members of Congress is. Working with OpenSecrets.org, Weiss and Wingate found that the 189 members who opposed a Democratic measure to redirect $16 billion in oil and gas subsidies to clean energy like wind and solar received on average $109,277 in contributions from Big Oil between 1989 and 2006. The 221 representatives that voted successfully to shift the subsidies to clean energy had only received an average of $26,277 over the same period.

While I'm sure some of those representatives who voted against the measure may sincerely believe that Exxon Mobil needs an extra few billion so that its shareholders don't go hungry, I suspect that most were just doing it to keep the petrodollars flowing right into their campaign account, and were willing to ignore the climate crisis to do it. It's amazing how cheaply those representatives are willing to sell their votes: $109,277 over 17 years isn't that much money -- generally less than 5 percent of what those candidates spent on their campaigns during that time.

It shows how contributing to political candidates remains one of the most effective ways to spend money: had Big Oil won this round, they would have spent one dollar for every $774 dollars they got back in subsidies (and that's just this one vote; actually their $20-million-plus in contributions have got them more than $35 billion annually in subsidies and tax credits). Industry has long known this, but environmentalists can get the same bang for the buck by directing more of their resources towards campaign contributions.

I'd like to highlight a few of the biggest recipients of Big Oil's big money:

New Mexico's Heather Wilson (R): $492,120
New York's Thomas Reynolds (R): $155,661
Virginia's Tom Davis (R): $134,360

But I've got to give today's Climate Balls of Steel award to New Jersey's Mike Ferguson (R), who sucked in $95,500 in oil money, but voted against Big Oil anyway. There aren't many people who can suck on Big Oil's teat and then spit crude oil in the harlot's face, but apparently Ferguson (at least in this instance) is one.

An oil exec gets the diagnosis right

One hesitates to agree with the CEO of a major oil company, but … I can’t really figure where Jeroen van der Veer, head of Royal Dutch Shell, is wrong in all this. He says: Energy demand is growing, and is likely to double by 2050. Oil and gas are going to become more difficult […]

More intransigence on climate change

Hello! I just wanted to drop by Gristmill to give all of you an update on the energy bill. To no one's surprise, the Republicans are throwing sand in the gears and trying to block any meaningful progress.

The energy bill, as it stands, is not nearly strong enough, so there are a number of amendments that must be adopted to give us a bill that actually gets us started on that path of dealing with our energy crisis and our climate crisis.

On moving to New Orleans, a city defined by water

Wayne Curtis is a freelance writer who’s written for The New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, American Scholar, Preservation, and American Heritage, and is the author of And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails. He recently traded Maine winters for New Orleans summers. Thursday, 24 May 2007 NEW ORLEANS, […]

Coal Is the Enemy of the Human Race

New BP, Rio Tinto venture plans three “clean coal” plants Last week, oil giant BP announced a new “clean coal” partnership, and it’s already spewing big plans. With Rio Tinto, the world’s third-largest mining company, BP created Hydrogen Energy, a cleaner-energy venture. Just one hitch: they’re gonna make hydrogen by burning fossil fuels, which produces […]

Funding deniers, still, in 2007?

A little while back Exxon was trying to backpedal on its global warming shenanigans, claiming it had been misunderstood and that it wasn’t funding those nasty denialist groups any more. In what is sure to come as a huge shock to … nobody, that turned out to be bullsh*t. According to a new report from […]

Not exactly

Wondering what to make of this? President Bush responded to a Supreme Court environmental ruling by settling on regulatory changes that don’t need congressional approval, the White House said Monday. Bush is announcing the steps he is directing his administration to take in a Rose Garden appearance later Monday. Read on down a little bit: […]

Exxon Mobil hikes spending, big time

Perhaps fearing the coming crunch of climate and energy legislation, oil giant Exxon Mobil more than doubled their reported lobbying expenditures in 2006 to $14.5 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. This blows their previous year’s total of $7.14 million and next-highest-spender Chevron’s $7.5 million out of the water.

Willie Corduff has taken arms against a sea of Shell troubles

Willie Corduff. Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize. “We’d never objected to anything in our whole lives,” says Irish farmer Willie Corduff. But when Shell Oil proposed to put a high-pressure gas pipeline through his family farm, Corduff changed his quiet ways. He and a handful of his neighbors refused to allow Shell on their property — […]