America’s $800B climate splurge is feeding a new lobbying ecosystem | Hacker News Reader

America’s $800B climate splurge is feeding a new lobbying ecosystem

economist.com

93 pointslxm90 comments

My company applied for an EU innovation grant last year. The way you do it, apparently, is you contact one of a handful of companies who specialize in helping with these applications and you promise them a cut of what you might get.

It's growth, Jim, but not as we (thought we) knew it...

Unfortunately that has always been the case when it comes to applying for EU funds, unless you're a very big company and you have a dedicated department for that (and even then I'd say in some cases it makes more sense to outsource this process to companies which do that for a living).

Nevertheless tenured academics are expected to handle this themselves in parallel with teaching and research...

My university has “valorization” staff to help.

A skilled academic who knows how to write those things will have a strike rate orders of magnitude better than a medicore one. That is why there are professionals ... they do it better.

These companies are not doing any lobbying though, they are helping with the huge amount of paperwork and compliance work that needs to be done.

They're helping you navigate regulation capture.

We're not talking about stopping water contamination here, we're talking about funding. It's balmy.

Who do you think lobbies for the compliance and paperwork?

Voters that seem to care more about who did what wrong than actually getting stuff done ;)

I applied for planning permission; The way you do it, apparently, is you contact one of a handful of companies who specialize in architecting things and you promise to pay them.

I needed a contract for employees; The way you do it, apparently, is you contact one of a handful of companies who specialize in doing these legal things and you promise to pay them.

I needed a set up an IT system; The way you do it, apparently, is you contact one of a handful of companies who specialize in doing IT systems and you promise to pay them.

It's doing shit, Jim, but the exact same way it has always been.

I see the point you're trying to make, but we've applied for many other grants without requiring help.

Suppose you've already done it before and know how to do it, I bet you wouldn't need help

In some places like San Francisco, it's effectively impossible to get a permit without making several "donations" to the local "nonprofits" & electeds office. You'll hear about how they know the problem is so hard and how much they hate the beauracracy and that's why they set up a small office to help small business or homeowners just like you but we're so busy and it's so hard to keep something like that staffed...

Has this been reported in any media outlets? That is very blatant corruption and I'd expect it to be of interest to many journalists.

If this is indeed happening and there has not been any reporting, you should reach out to some news organizations.

It happens everywhere.

I recently had to bribe some government officials just to get them to process a real estate permit release.

It was either that or wait 0-2 years for something to happen.

Who do you think will report on that? With what proofs?

how much did you have to bribe them?

It was reported, and prosecuted, and now the FBI goes away for 10 years, and then just repeats the process with the next guy.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-san-francisco-pu...

btw, anyone want to buy a Winnebago?

It's an open secret, just like Epstein/Weinstein. Businesses here are afraid of retribution. Those who paid in often embrace it, see it as part of the game and therefore unfair if newcomers don't. And because of the path dependency of office, everyone's hands are dirty/leverage, everyone has dirt on everyone else, and going for the jugular might bring down your allies as much as your enemies which is too much uncertainty.

It's reported when the scale is grand, like https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-01-19/jose-hui...

Where have all the Fiorello La Guardias of the world gone to?

> In some places like San Francisco, it's effectively impossible to get a permit without making several "donations" to the local "nonprofits" & electeds office

US normalizing corruption under a more friendly name, where's the news?

You're missing the point.

Unlike the case you mention, you need to pay someone to get public money or you won't get any.

How do you think that happens?

Do you pay % of the house you will sell it for to each handyman, architect, supplier etc? Or do they have fair fixed fees that you can check, choose the best for you and if you are not happy go next door.

What OP describes is pure corruption, eastern more fucked up parts of EU have this ecosystem for 3 decades. It takes easily 70-80% of the budget to get anything done (say play park for children). If company wants some grant to ie improve their processes, the cut may be more like 30-50% percent.

That's how mafia runs things, and ie in quite a few places mafia is very deeply ingrained into state and processes that manage those grants. If its not outright italian mafia, then some self-brewed oligarchs connected to mobsters and politicians capture the drip. I come from such a state and literally everybody knows this, nothing secretive there. My cousin worked for state department responsible for EU grants, and it was a corrupt shitshow where processes were often bypassed every single effin' day. The only positive thing is, our country is so small and economically weak that even if all money end up stolen EU doesn't bat an eye since its pocket money for them.

