Scott Segal

What is your work?

Well, lobbying is really about information. It’s about getting high-quality information, some of which can be political, but most of which is really highly technical, into the hands of decision-makers. If you take an energy problem, a technology issue or something like it, that final decision-making process is made up of hundreds of smaller inputs. And it’s just not realistic to believe that the member of Congress, the US senator is going to have all of that at their disposal right from the get-go.

So, what the lobbyist does is come forward and say, “I represent an interest. Here is that interest. Here is why it has something to say on the particular subject that’s before you, and here are some of the details that we worry about when we contemplate that issue. We hope this is helpful to you.” I mean, it’s a respectful exercise but it really is an information-driven process where you’re trying to tell members of Congress something that you don’t think they might reasonably have access to without talking to the community that’s going to be regulated by a new law or a new program.

Do you usually work with members of Congress or their staff?

I would say that of the presentations we do on Capitol Hill, probably 95% of them are with Capitol Hill staff, or with chiefs of staff, legislative directors, legislative assistants, counsels and the like that work for either members of Congress or committees within the Congress that have specific jurisdiction over issues. 5% of the time, we might be meeting with principals, or as I like to put it, people that have election certificates, senators, members of Congress and the like.

Do you have a large variety of clients?

Well, the firm as a whole represents probably 10,000 different clients. Now, that includes legal work, corporate transactions, as well as, as well as legislative and governmental affairs work that we do. Within the government relations practice, it’s a more modest group, but it’s several dozen clients that represent a variety of different interest areas, energy, environment, natural resources, taxations, appropriations of federal funds, health care, national security and defense.

A lot of the principal operations of government are reflected in the types of things that a good government affairs firm is going to do.

Are there any specific clients within the energy sector you represent?

You know the production and transmission of energy is an incredibly diverse area, and I think our practice represents the inherent diversity in that area. So, for example, we represent conventional electric power generators that might include coal or natural gas as part of what they fire. We also represent entities that are interested in and developing nuclear projects. We represent renewable companies that do everything from geothermal heat pumps for businesses and for residences, all the way to solar and traditional wind power development, so-called wind farms.

We do strategic communication work for the development of those types of projects. We’ve worked for petroleum refiners for many, many years, which is to say, the folks that take crude petroleum and refine it into a range of products that would include gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, things like that. And we’ve also represented folks that are active in research and development, and are, are developing new technologies, new forms of pollution control equipment, new forms of carbon capture as we enter into the sort of global warming area.

And so as far as energy goes, that’s sort of the broad range. We also represent folks that use a lot of energy. You can’t build anything without energy. And, so we represent cement manufacturers, we represent, industrial boiler owners and people like that who are creating a great deal of energy for captive use in the production of their product. And, so that’s really the broad range. I think we probably have one of the broader-ranged energy practices in Washington.

Do you ever find yourself representing groups with differing goals?

Well, if you’re doing your work right, then your firm should never end up arguing two different sides of the same story. And, so we don’t do the exact same thing for each of the energy interests that we represent. For example, we might, on behalf of a renewable energy provider, we might be doing some of their communications work, or we might be working on tax incentives. And, and so that might be the way we’re advancing their policy interests.

On the specific issue of global climate change, we might be more limited to the more traditional industries that represent the vast majority of investment in the energy sector. So, electric power generators or or petroleum refiners, or major industrial users of energy, and they would all seem to have consistent positions. As a general proposition, our firm represents people that want to build stuff.

Now, there are plenty of groups in town that represent organizations that want to stop the building of stuff or even tear down stuff that currently exists. But, as a general proposition, all of our clients, from whatever walk in the energy industry, want to build new projects or continue to operate projects. That’s an important distinction, because parts of the energy industry that want to construct new generation facilities, or want to construct power lines and the like share a lot in common, even if the technologies they have are very different.

And so for example, if you try and build a wind farm in the United States today, you will ironically find that you have substantial environmentalist opposition. If you wish to build or expand the footprint of a fossil fuel powered generator, you will find, guess what, that you have extensive environmentalist opposition. So, there are a lot of similarities, even though the technologies themselves may differ.

Is it important that you believe in your clients’ goals, or does that matter?

Yeah, I mean, look. There are plenty of policy issues where I will not hold myself out as a lobbyist or seek, to attract business into those areas. I don’t hold it against anybody else who does, but there are plenty of things I don’t go into.

