Exposed: How Businesses Are Undermining Efforts on U.S. Climate Committments

The following is reprinted with permission from the Center for Public Integrity.

Todd Stern received a standing ovation from fellow negotiators when he was introduced at this year's first session of international talks to craft a new treaty to combat climate change. As the new climate envoy for the United States, Stern represented the nation that had contributed more than any other to the world's burden of greenhouse gases. But for eight years the industrial leader had largely been on the sidelines as the rest of the world tried to implement the solution embodied in an agreement signed in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997. Now, Stern represented a new president who had pledged to engage vigorously in global discussions aimed at arriving at a successor treaty by December in Copenhagen. As Germany's environment minister said that March day in Bonn, the United States was "back in the game." Stern would remember that instant long after the applause had died. It was the moment, he since has joked, when perhaps he should have quit while ahead.

Since then, Stern has worked to lower expectations around the world for the kind of deal the United States is likely to accept. With only 4.5 percent of the world's population, the U.S. is responsible for more than 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Accordingly, President Barack Obama promised "a new chapter in America's leadership on climate change," following President Bill Clinton's inability to get Kyoto ratified and President George W. Bush's abandonment of the treaty altogether. But the action that the U.S. Congress is contemplating -- legislation much in line with the president's campaign pledges -- falls far short of the short-term targets for greenhouse gas emissions reductions that science points to as necessary. The legislation passed in the House, and the slightly stronger version introduced in the Senate, would only bring the nation's greenhouse gas emissions back to, or a few percent below, 1990 levels by 2020.

That contrasts with the recommendation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body tasked with assessing the world scientific consensus, which has said that developed countries need to reduce their emissions 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 if they are to head off the worst impacts of global warming. Britain has complained about the “ambition gap” between Europe and the U.S., while India has called the U.S. goal "measly." But Stern has asked governments to be “sensitive to what is do-able in the United States.” And the evidence so far shows that what's do-able depends on the coal-fired, energy-gobbling industries -- many of them now accounting for just a small portion of the economy -- and the other special interests that dominate Washington politics.

Capitol Hill's 2,810 Lobbyists

With only weeks to go until the Copenhagen talks begin on December 7, the Senate is only beginning deliberations on the legislation meant to be the basis for the commitments the United States will make there. And senators won't be deciding anything until they hear from those denizens of the Capitol corridors -- the lobbyists. Many of them are ex-government officials and staffers and professional campaign fundraisers who now plead the case of special interests with former colleagues and legislators who are nearly constantly running for re-election. By the time the House of Representatives narrowly passed climate legislation in June, more than 1,150 companies and advocacy groups had hired an estimated 2,810 lobbyists on climate change, according to an analysis of disclosures filed with the Senate Office of Public Records. That amounts to five lobbyists for every member of Congress, an increase of more than 400 percent from six years earlier, when Congress considered its first major comprehensive climate change legislation. U.S. regulations do not require filers to itemize how much they spend on climate, but even if global warming consumed only 10 percent of their efforts, they would have spent more than $47 million on climate issues in the first half of the year.