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  • Markey demands info on coal group’s role in forged climate-bill letters

    Rep. Ed Markey wants to get to the bottom of the story.Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) wants answers from the pro-coal group that funded the organization responsible for the forged letters sent to House members. Markey, chair of the Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming, sent a letter to the American Coalition for Clean […]

  • Blame game continues as more details on forged letters to Congress come to light

    Officials at the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) are claiming to be victims of the forged anti-climate bill letters sent to three members of Congress earlier this summer, but a background document released by the organization reveals that its leaders knew about the fake letters before the House voted on climate legislation. In […]

  • What if climate groups copied dirty industry tactics…?

    If Big Coal or Big Oil can pay to generate fake grassroots opposition to climate and energy legislation, couldn’t green groups flip the tables and do the same? Grist got to thinking about what a pro-climate astroturfing campaign would look like… Got other ideas for pro-climate bill astroturfing? Drop ’em in the comments section below.

  • Forged climate bill letters spark uproar over ‘astroturfing’

    The controversial business of selling grassroots political campaigns is getting the spotlight treatment as details continue to emerge about the source of fake letters sent to a first-term member of Congress urging him to vote against the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill. Congressman Tom Perriello represents Virginia’s 5th district. His office received forged letters urging […]

  • Larry Craig, oil lobbyist

    Illustration by Tom Twigg/GristThis is an actual thing: Larry Craig, former punchline of Idaho, has opened a Washington consulting firm to work as an energy lobbyist. New West Strategies LLC offers “strategic advice, guidance, and advocacy” from Craig, the senator was arrested in 2007 in a sting operation against men cruising for sex at the […]

  • Money can’t buy YOU love — but it can buy the fossil fuel industry the GOP loves

    Oil companies, electric utilities and the coal industry have poured more than $250,000 this year into the coffers of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the party’s House fundraising arm that has played a lead role in attacking Democrats who supported climate legislation. All told, political action committees for various fossil fuel industries have given at […]

  • Southern Company dominates the climate lobbying scene

    This post was originally published on the website of the Center for Public Integrity and is reposted on Grist with CPI’s kind permission. —– Southern Company, the nation’s largest electric power generator, also had the largest force of lobbyists among the hundreds of businesses and interest groups that were seeking to influence the landmark climate […]

  • Climate change lobbying dominated by ten firms

    This post by Marianne Lavelle and Matthew Lewis is reprinted with the permission of The Center for Public Integrity.—– Hundreds of lobbyists are cramming into Room 2123 of the Rayburn House Office Building this week for the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s mark-up of landmark legislation to curb global warming through a complex cap-and-trade system. […]

  • Southern Company, coal plants, and the latest gizmo

    Who is behind the push for “clean coal”? Seems like it ought to be simple, but it’s not. Take a look at this list of members of the “clean coal” front group ACCCE. There are effectively three lobbies: producers, utilities, and legislators. Producers’ interest in “clean coal” is obvious: they want to sell more coal. […]