Because I don’t believe in them, and I don’t, as a result, think I’d be very effective. Or I wouldn’t potentially render good advice in those areas. But when it comes to the energy area, I believe I have certain sort of immutable principles, that I think that there needs to be enough energy to have affordable and reliable power and affordable and reliable transportation. And, that’s good not just for businesses that I might happen to represent, it also is pretty good for schools and hospitals and all the purveyors of important social service.

It all starts with energy. So, I do not find it difficult to advance a basket of policies which advances the diversity of American energy and the reliability and the affordability of that energy. So I find that’s very consistent with my personal code, which is that it’s okay to build stuff, it’s okay to make stuff and it’s okay to operate at a reasonable cost your businesses small and large, your schools, your hospitals, your non-profit institutions.

Daniel Patrick Moynahan wrote that the capitol was placed away from New York to kind of split business and governmental power, but K Street seems like it’s reuniting those powers.

Well, sure, I mean, first of all, just on the history of it; it’s a fascinating history. Alexander Hamilton and others wished to see the capitol located in New York. Philadelphia was suggested as possible too. And, then the southerners, particularly the Virginians from whom we drew most of our early Presidents, actually, the majority of our early Presidents definitely wanted it located in the south. As a compromise, they chose somewhere in these middle states, the state of Maryland, in this case.

And they asked George Washington to pick the precise location. So, he took a ruler, and he put one end of the ruler on Mount Vernon, and he put the other end on the Potomac River Valley, which separated the states, and drew the shortest possible line, which was this area, Jenkins Hill, which we now call Capitol Hill. And that became the site to locate both the Presidential mansion and the US Capitol.

So, what I believe the parable of the location of Washington shows is that when national policy is made, it looks as though there’s a disagreement among interests. But, what really is actually going on is there may be a disagreement among regions. That’s very true of energy policy. Those parts of the United States which have a lot of solar power and a lot of wind power are located in windy areas or located in desert areas and such may feel one way about, just as an example, a mandate that a certain percentage of electricity come from those sources.

Whereas other areas that are not so blessed may feel that more conventional or maybe nuclear power are better ways to go. They see that reflected all the time in the climate debate, where the southeastern states and the midwestern states take one view, because of their heavy dependence on coal, and the two coasts take different views because they long ago gave up on coal-fired power, or at least diminished their reliance on coal-fired power.

In many respects, the location of this city is kind of prototypical of the way we resolve things. It’s through compromise. The compromise location was to turn to someone of unimpeachable integrity, George Washington, and give him guidelines, must be between the two regions, and let him choose. And, so there are many issues that are resolved that way in town. On the notion of we were trying to avoid the moneyed interests, and now, look, they’re here, I would say that from the earliest time of the Republic there has always been a a careful attention paid to what small businesses, large businesses, shopkeepers, farmers have to say about the effects of national policy.

The biggest difference between the period when this country was founded and today is the extent of our laws and the extent of our government regulations. I think the Founding Fathers would be very surprised to learn about how many thousands and thousands and thousands of pages go into the code of Federal regulations, and the United States code, annotated, which is essentially the codification of our laws. They would be very surprised we cover so many subject areas. Once they understood how many subject areas we cover, I don’t think they’d be surprised at all that interest groups that correspond to those areas are active in the city of Washington, providing information on how these laws affect them.

Do you think they would be surprised at the money spent on lobbying?

Well, hard to say. I would say they’d be surprised at the size of our entire economy. I’m sure they’d be surprised that more money is spent advertising laxatives than is spent on the entire political process. They might be surprised at that. So the economy’s large and diverse and I think they would feel that it’s important that the Congress have the best information as timely as possible to make decisions. And, so and I think that our Founding Fathers would probably be pretty offended by a notion that the Congress needs to be protected from the people that it serves.

And, so artificial barriers that prohibit the robust right to petition government, I think they’d be a little surprised by that. They might even be surprised that lobbyists have to register, ’cause they’d be thinking, “Well, jeez, didn’t we just fight a revolution to set up a right to free speech with a right to petition government? We didn’t really contemplate the people would have to register for that.” But again, the making of legislation in Washington is a lot about compromise, and they would probably look at the way we do things now and recognize it for what it’s worth, which is a flawed process that reflects certain compromises, but also tries to celebrate the diversity of thought in the United States.

I think they’d probably be pretty pleased with how the Republic’s going.

