fbpx
Donate Newsletters

Collection: Look Who's Taking Oil & Coal Money

Gov. Inslee Hires Coal Lobbyist to Direct Policy Office

by

In a classic instance of the revolving door between government and industry, Governor Inslee has decided to hire Matt Steuerwalt as the director of his policy office effective May 1. In recent years, Steuerwalt has acted as a lead lobbyist for coal-fired power in Washington, as well as for a now-defunct coal export proposal. The news was first announced by Steuerwalt in a mass email sent last night.

The state is now wrestling with two major policy issues connected to coal: whether to permit large-scale coal export terminals and whether to phase out coal-fired electricity imported from other states. Given that Steuerwalt has recently been a paid lobbyist in support of coal in Washington, the move raises question about whether he will use his influence in the Inslee administration to advance an agenda more favorable to the coal industry.

Coal Money in Politics: Whatcom County

by

The race for the Whatcom County Council may turn into one of the nation’s most important votes for climate change. That’s because the county is home to Cherry Point, the site of a massive proposed coal terminal—which, if constructed, would be the biggest coal terminal in North America, allowing 48 million tons of coal from the landlocked western US to reach Asian seaborne coal markets.

In Whatcom County, local authorities have a direct say over the land use and permitting decisions that will allow the project to go forward—or not. In other words, the composition of the Whatcom County Council matters a great deal to the future of the US coal industry. And as it happens, four of the seven members of the Council are up for re-election, which means that the races have become a virtual referendum on the highly controversial coal port.

As KUOW’s Ashley Ahearn reported last week, the candidates thought to be opposed to the port were handily out-fundraising their opponents. Then, just after Ahearn’s story and other similar coverage was published—and just days before a key fundraising deadline—a tsunami of coal money flooded into a two-month-old local PAC, Save Whatcom.

Here’s how suddenly the cash arrived:

timeline coal PAC

And here’s where Save Whatcom’s money comes from:

Read more

Look Who’s Ashamed to Be Taking Coal Money

by

Well, that was satisfying. Yesterday, DeSmogBlog caught coal PR flak Lauri Hennessey laughing about people worried about climate change. After that, I publicly asked whether we should begin a targeted divestment campaign that would encourage Northwest clients to stop working with her private consulting firm.

Today, all that’s left of the Hennessey PR website is smoking rubble. The subpages are 404 errors, and this is all that’s left of the front page:

Look Who’s Taking Coal Money: Seattle Times Investigates

by

On the front page of the Seattle Times today, reporter Brian M. Rosenthal has a first-rate investigative look at the supposedly green lobbying firms that are on the payroll of the coal industry. The Seattle Times article is based on two recent reports from Sightline: Look Who’s Taking Coal Money Look Who’s Taking Coal Money, … Read more

Look Who’s Taking Coal Money, Part 2

by

Excellent. At Seattlepi.com, Joel Connelly runs with this story in a strong piece, “Northwest’s so-called ‘green’ law firms working for Big Coal.”

Photo credit Jesse Varner
Photo credit Jesse Varner

If ever an industry needed lawyers, it’s coal.

Widely despised for the range of harm it leaves in its wake—from asthma in kids to mercury in fish to dangerous drinking water pollution—the coal industry long ago became dependent on law firms to run interference with the rules that would protect public health and the environment. And now that coal is coming to the Northwest in a big way, it’s hiring a small army of lawyers to smooth the path from unwelcome interloper to permanent fixture.

Several well-known Northwest law firms, including two that cheerfully market themselves as green leaders, have thrown in their lot with the coal industry. They aim to help coal companies avoid a comprehensive public review of plans to export as much as 140 million tons of coal annually from the region. Yet it’s probably fair to say that many of these law firms care deeply about their reputations and would rather not have their work for the coal industry broadcast too widely.

In our first installment, we looked at the Northwest consulting and PR firms doing the coal industry’s dirty work. (We missed one, Smith & Stark, which we’ll get to in a moment.) In this chapter, we’ll examine four Northwest law firms that are working to promote coal exports.

Gordon Thomas Honeywell

A Northwest law firm with offices in Seattle and Tacoma, Gordon Thomas Honeywell adorns its website with photos of windmills and orcas. The firm sells itself as green, even devoting an entire webpage to its “commitment to sustainability”:

Gordon Thomas Honeywell understands how vital sustainability is to the environment and our future generations. And we recognize that business operations can impact the world around us. We make every effort to limit that impact for our employees, our clients, and our community. 

The truth is that Gordon Thomas Honeywell is deeply connected to the coal industry.

Read more

Look Who’s Taking Coal Money

by

This is great: the redoubtable Joel Connelly, over at the Seattle P-I, is on the case. Take a look at his story: Seattle PR firms are doing “coal’s dirty work.”

If ever an industry needed good PR, it’s coal.

The industry can’t hope to promote its own coal export schemes in the Northwest so instead it buys support from local consulting and PR firms willing to do coal’s dirty work. By taking money from Big Coal, these firms—many of which have carefully groomed reputations for sustainability and public-interest work—have themselves become a part of the coal industry.

Most of these firms might rather not have the public know about the work they do, with the blinds pulled down, on behalf of out-of-state coal giants. After all, their livelihoods depend on appealing to green-minded governments, nonprofits, and businesses in the Northwest. So as an exercise in letting in the sunlight—and as a sort of caveat emptor for clients—here is a look at the Northwest’s homegrown coal industry.

Edelman

The world’s largest independent PR firm, Edelman operates with a dizzying hypocrisy that is on bold display in its Seattle office. Although CEO Richard Edelman says publicly: “I do not subscribe to the use of front groups to cover up the true intent of a client,” the firm is in fact the shadowy force behind the newly constituted front group Alliance for Northwest Jobs & Exports (ANJE). The Seattlepi.com calls ANJE an “astroturf” group for its work supporting the proposal to ship 48 million tons of coal each year from Cherry Point.

Read more

+ More