The Economy Project
(2009-10-29)
WASHINGTON DC
(WEKU) -
Some Kentucky coal companies are spending big bucks to get a seat at the table as Congress debates climate legislation. Watchdog groups want to know what those lobbying dollars are buying.
$3.2 million will buy a lot of lobbyists. That's what Southern Company spent in just the last quarter. We caught up with Jim McCool, a member of the Southern team, outside a Capitol Hill hearing on pollution credits.
"We tend to try to work with the folks who are elected from our service territory, which is in the southeast, because our rate payers are their constituents," McCool said.
The Georgia-based utility produces 70 percent of its electricity from coal.
A search of records by Capitol News Connection reveals that some of the biggest coal companies operating in Kentucky have dramatically increased their lobbying activities lately. They want to have their say on the cap-and-trade bill making its way through Congress. CONSOL Energy has spent $6.4 million in the past two years on lobbying, a huge increase over the previous years.
CONSOL spokesman Tom Hoffman says the industry just isn't ready for the emissions requirements in the bill.
"We do need to have some help from the government in developing the technologies necessary to capture carbon and to store it," Hoffman said.
The parent company of TECO Coal Corporation, based in Corbin, Kentucky, spends more than a million dollars a year on DC lobbying. TECO Energy hasn't increased its spending recently, but Arch Coal has. That company is spending money three times faster than it did last year.
Dave Levinthal works for the Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group that tracks money in Washington.
"What they try to do when they are making lobbying expenditures like this is buy themselves into the process," Levinthal said.
And what have these companies gotten for their money? By the time the House bill came up for a vote in June, it had lost much of its bite. The emissions reduction target for 2020 was lowered from 20 percent to 17 percent. Lawmakers cut renewable fuel standards. And they're planning to give out most of the credits for coal companies to pollute for free.
Even though the bill was weakened, the National Mining Association says it's not enough. Here's spokeswoman Carol Raulston.
"We ended up having to oppose the bill. There are similar problems in the various versions being looked at on the Senate side, though we haven't seen a final bill there yet," Raulston said.
Kentucky's lawmakers are also trying to get a good deal for the coal companies.
"Of course I represent the biggest coalfields in Kentucky."
Republican Hal Rogers says he didn't need lobbyists to convince him to vote against the cap and trade bill.
"I think all members make up their minds on the issue. My mind is made up because I represent the coal miners who earn a living and it's the economic backbone of my district," Rogers said.
Louisville Democrat John Yarmuth is skeptical. He says lobbyists with fat wallets have an impact.
"There's not one member of Congress that would say that the money they get influences their vote but it's inevitable that even if it doesn't the perception is that it does and the perception poisons the system as well as the reality," Yarmuth said.
The other side of the economic coin is, of course, the environment. Jennifer Layke of the World Resources Institute says climate change threatens the very survival of human beings on the planet.
"That means we'll have more droughts, that means we'll have more large-scale weather events, like Hurricane Katrinas, that means that we disrupt our agricultural patterns, that our seasons change, that the ice is melting much more rapidly, and that we have sea level rise," Layke said.
Some coal companies took their lobbying down a notch over the summer. The climate bill had passed the House in June, and the Senate was too busy with health care to pick it up. Watch for CONSOL, Arch and other energy firms to redouble their efforts later this year, when the Senate turns its attention to climate change.
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