Real coal muscle getting results
June 19th, 2008
Filed under: Tactics — Mr Big @ 11:56 am

They’ve got their priorities right over in the USA. They understand the meaning of big. Each year they turn 1.053 billion tonnes of coal into profit. We’re way behind that here in New Zealand but to understand how America burns so much coal, spend a few minutes over at the lobbying disclosure website run by the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives.

I’ll summarise.

According to the Office of the Clerk, in the first quarter of 2008, Big Coal’s new front group, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, spent a record-breaking US$1.9 million in federal lobbying expenses. To put that in perspective, in the same period, the Solar Energies Industries Association spent a pathetic US$75,000! No wonder they’re not making any ground!

In the land of free enterprise they understand the value of lobbying. At this rate, ACCCE will more than double their lobbying expenditures from last year.

Individually, Big Coal spread even more good will around.

Peabody Energy, the world’s largest coal producer, spent $1.3 million in lobbying fees in Q1 of 2008. At this rate, they too will nearly double the $3 million the company spent lobbying in all of 2007.

The 800-pound gorilla in coal politics has long been The Southern Company, the big Altanta-based coal-burning electric utility.

Once again, Southern didn’t disappoint its friends, doling out $2.8 million in lobbying expenses in Q1 of 2008. That’s close to surpassing the All-Time Lobbying Champion of the Fossil Fuel Industry, ExxonMobil, which spent $3 million in the same period. But ExxonMobil is about 20 times larger than Southern (according to Google Finance, ExxonMobil’s market cap is $462 billion; Southern’s is $27 billion). So dollar for dollar, Southern Company is far and away the biggest political muscle in the fossil fuel industry. That’s something we here at the Standover Group aspire to.

Is it any wonder that the Lieberman-Warner climate bill was dead on arrival?

http://www.standover.co.nz/real-coal-muscle-getting-results

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Couldn’t they get a regional development subsidy from the Land Transport Fund to extend the railway 22km?

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“The capacity, environmental and commercial advantages of the much shorter trucking route to Ikamatua determined the decision.”

Apart from the daft greenwash of wanting to be patted on the head for choosing to engage in an activity that produces CO2 only a bit less than what they could have chosen to produce, doesn’t this sound like “We did it because it was cheaper, but let’s pretend we did it for environmental reasons”.

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lol, crafty.

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no cleaner coal is not far off:

http://www.coalisclean.com

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this is useful..

http://whoar.co.nz/2008/bottom-of-the-barrela-chart-of-alternative-oilsfuel/

phil(whoar.co.nz)

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it will always be a dirty business.

Cos of the mining frog? I think if sequestration ever does become viable, no one will give a damn about mining because they’ll be so relieved that such a MAJOR problem has been solved!

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The comments not in the press releases may have been rendered via a phone call. Media often if not always follow up a press release with aa phone cal looking for an exclusive item or tidbit to differentiate their story from others. Active editorial support in greenwashing a news item would be interesting to confirm if it could be.

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