> Do you pay % of the house you will sell it for to each handyman

It's not material to your point, but if you're flipping houses, and don't have much cash, and have someone you've worked with before and that trusts you, it's not unheard of for then highly skilled and licensed tradesperson (eg electrician) to take a percentage off the sales price. Most people don't buy or sell houses that often, and most people don't work for promised future cash, so it's definitely not normal though.

Except in none of your examples does the government handout money.

The best corruption ALWAYS involves the giving the government money, not taking it. All the greatest empires are built on paying $1 for a billion $ of value.

I'm not sure what that has to do with my post?

The government does planning... If I bribe a planning officer I can sell the thing I own that is worth 10k for 10mil. The government has given me $0.00, indeed I have paid them $100 in processing fees for my application.

Architects are licensed. Anyone can become one provided they meet the requirements.

That was unnecessarily condescending, and also it's a false equivalence to pretend that lawyers or IT people are all rent seeking middlemen (or that grant application consultants aren't, I don't know which you meant). These kind of handouts encourage a shift from useful work to rent seeking, and cause consultancies that specialize in rent seeking to flourish.

So? Anywhere where there are economic interests, there will be lobbying for those interests too, that's unfortunately a fact of life. Still, I would take the renewable energy lobbyists above the gun lobbyists anytime!

Evil lobbyists accidentally creating a cleaner world is something I can live with.

If the outcome is demonstrably beneficial yes. But there's greenwashing, and huge amounts of it. So.. if Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) proposals get significant funding, thats a giant black hole of fugitive methane gas coming back to haunt us: It doesn't work except to push MORE extraction from tired wells. (ie, fracking)

I don’t see any scenario where this is worse than the status quo in the narrative put forth by grandparent comment. Is the implication here that the end result of the efforts mentioned is somehow more greenhouse gas emissions? If so, I would love to hear more of the rationale and statistics behind it.

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the decent (not even good, but way better than the shit world we live in now)

Germany.

The scenario where it is worse is that it results in less overall improvement because now we are paying for show projects brought on by lobbyists rather than valid investment in useful projects. If we don’t have evidence based evaluation and selection and rather lobbyist based selection then we will not make sound investments and this can harm the environment. Ie spending $100B on bullshit rather than effective clean energy or whatnot.

I was working on an island in Uganda and we drove past a solar energy array. Me and the other foreigners were like “oh cool, that’s really nice” and the local collaborators we were with explained that it was the result of $100M in foreign funding and would have cost about $500k if it used local firms. And that it displaced a local firm that was trying to do solar stuff. Instead they flew in people from outside the country and continent even to install and perform routine maintenance. The local collaborator said it produces the electricity of a small diesel generator. This is just an anecdote and I was never able to check the numbers, but it’s an example of how we can do harm by trying to do good. Bullshit projects and funding can harm good projects.

So please let horrible be the enemy of minimally effective. And don’t pretend that horrible is good and minimally effective is perfect.

I'm seeing quite a few startups who seem to focus on helping people document and discover their environmental footprint more so than changing it, often with a focus on compliance. This is obviously great if it does lead to real initiatives and changes in the companies and the markets they act in, but there is a hint of bureaucratic busywork to it. A focus on papers over improvements.

Let's pay down the climate tech debt, before the lobbying tech debt.

Believing evil lobbyists can possibly “accidentally” create a cleaner world, or anything useful, shows how screwed up our educational system is.

I don't understand what your comment about the education system means. Do you mean people won't know about how to squelch carbon?

Means people are dumb to think, lobbyists are bad but dumb that they will let $800B to actually amount to something useful. Being the pleb they are probably should have figured out how its PR and meant to exactly bring up that kind of thinking of them being dumb so normal folks stay quiet.

Creating a cleaner world is more expensive than pretending to clean the world by using loopholes such as “offsetting” carbon (which doesn’t actually mean anything in practical terms).

My point is this: if a business is going to invest substantial sums on what is effectively legalised bribery, then you can bet their motives are not for the betterment of humanity.