What do you think about criticisms that lobbyists tend to represent not the people, but industries and business interests?

Well, few things. First of all, no one represents an industry in Washington, because an industry is an abstract concept. We represent the people that manage, own, but also that work in that industrial sector. Every one of these industries that are represented heavily in Washington have a multiplier effect on the economy as a whole, and there are various economic models which demonstrate this. But, if you have an industry that has 20,000 folks working for it, most economic models will show you that there are 150,000 individuals that are dependent on those 20,000 jobs.

So, it’s a multiplier effect, and those are the interests that are represented in town. I don’t think that it is healthy to say that there are some points of view which are shared by contributors to a non-profit and are therefore better points of view than those that are shared by literally hundreds of thousands of folks that are dependent on industrial or major service jobs as well. So we all have a claim on We The People.

Everyone that’s here represents an organization or an idea or a concept upon which hundreds of thousands of folks in some respect depend. I have always thought that the best public policy is made when all sides are represented and have a robust discussion back and forth about what the truth is. I do agree that when a lo- a good lobbyist goes into a, a member of Congress’s office, the first words out of the lips of that lobbyist ought to be, “This is who I am, this is who I represent, these are my interests.

Now, let me tell you about the issue before us.” So, disclosure in that respect is extraordinarily important. But, I think everyone wins when there’s robust exchange of ideas and robust discussion. Now, on this notion that there are more corporate lobbyists than there are non-profit lobbyists, I think that corporations may spend on lobbying fees, may spend more than non-profits. I’m not even sure that’s right, but they may.

In terms of raw numbers of individuals who are registered to lobby, or who perform tasks, educational tasks which are so close to lobbying that they are, for all intents and purposes, the same? I would say, it’s a pretty even split between what non-profits are doing and what for-profit trade associations or individual lobbying organizations are doing. I mean, I know this. When it comes to energy, environment, and natural resources, for every one person who performs the task that I perform, there is at least one person for the environmental community who is performing the task that they perform, maybe even more.

So, it’s not like these issues have a want, suffer from a want of people discussing them. There are all kinds of folks represented on both sides. Oh, and by the way, let me just get this out, too. If we take the climate change debate as an example, and we ask ourselves who has spent more money on advertising over the last several years, I would not be surprised in the non-profit community hasn’t exceeded the business community in total expenditure on issue advocacy.

In fact I would be very surprised if that weren’t the case.

But, the American Coalition of Clean Coal Electricity has spent $11 million in the second quarter of 2009.

And, that 11 million figure is a lobbying expenditures. What I’m suggesting is, what you don’t have to register, which is advertising. Yeah. And by the way, I take nothing away from them. They should spend that money if that’s what they want to spend it on. They’re really good at it. The environmental organizations are very good at the the issue ads they put together, and that’s the way they choose to make themselves known.

How do you think the budget for advertising at NRDC compares to some of the companies you represent?

Well, we’d have to, we’d have to make a distinction between issue advertising, so as- advertising that’s on particular issues that’s before the government versus name brand, ID, and selling products, things like that. If we look at issue advertising versus issue advertising, I-I’m suspecting the major environmental organizations probably exceed the major corporations in total, in total expenditures. Individual corporations. Now, obviously, if we add up every corporation in America, it’d be difficult to tell.

But they wouldn’t all, but then again, remember, not every corporation in America shares the same point of view on the issues that are before them. In fact, even within the power sector, major utilities have very different views of how the issues ought to shake out. Some have signed onto agreements with the, with NRDC, with Environmental Defense Fund and other such organizations. There’s a lot more homogeneity, frankly, in the public interest group community about where they’d like to see the direction of public policy going.

So, as a result if you have, even if you have a lesser amount but they’re all pulling in the same direction, I think it provides, let’s just say this, more than an effective counterbalance. I think it’s, I think there’s, there’s the marketplace of ideas is freshly stocked every day.

What’s the name of the climate bill?

ACES, I think that’s their acronym, ACES. American Clean Energy and Security Act.

How would you sum up the debate over this bill?

Well, the most interesting thing about the climate debate right now is the enormous amount of agreement there is. If you compare where the climate debate is now to where it was even five years ago, you would see that there’s been a marked exercise in consensus-building that’s gone on between the non-profit organizations, the American industry of a broad variety of stripes, and and, and governmental actors. And so, for example, there’s no longer a particularly robust debate over the science of climate change.

