Lobbying

As the mid-term elections in the United States continue to heat up, a new report released Wednesday shows that Canadian corporations have registered at least $15.3 million USD in spending on direct lobbying of the U.S. federal government in the first nine months of 2014.

While the withdrawal of Google, Yahoo, Facebook and others from ALEC’s vast pool of corporate funders was widely celebrated by climate campaigners, a recent report released by Forecast the Facts and SumOfUS shows how Google – and many others who claim to do good by climate – are still funding climate denial in politics.

MoveOn.org's script for people to use when asking legislators to push for GMO-labeling is weak. Here's something with a little more teeth to use when calling your representatives.

A new report from Environment Virginia details the ways electric vehicles are taking pollutants off the state's roads. And even when their electricity is derived from coal-fired plants, their efficiency is still a net positive, on both pocketbook and lungs.

Big Oil's money worked. Spending $1.5M on state senators got them the votes to sink a moratorium on fracking in California.

Climate change denier Steven Milloy has had a number of jobs, all centered around some pretty deadly stuff – tobacco, big chemical – and now brings these impeccable credentials to the head of coal behemoth Murray Energy. Unabashed, he thinks of global warming skeptics as "a ragtag bunch, very Continental Army."

Cities and municipalities across Colorado are voting for and instituting bans on the process known as 'fracking,' or hydraulic fracturing to access shale oil deposits. And the oil and gas industry is not happy. Along with right-wing Governor John Hickenlooper, the companies are suing, claiming that only the state can call for a ban (which, of course, it wouldn't).

Facing an Internal Revenue Service inquiry on tax fraud charges, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is effectively acknowledging that its status as a charity may be a cover for its real work as a multi-million dollar lobby for some of the nation’s largest and richest corporations. Cue up the back-up plan: a "social welfare" organization able to engage in unlimited lobbying. The only reason this hasn't happened yet is because donors would not be able to deduct their contributions on federal tax forms.

Washington State Representative Doc Hastings has introduced an amendment to the Federal Lands Jobs and Energy Security Act to effectively gut the provisions funding renewable energy. The amendment would limit the number of green jobs that would come from the legislation, essentially undermining it.

The New York Times has endorsed the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a dastardly treaty that abdicates the rule of law for corporate-run kangaroo courts.