This “capitalism at all costs” approach is what got us into our current state. What we really need is governments to step up and impose sensible regulations without having businesses whispering in their ear. Which I know is an unpopular opinion to voice among the libertarians on here but we’re all entitled to our own opinion.

“rational self-interested thinking is what got us into this mess” therefore the solution is “you guys should all elect good politicians and be motivated by my altruism”

Honestly, I wouldn’t trust that solution further than I can throw it. I absolutely want effective climate solutions people can pursue out of greed. Then I can believe in them! Not because I like greed but because I trust it. Do you see what I mean?

We’ve had more than a hundred years of industry and it has been demonstrated time and time again that greed doesn’t fuel positive change when it comes to matters of the environment. Greed only leads to greenwashing (on phone so no citation but you can look the term up - ostensibly it’s where companies run PR campaigns to promote greenness while not actually doing much, if anything, to improve the situation).

Examples of this are carbon offsetting instead of reducing the carbon they use, recycling campaigns instead of actually using less environmentally harmful packaging. The “right thing” here is always more expensive.

This is a trend we’ve already seen for decades. Why should it suddenly be different now?

I’m not saying politicians can be trusted either but at least politicians goals aren’t contradictory to environmental concerns, unlike greed vs environmentally sympathetic products that generally cost more to produce.

And here lies the problem: companies can’t be trusted to do the right thing for the environment because it costs more for them to do so. And if there is one thing we should have learned by now it’s that most companies will gladly take shortcuts if it raises their profits and/or share value.

Asking readers of HN to trust businesses to do the right thing is like repeatedly approaching a barking dog after getting bitten multiple times thinking “this time I’m positive the dog won’t bite me”. At some point you have to set boundaries otherwise they’ll continue to misbehave knowing they can always get away with it.

It’s not accidentally though, it’s entirely on purpose. I work in climate tech, or sort of, because what I really work for is an investment bank owned by a hedgefund, and the sole product we sell to investors is good returns.

You can do that in a lot of ways, however, but our way is to use their investments to build green energy plants, ride them to a profit and then sell them. Which creates a better world, but it’s very much intentionally. The increasing climate awareness, especially among the generation of wealthy 60+ year olds who want to leave their grandchildren a better world is simply a good business case. It’s much easier to sell that group of people a green investment in 2023 than it was in 1993, in fact it’s hard to sell them an investment that is not green. That last part is why you see the corporate world turning eco-friendly. But I think it’s wrong to say that’s it’s accidental, because it comes after five decades of climate science and politics turning the hearts and minds of society, and now that they’ve been successful, and there is a lot of money to be made off green energy, the corporate interest follows.

I’m not a fan of the way lobbying impacts our democracies, but it’s primary function isn’t to be evil (at least not in general terms), no, it’s primary function is to influence society in a way that allows businesses to make money. If society wants cheap gas in their cars, or if big sugar/tobacco wants to keep their massive market shares then lobbying does evil, but if the best way to make money is to generate a profitable green energy market, then lobbying will likely do good. At least as far as capitalism is concerned. You can think about that what you will, I would personally prefer if my own government had not sold off much of our energy sector as a citizen, but I both work and invest in the sector so it also benefits me immensely as an individual.

That being said. By 2030 we’ll have build more than ten thousand solar plants of different sizes, and while we couldn’t have done that without climate science and climate NGOs (and corporate lobbyists) creating a political climate to drive green energy forward, climate science and climate NGOs couldn’t have build those plants without private money. So while it’s fine to have ideals, it’s the realism and the compromises that actually change the world.

> lobbying…but it’s primary function isn’t to be evil

Its primary function is to maximize returns. That’s not necessarily evil, but amoral.

Evil in the sense you’re using it is not real, but if it is, then pushing for a local advantage by externalizing costs onto others seems pretty bad to me.

My issue is that lobbying is inefficient and bad overall as it increases the costs spread across the system and focuses the benefits in a specific area. Usually to a net negative. For example, spend $1M in lobbying to earn $2M in benefits at a cost of $100M to the system (see US agricultural subsidies on sugar, corn, etc that help a very small section of an industry at great expense).