And, there is a fairly substantial agreement that this is appropriate for legislation, climate change, anthropogenic sources of emission and climate change are appropriate subject matter for legislation, and that the legislation that ought to be adopted should be significant and comprehensive. So, those are pretty broad areas of agreement. If you took all of the pages of the Waxman-Markey bill and drew a big red circle around every page number where there’s substantial agreement, you’d probably find that 85% of the pages would have circles around them, all right?

So, what’s left? Where are the areas of disagreement at this point? First, I think that there is a real desire on the part of industry and a lot of thoughtful observers that the emissions reduction targets that are in the bill, in other words, the cap that’s placed on global greenhouse gas emissions be based not just on scientifically-derived environmental principles, but also be based on a realistic assumption of what technology can actually accomplish.

It would not do anyone any good if we attempted to mandate a standard that could not be met by technology, but yet we began to rack up penalties and exact prices out of the American economy even though it was beyond what technology could achieve. So, it’s important that the technological assumptions that go into the bill be realistic. Let me give you some examples of what some of those are. Some of the economic analysis of the Waxman-Markey legislation is predicated on the fact that we’re going to build 150 nuclear power plants in the near-term.

Well, we might reasonably suggest that, while that is a perfectly acceptable goal, there might be a number of things that would get in the way of that being technologically realistic.

There might be financing issues. The government’s ability to supervise and approve permits might be slow. So, there are all kinds of things that get in the way of that — although, frankly speaking, if we look at the example of France, we know that that’s a pretty good way to reduce your carbon emissions in a substantial amount. Another example, some hypothesize that we’ll develop technologies to capture and sequester — capture and store, if you will, carbon dioxide emissions.

And while that is scientifically doable — and frankly, there are some very interesting technologies that are pretty robust in that area, to say that it’ll be available by 2020 is probably not right, at least in a scalable fashion that could be applied across the board. That’s another technological assumption. We have to be darn sure of how right we are on that before we create a mandate that’s based on that being true. I mean, some folks who support legislation sometimes engage in what I’d call wishful thinking.

Or even magical thinking, where they think if our motive is pure and we just concentrate on it hard enough, the technology will appear. And sometimes, that’s the case when we’re creating market signals and we’ve got technology that’s almost off the shelf, then you really can create a signal to bring that.

But sometimes, if the technology is a little further away than you think, the mandate can exact huge economic consequences and produce very little in the way of environmental return because the technology isn’t there to do it.

So, that’s problematic. Another issue. If you ask me exactly what percentage of reduction these bills will exact in global greenhouse gas emissions, we can look at the bill and sort of determine exactly how much reduction that will be. If you ask me, by contrast, to determine exactly how much will each of those reductions cost, what is the transparency of that cost curve?

How much do you know about it? There is a huge disagreement. There are some studies which say this legislation will cost a tremendous amount. There are some studies which say it will cost markedly less. And even a few who say it will cost nothing, which I find curious. We really wouldn’t be arguing that much if it would cost nothing.

So, there’s a broad range of disagreement over what the cost of the bill will be. In any situation where there’s such a broad range of disagreement, it would make sense to adopt policies coincident with the climate change policy that place a collar around how much the price can be.

That is quintessentially a political judgment, as is the adoption of the entire climate change bill a political judgment. So, if we can be smart enough to develop an exact conceptualization of how much carbon should go down, we ought to be smart enough to figure out exactly how much we’d be willing to pay for it. And that means something called a hard price collar.

No legislation that’s passed out of committee to date has taken that step, and it needs to before we have the kind of openness over cost that’ll be necessary to determine what type of investments society will make to achieve those objectives. You’ve got to know, basically, how much it will cost before you begin down a particular path. So, that’s another issue, the extent to which we have an open and transparent approach to containing cost.

And that’s something that’s missing, as well. And there are other issues where there still remains disagreement. Here’s another one. I think that I’ve heard President Obama say pretty clearly that if we don’t have substantial action taken by the People’s Republic of China and taken by India, that it’s going to be very difficult for even substantial and costly reductions and emissions in the United States to actually reduce global greenhouse gases and to reduce — and to therefore ameliorate temperature increases, which is kind of the point of the exercise.

