Andy Rowell, co-founder of SpinWatch – a UK NGO which tracks corporate ‘public relations’ work – explains their attempts to identify the corporate lobbyists seeking to influence the outcome of the forthcoming Copenhagen climate conference.
With science demanding ever deeper cuts in carbon emissions, we know that politicians will be under intense pressure from industry lobby groups not to sign up to anything too difficult this December. Top of the list of prime suspects is, of course, the fossil fuel industry, which is already reeling from revelations of lobbying and fake letter-writing campaigns against the US Climate Bill. But what have they been up to in the UK? In order to find out who industry was lobbying in the run up to Copenhagen, a series of Freedom of Information requests were sent by SpinWatch to government departments over the summer.
No lobbying here
The most logical place to start was the Department of Energy and Climate Change, headed by one of Gordon Brown’s inner circle, Ed Miliband, whose government is spear-heading the negotiations for Copenhagen. According to the DECC website, Ed Miliband leads the government on “overall” climate strategy as well as “representing the UK in key international and EU negotiations”.
But when asked for details of meetings or correspondence between DECC Ministers and BP, Chevron/Texaco, E.On, Exxon/Esso, RWE and/or Shell, the reply was, surprisingly, that there were “no records of any Ministerial meetings”.
What about Defra, whose lead Minister Hilary Benn is responsible for sustainable development? That too came back a blank. Having checked through Ministerial records, Defra confirmed that “there are no records of any meetings, correspondence or memos that specifically covered the UK’s negotiation position for Copenhagen”.
Maybe the oil industry had been targeting the Met Office and the scientists at the Hadley Centre for Climate Change? No meetings there either. But the oil lobbyists must be stalking the corridors of power somewhere.
Oh, you found us
What about Number 10 and specifically Michael Jacobs, Gordon Brown’s Special Adviser with responsibility for energy, climate change and environmental policy? Finally we got a hit but Number 10 explained that “due to the complexity and volume of information requested” the deadline had to be extended, and we still await a response.
We also tried the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, specifically the Business Secretary Lord Mandelson, Lord Drayson, the Science Minister and Baroness Vadera, the Minster for Economic Competitiveness. This was once again a hit. However, BERR came back saying they had to analyse the documents to see if a “qualified” exemption applied to the information and to gauge whether it could be released at all. Once again we are still waiting to hear from them.
So what does this tell us? It means that the Minister in charge of international climate negotiations, Ed Miliband, is not actually in charge at all. The real power politics are happening at Number 10 through Gordon Brown, and at BERR, with Peter Mandelson and his fellow Ministers. Whilst it is not surprising that the Minister for Climate Change has been sidelined by Labour’s big guns, it also tells us that the oil industry will probably be receiving a sympathetic hearing. Let’s not forget that Mandelson, the arch wheeler dealer and ex-Trade Minister, is seen as highly business friendly. So too is Vadera. And Brown, ever the Chancellor, will not rock the oil industry’s boat.
Finally we asked the Environment Agency, who conceded they had met E.On and Shell. They sent a copy of a letter that James Smith, the Chairman of Shell UK, had sent to Dr. Paul Leinster, the Chief Executive of the Environment Agency, back in April this year. In the letter the oil giant reiterated its commitment to tackling climate change weeks after it had been castigated in the press for publicly dumping solar and wind power from its business portfolio.
Shell tried to downplay the environmental impact of its operations in Canada’s dirty tar sands stating, amongst other things, that its CO2 impact there is not “major on a global scale”, and that less than one per cent of the boreal forest had been destroyed by the tar sands. As for the local pollution, well “the Athabasca River has been flowing through the oil sands for a very long time – the chemistry has long been in the natural environment”.
The angry mermaid
Shell is one of nearly three dozen companies and business organisations that have been nominated for a special award that will be presented at Copenhagen, where the public can vote for the worst corporation lobbying to derail climate action. Called the ‘Angry Mermaid’ award, it is named after the symbolic image of Copenhagen, the Little Mermaid, who is angry that her seas are rising and warming due to climate change. If you want to see if Shell makes the short-list, public voting will start in November at www.angrymermaid.org.
Andy Rowell is a freelance writer and co-founder of SpinWatch.
This article first appeared in Ethical Consumer 121, November/December 2009