Again, not evil in the sense of eating babies or gas chambers or whatnot, but banal and causing harm. There’s not much true evil in the short term and even Nazis (the most evil I can think of) would be perceived very differently had they won (see the opinion on Ghengis Khan).

Do you have any sources to back up your claims? I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of any propaganda where an 1 million investment would cause 100 million worth of unintended harm.

Whoa, whoa, whoa there.

Who said anything about a cleaner world? To get the money they only have to promise a cleaner world. Or do something that the government thinks will result in a cleaner world.

Clean coal baby!

Or the guy who was selling carbon credits by grinding up old cars and dumping them in the ocean (theoretically would cause algae blooms that trap CO2 then sink).

"So you're telling me that instead of selling my cars for scrap, I can grind them up, dump them in the ocean and you'll give me way more money?"

I liked that solution much better than the response: “all scientific study on the merits of this approach shall henceforth be banned”

Most environmentalists are incapable of actually identifying things that would cause a cleaner world.

For example they actually think recycling plastic is better than incinerating it (it's not - incineration uses less energy in total because you need to pump less oil from the ground and produces less pollution because you don't need to work so hard to clean and separate the plastic).

You should go and correct Wikipedia, because they have lots of cites saying that incineration with energy capture is lower on the waste hierarchy than recycling:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_hierarchy

You think they will do that, just another way to get money for them.

Do you think they are interested in creating a cleaner world? Or just bill rates and collecting fees?

It’s not just an opportunity cost of what we could do with $100 investment in climate change remediation vs $50 investment and $50 lobbyist. I think it’s that the $50 lobbyist don’t really result in $50 investment in climate change, but $50 investment in things that lead to more lobbying.

It's not the field they are lobbying in that matters, it's exactly what and who they are lobbying for. If you can't come up with theoretical scenarios in your head in which a gun lobbyist can do go good and a renewable energy lobbyist can do harm than you can't judge things beyond their name.

I'm lobbying for women rights. That is undeniably good. The exact details: their right to come serve as my sexual slaves. But don't mind the details, focus on "women rights", that's what matters.

Honestly I think lobbyists are fine as long as their influence on politicians is tightly controlled. A politician needs to know the interests of companies and people in their constituency. Lobby groups are an effective way to provide that view point. They just shouldn't be allowed to write laws or bribe politicians.

I feel the same about lobbying as enterprise sales. I don’t want a salesperson trying to get time on my calendar. Make the information available, I will find it.

Politicians have substantial numbers of staffers (in 2021 9,034 staffers for 535 congresspersons [0]) so they have the ability to educate themselves on important topics. They can also summon SMEs on any topic they like and get the world’s best experts on any topic.

No one needs a fat lobbyist to fly them to a golf retreat and take them to lunch to learn about the efficacy of different climate projects.

[0] https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R43947

I agree, but you have to be careful, because the SMEs very often CAN be the lobbyists. Look at the judicial system, where you can literally hire an "expert" to say and argue basically anything you want for enough money. Greedy bastards are everywhere. How can we prevent subject matter experts from just being another lobbying avenue?

> Still, I would take the renewable energy lobbyists above the gun lobbyists anytime!

You get both.

> Still, I would take the renewable energy lobbyists above the gun lobbyists anytime!

Gun lobbying in 2022: $13M [0]

There’s no category for climate, so here’s a few (tldr gun lobbying sucks but it’s a drop on the bucket of the billions spent on lobbying). Sugar kills way more than guns every year (for example 88k deaths in 2019 [6] vs 40k gun deaths in 2019 [7] and sugar causes more than just diabetes) so the effect of lobbying is more than just hurting people with guns, it’s hurting people with physical and mental health issues.

Single issue/ ideological: $194M [1]

Energy: $359M [2]

Cattle ranchers: $5M [3]

Agribusiness: $166M [4]

Timber: $5M [5]

[0] https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/industries/summ... [1] https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/sectors/summary... [2] https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/sectors/summary... [3] https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/industries/summ... [4] https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/sectors/summary... [5] https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/industries/summ... [6] https://diabetes.org/about-us/statistics/about-diabetes [7] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2023/04/06/gun-deaths-...

You realize that these people are the gun lobbyists, right?