How do we get there? It’s a difficult question. Some supporters of legislation say, if the US adopts legislation, then other countries will happily follow along in our course because they’re so used to following the example of the United States in international relations. I’m not an expert in international relations. I haven’t noticed this trend, particularly in recent years, that people just adopt what the US adopts willy-nilly. It doesn’t seem to be very realistic.

The more traditional approach in international relations is to hold in advance your commitment to unilateral action until you have received sign-up for multilateral action. That’s more traditional. It’s sort of the old carrot and the stick going hand in hand. That’s an intensely complicated issue. Needs to be resolved before we can proceed. I could keep going, but the last one we’ll tell you about is, what about those industries in the United States that are highly energy-intensive?

If, per chance, we should adopt policies that markedly increase the price of energy in these industries, markedly increase the price, and other nations who also participate in those same industrial marketplaces do not adopt similar carbon standards, will there not be an incentive for that industry to flow from the United States and overseas? This is what even supporters of legislation refer to this matter as leakage.

That a cap isn’t a very good cap if the carbon-emitting industry leaks out from under that cap and goes to foreign sources. The United States is facing one of the worst economic downturns since the Great Depression. Now is not the time to export major job-producing industries overseas. There are solutions for that. They might exist in terms of border adjustments that deal with the price of goods coming in from overseas.

They might deal with rebates to cover the energy cost that’s associated with production in those industries. But both the rebates to cover energy costs and the border adjustments are intensely controversial. Those matters have to be resolved before we proceed. So, there’s a lot of ground that is common ground in legislation. Science, the desire to legislate, the desire to create incentives for new forms of energy-producing technology, the desire to reduce our carbon emissions. All of it is an emerging common ground.

But there’s still areas that are thorny problems that need to be resolved before legislation should hit the President’s desk.

What do you say to the idea that development of renewables is tied directly to where the standards are set?

Well, and I think that’s part of the reason why there’s, as I say, an emerged consensus that legislation makes sense. First of all, there are lots of different ways to provide an incentive or a market signal to bring new technology forward that don’t involve particularly draconian measures. We incentivize things fully through the tax code. We even create regulatory processes that benefit one type of cleaner technology over other technology. So, it’s possible to create incentives without having a process that exports jobs overseas.

So, call me a cockeyed optimist, but I believe we can both preserve American industry and incent new technology to come to market. Proof of that pudding is that even before we’ve adopted any true regulatory standards on carbon, almost all of your major investor-owned utilities, industrial energy providers, refiners — you name it — have made heavy investments in alternative technology and are investigating what is needed.

The last thing I would say is that bringing technology to market is not just a matter of having the proper price signal on carbon. There are a lot of other things that need to happen, too. First, you have to have investment capital. And if you set a regulatory program so strong that it can’t be met or that a lot of money has to be spent on allowances, instead of R and D, you’re not going to bring technology to market.

In fact, you might even slow the rate of technology to market. Let me give you an example. If you have a coal fire power plant, and it is just not possible to meet the standard that is implied by law, you would then be tempted to switch from the coal fire power plant to potentially natural gas firing. Now, natural gas firing has 50 percent the global greenhouse gases that coal does, so that would be a benefit from an environmental perspective. But, to call it technological innovation would be a bit of a stretch.

So, to replace a 1960′s era fossil fuel plant with another 1960′s era fossil fuel technology is not an advancement in technological innovation. It is not an expansion of the green economy. It cuts CO2 by 50 percent, but it did not do what I think you said some of the other folks you’ve interviewed really want to happen, which is to create occasion for new generations of technology to come to market.

What is the answer? The answer is a careful balance of proposals that may include a cap on global greenhouse gases, or it may include a cap and a variety of sectoral regulatory approaches where we treat oranges like oranges and apples like apples. And so, we create a more finely tuned process. There are particular technologies that we are quite keen on, we might want to incentivize them.

Where are subsidies and incentives for new technologies that are going to come from when the people that are weighing this policy are being outspent, like wind energy, by such a huge amount?

Right. Well, first, I challenge the notion that there are a substantial amount of so-called fossil fuel subsidies. And let me explain why. The environmental community tends to label any program that is funded by the government with which they disagree as a subsidy. But it doesn’t necessarily make it into a subsidy. For example, if the federal government is spending money on research and development to create cleaner fuels out of coal, which is undeniably a domestic resource in the United States.

We have a 500-year supply of it. And they’re trying to make clean gases out of it or maybe even motor fuels out of it that burn cleaner than the conventional fuels that they replace. It’s hard for me to say that that’s a subsidy to the existing structure of the way fossil fuel is utilized in the United States. Quite the opposite.

