Climate push triggers lobbying boom
The growing prospect that there may be federal action on climate change apparently has spawned a wave of lobbyists in Washington. The Center for Public Integrity reports that in the past year, as climate legislation finally came to a vote on Capitol Hill, more than 770 companies and interest groups hired an estimated 2,340 lobbyists to influence federal policy.
That's a lot of buttonholing - as the center noted, that comes to more than four lobbyists for every member of Congress. Environmental advocacy groups have ramped up their Washington presence, but so have all the industries that see themselve being affected. The center's put together an analysis of the lobbying corps, profiled some of the more prominent ones and provides a listing. Check it out here.
Advocates of curbing greenhouse gases have argued that the push will generate "green" jobs and actually boost rather than kill the economy, as skeptics contend. Looks like the job growth is already happening, though maybe not the kind of jobs environmentalists had in mind, and certainly not the kind of green they were thinking of.
(Photo by Brendan Hoffman, Getty Images)
I report on the environment and Chesapeake Bay. A native of West Virginia, I have focused mainly on Maryland's environment since moving here in 1983. Along the way, I've crewed aboard a skipjack in the bay, canoed under city streets up the Jones Fall from the Inner Harbor, and gone deep underground in a western Maryland coal mine. Recently, I have been covering the growth and development transforming the landscape. I love seafood, rambles in the country and good stories. I hope to share some here.