It's a revolving door. The organizations and individuals involved don't care. They've seen it all. Everyone's cause is the end of the world. Everyone's cause is going to bring about utopia. They'll peddle anything if you pay them.

A small point but is it really a “splurge” to spend money on ensuring the planet’s climate isn’t terrible? Splurge usually means impulsive greed, but in this case that money is “desperate attempt to ensure survival.”

“When he ran for office he promised to drain the swamp, but he turned out to be the biggest crocodile of them all.”

This sounds like a 'too good to be true' quote.

A long-time advocate of upgrading the power grid reports gleefully that he is suddenly very popular as electrifying industries struggle to work out how to get transmission lines and other power infrastructure built.

'A long time advocate for not poisoning our children reports gleefully that he is suddenly very popular as de-toxifying industries struggle to work out how to stop poisoning our children.' — The Economist could've chosen a number of ways to frame this totally anonymous not-even-a-quote, and shockingly chose the one that makes the supposed speaker sound maximally venal.

Good, lobbies are a constant. So, it's nicer to have lobbies obsessing about renewable tech and solutions to climate change rather than actively working to promote the burning of oil and coal. Nothing good has ever come out of that.

As long as it is not just performative and achieves results, I am all for it.

> Good, lobbies are a constant.

What? Are you suggesting that whenever one company hires a lobbyist a lobbyist from another company magically disappears?

not a constant quantity, a constant phenomenon

https://archive.is/rVgD4

I'll add "lobbying" to my long list of things that the media suddenly discover is bad when it hurts fossil fuel interests.

Aligning capitalism with green policies is exactly what we need to do in order to succeed.

The idea that everyone should just eat grubs and ride a bike and if they don't we deserved it is completely ridiculous. It doesn't and cannot work to have a system in which anyone who "cheats" gets orders of magnitude of advantage over the others.

When the car I want to buy with my £3-5k budget is electric we'll be there. Whilst I have to "decide" to spend £30k more in order to get anything even reasonably equivalent, we're not.

So the obvious question is "how do I get some?" - or rather this can't just be subsidies to existing energy companies. What starts ups will be created out of this 800bn?

Instead of marketing, you need lobbyists and legal experts.

You don't want to be the guy panning for gold. Most of those people will get nothing and tiny minority will get a lot. You want to be the guy selling pans. It might have a lower ceiling but it's definitely got a lower floor.

I don't think anyone is surprised? If the government promises to spend $800B, you're going to have people advocating on how it's spent.

The lobbying ecosystem is a form of corruption and a cancer of the system…

The public should demand high quality models for any CCS project. Also, comprehensive MMV (measurement, monitoring and verification) needs to be included. The technology can work but the potential for corruption is pretty high imo.

"Lobbying ecosystem" is nice term to describe a corrupt economy. Next time IMF asks for some meaningful reforms in my country, we can reply to them that we have a lobbying ecosystem, duh.

Would you say I am pessimistic if I believe that a tiny fraction of those actually care about the environment while the rest is in for the easy money?

I'm not sure it matters?

If you're going to leverage capitalism to clean up the environment, you'll get exactly that as long as the incentives align (you don't get money unless you deliver a cleaner environment).

If someone gets filthy rich improving the planet, then they win and we win.

But that's the problem. If everyone is only doing this for the money then as soon as incentives shift and they have an opportunity to make more money by pouring toxic waste into the ocean then they'll do it.

It's like companies who are "passionate about customer service" (both in rhetoric and reality). We understand that they're still motivated by profit but if they have this additional almost ideological commitment to good customer service (or product quality or whatever) then there is at least a chance that they will at least think twice in screwing over their customers for a small profit increase.

Well, this is why we develop environmentalism as a demand driven market—consumers will punish businesses that are inauthentic. But that is still small peanuts—we need people to maximize profits by doing the right thing. Rational alignment of interests is the goal, not enhanced individual morality. One is much more likely to lead to systematic rapid change.

Sure that's the problem, but what are you going to do to solve it? Change everyone's mind?

No, I'd respond with, you should reserve moral sentimentalism for people on an individual-basis, not collectively as a system.

The injected anti-Trump rant at the beginning of the article is weird. Was this added as an olive branch to appease the mob?

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