It is an incentive to change the existing structure of the fossil fuel industry to make it into a different industry. So, I don’t really regard that as a subsidy. And I always try and get folks that bring up the notion of fossil fuel subsidies to be very specific about the types of programs that are called subsidies.

Second point, if I hear President Obama speak about the clean energy legislation that’s pending, he will stress the following items. He will stress the need to bring clean technology to market in order to create new economic opportunities. And he’ll often talk about energy security and energy independence. It seems to me that if we come up with cleaner ways to use existing fossil fuels, which everyone would concede are very dense in the amount of energy that they contain, we will go a lot further along the road a lot sooner toward energy independence and energy security if we bring those to market.

In terms of the incentives that are provided to renewables like solar and wind, to a certain extent, you have to have an industrial base to effectively receive the subsidy that is offered. And what I would suggest is, given that solar and wind together occupy a fraction of one percent of US electric generating, as opposed to coal, which occupies about 55 percent of US electric generating, it should not surprise anybody that, to the extent that there’s money available for innovation, it’s not going to be as large for solar and wind as it would be for more conventional sources of fossil fuel.

The energy pie, as it exists in the country today, overwhelmingly is dominated by fossil fuels. And if we were to radically change that distribution overnight, for example, or in a relatively short period of time — if we were to radically change the support network that exists for our energy in the current ratio of fossil fuel resources to renewables, what we would find is the price of energy would become substantially more expensive, and that would not inure to the benefit of consumers or schools or hospitals or any of the other very energy-dependent enterprises that make up society.

So, there’s a lot hanging in the balance to just change it. Last item. The environmental community does not agree on the definition of most favored renewable. Some environmental organizations strongly support wind power as I do. But other environmental organizations at the local level oppose the sighting of wind power plants, whether it’s off the coast of Nantucket or whether it’s on the Appalachian ridge or wherever it might be.

So, there’s substantial opposition there. Take the case of hydroelectric power. Hydroelectric power represents about 10 percent of the US energy mix. It is far and away of the definition of renewable power the market leader. And yet, many, many, many folks in the environmental community strongly oppose subsidies for hydroelectric power, or even the use of it. So, there’s not substantial agreement in the public interest community about what the most correct form of energy is. And as a result, it shouldn’t be totally surprising that there’s a little bit of shall we say, failure to concentrate on a specific set of incentives.

Interesting point, representing as I do sort of energy companies that have a broad variety of different forms of energy in their portfolio, I probably work as hard to advance the cause of actual incentives to solar, to wind, to geothermal, to hydro, to new, next-generation nuclear than a lot of folks in the environmental community do. Because diversity of the fuel mix is something that’s very important to my clients.

Diversity of fuel mix isn’t quite so important to those in the environmental community, who would rather pick and choose a few winners, place society’s bet there, and if it doesn’t come in, we’ll be out of luck.

In saying the US can’t step forward alone, people will say with China in mind that the US is starting to lag behind in relative renewables technologies such as solar.

Right. And in fact, if you want a good quote on that, I saw what’s his name, from John [Pedesta] from the Center for American Progress offered some testimony in front of Boxer’s committee on just that subject. I believe his phrase was, the Chinese are eating our lunch when it comes to solar technology. Let’s deconstruct that for a minute and see what’s really going on there. The vast majority of solar technology at this point is still in the form of solar panels, right?

Which you see somewhat ubiquitous in certain areas of the country that are basically put on people’s roofs. These are plastic boxes that are assembled. They may have some mineral content in the inside of the plastic box in order to perfect the photovoltaic cell. Of course they’re manufactured in China. They are a relatively unsophisticated plastic box. The notion that the United States, simply because it mandates the use of renewable energy, will begin to manufacture solar panels, I think is completely illusory.

And a relatively uninteresting fact that they’re made in China. I think they’re pulling the wool over your eyes because, let me give you a much more sophisticated plastic box. It’s called a flat-screen TV. They’re very popular in the United States without a government mandate. And yet, they’re primarily made in Asia, right? Because we have exported much of our manufacturing sector. And so, my anticipation is that many, many wind turbines, many, many, solar panels are going to continue to be made overseas, irrespective of whether we have a climate policy in place or don’t have a climate policy in place.

