Meet the Climate Lobby

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There are now four climate lobbyists for every member of Congress — an increase of 300 percent in just five years. But who are they working for and what do they want? The Center of Public Integrity has a new report on the climate change lobbying stampede which finds that the fight over energy policy has exploded in complexity. While big polluters still comprise more than half of the groups or companies lobbying on climate legislation, they’ve been joined by a diverse roster of new interests, all with complicated designs on government reforms. 

In addition to those entities that are simply trying to support or block efforts to cut carbon emissions—positions that now look increasingly retro—many companies and trade groups see climate legislation as inevitable and want to shape the resulting reforms to their own ends. The financial sector, for instance, has 130 lobbyists pushing for a cap and trade system that banks could profit from. There are city and county governments that see an opportunity to snare some federal money. And then there’s the renewable energy sector and environmental groups, although they’re outnumbered by everyone else by eight to one.

All of this activity has resulted in a bewildering proliferation of proposals on how to regulate pollution or encourage efficiency. Small wonder that the Waxman-Markey bill is now 900 pages long and counting, or that House Dems have hired a speed reader to keep up with GOP amendments. More on all of this to come…

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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