So, I’m always somewhat kind of taken aback when I hear folks say, oh, my gosh, look, the Chinese have made a commitment to global warming policy because they’re manufacturing plastic boxes in their country. Well, I assure you, they’re manufacturing plastic boxes for a broad variety of applications, including consumer electronics and even automobiles. So, there’s all kinds of reasons for which the Chinese have a manufacturing advantage in that level of technology.

Now, I would ask the same question of the environmental community about why they weren’t quite so upset that nuclear manufacturing in this country has lagged behind some of our European competitors. We have top-flight nuclear manufacturing capability in the United States. We absolutely do. And it is a high-end, capital-intensive industry.

Nuclear waste is probably their quick answer.

Well, that may be. Well, that might be their answer. That might be their answer. But of course, the French are well ahead of the United States and there are newer technologies, which produce less waste. And there are policy choices we’ve made in the United States to minimize our ability to take care of nuclear waste, at the same time that we’ve demanded that energy production be less carbon-intensive. I mean, those sort of pull in opposite directions. Yeah.

When asked if you have access lobbyists in your shop, you said well, actually, I think there are.

Well, let me clarify. There’s access lobbying, which may be lobbying based on a pre-existing relationship that is had between somebody who is a registered lobbyist and somebody who still remains in the government. Or may be dependent upon the raising of political action committee funds. And then there is substance or information-based lobbying, which is based on some form of mastery, at least as good as you can get with a law degree, of the actual substance of the public policy issue.

What I would suggest is that the most successful lobbyists in Washington probably have a little bit of both, even within a single person. So for example, I consider myself to be more on the end of an information-based or substance-based lobbyist. But that doesn’t mean I don’t ever attend fundraisers or raise money for members of Congress that I think share the point of view of myself or my clients. So, I do have a foot in both camps.

Although, I think it’s a question of what predominates. And the service that we tend to offer is strategic thinking on the actual public policy issue. We don’t get to be as good of experts as our clients, because you never get to be as big of an expert as when you’re working with it every day and in three dimension. But we get to be pretty darn good at explaining technologies, processes, economic realities, the robustness of what new investment or technology can generate.

And these are things that we get to be expert in. But that doesn’t mean that we totally are divorced from the politics of it. We understand that process and yes, indeed, we raise money.

How do you go about raising your money?

Well, raising money internal to a law firm or a lobby shop might involve the establishment of something called a political action committee or a PAC. Many institutions have PACs, whether they be non-profits, for-profits, professional associations or partnerships. All may have PACs. PACs are made up of individual contributions that are given from folks for whom it is authorized to solicit contributions. And so, those may be employees. They may be managers of a certain level or above.

That’s who will contribute money. Presumably, they’re all of like mind and like interest, and therefore, you’re able to consolidate their contributions into these political action committees. That’s only part of answer, though. The other part of the answer is, to raise money, one political action committee or one entity may look to others that it knows have a similar position and ask them to contribute money at a particular event or for a particular cause or something like that.

And then, together, it would be the combined consolidation of everything that is meaningful in the running of a modern campaign. Now, why are modern campaigns so expensive? They’re expensive because of the cost of media. It’s the number one expense. And maybe somebody ought to do something about that. I personally would support fairly aggressive governmental funding of the cost of political campaigns to reduce the price of access for challengers and incumbents alike to get access to the voters.

If you look at all of the money spent on all of the races, particular — I know the federal race is a lot better — but you take all the money that’s spent and raised and it seems like such a vast amount. It just pales in comparison to the amount of money spent advertising the most mundane of consumer products. And yet, who we elect would presumably seem to be of maybe greater [signal] importance than the antacid we choose.

So, I think there’s a good case for having the government come in and do it. And if the government would do that, it would diminish the role of money in politics and that would be fine by me. Those of us who make our stock and trade in being information or substance-based lobbyists would, I think, do better in a world where we reduce.

If I never had to raise any more political contributions, and instead could come to work and tell the story of my clients, I’d be a much happier man.

Have you talked to the Fair Election Now Act crowd?

I haven’t. I’d be happy to talk to anybody on that subject. I really would be. I mean, obviously you know I know some of the folks at Common Cause. And I don’t know what their position is on [crosstalk].

Have you bundled for the fossil fuels?

I am typically a guy that people call and say, hey, can you contribute to this fundraiser that we’re sponsoring? We occasionally will sponsor our own fundraisers. And let’s be clear what I’m talking about. I’m talking about an event, my preference is a breakfast because then it doesn’t interfere with too much of your day and maybe you can have breakfast, which is the most important meal of the day. So, we have breakfast. And so, you agree to sponsor such an event.

And then you may call two, three, four other folks that you think share the common point of view and say, hey, I’m putting on a breakfast at this time. But those contributions are made by the other individuals and entities that attend that breakfast, they’re made independently. Bundling is sort of a term of art, it’s a different story. And I don’t do that.

And the point is this. Have I been in a position where I needed to solicit other individuals or entities for contributions to fundraising for a particular candidate? Yes. Absolutely. More likely than not, I’m the type of person that someone calls and says, hey, can you contribute? I’m usually the solicited, not the solicitor.

Can you speak to who’s calling you?

Just other lobbyists that might be active.

How about Capitol Hill?

The most typical person to get communication from is probably a professional fundraiser who may work for the campaign of a senator, a congressman, or even a candidate. A challenger.

Political fundraisers are a profession that you will find in great number in Washington. And some of them, Democrats and Republicans alike have political fundraisers. And some of the political fundraisers do only fundraising for candidates. Others may also raise money for causes. Even environmental organizations will use the services of some of the same fundraisers that work for candidates.

Can you give me a clean byte on the calls coming from the fundraisers that are employed by the campaign of members of Congress?

To work in Washington is to be solicited for contributions. Sometimes, those contributions come from fellow lobbyists, similar interests. Most of the time they come from professional fundraisers that are employed directly by congressional campaigns.

When you get a call to do this particular aspect of your lobbying work, how does that work? Who’s calling?

Sure. More likely than not, you might receive a phone call from somebody in their 20′s to early 30′s who works for a professional fundraising firm. And they’ll say, I’m calling on behalf of Congressman So-And-So’s campaign. We’d like your help with an event that’s coming up on the third. And at that event, we’re going to be putting on a breakfast. And we hope you can attend. And it’s often as simple as that. Sometimes, it may come in a fax or an e-mail.

And that’s the way the contribution is solicited.

Committee members in both the Senate and House are accepting large campaign contributions from the electric industry lobby. Why is it that members on these committees get such huge dollars?

Well, it shouldn’t really come as any surprise that an energy company is going to focus more of its political attentions on members that are on committees that deal with energy issues. And so, as a result, just as you’d expect to find major health care companies are probably giving more money to the finance committee and the health committee in the US Senate, you would expect to find energy companies giving money to members of the environment committee or the energy committee.

And so, I think that probably plays out in the data that you examined on the subject. Now, that said, I’m going to give you some other stuff which you can use or not, which I think it’s kind of fun. In the House of Representatives, you talked about the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and it sounds like their jurisdiction would be relatively narrow. What you need to realize is that something like three quarters of all legislation introduced in the House of Representatives travels at some point through the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Under the many, many decades of leadership of John Dingle from Michigan when he was chair — he’s not chairman now, but when he was chair — he grew the jurisdiction of that committee to, and defended that committee against jurisdictional slights like no other member in probably the history of the US Congress has done. So, for that particular committee, it is not at all difficult to understand why representatives of regulated industries, whether that be utilities or whether that be health or science or whatever it might be, would want to understand, know the mechanics of and become conversant with the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

So, their political strategy would follow accordingly. The old joke used to be that Mr. Dingle was asked about how broad the jurisdiction of his committee was, and this is apocryphal, but he supposedly said, it’s the energy and commerce committee. If it moves, it’s energy. If it doesn’t, it’s commerce. And so, it was a committee with very broad jurisdiction.

The money the energy industries have spent in campaign contributions have jumped quite a bit in reaction to the climate bill, according to Open Secrets.

Okay, first of all, companies are more politically active with respect to climate change legislation than they were in past years. One of the reasons is that with democrats who control both the House and the Senate and with a like-minded administration, the chances that such legislation will be more seriously considered and might advance toward final passage are undeniably greater now than they were in past years.

Militating against that is the fact that the economy is in a bad way. And so, the chances of passing a 2,000 page bill or an 1,000 page bill when the economy is in bad shape probably diminish, but the overall political significance of the movement is no doubt greater. What I think you have to keep in mind, though, is that, in a very real sense, climate change legislation is a bet-the-economy proposition. It will be a substantial change in the way goods are manufactured and services are provided in the United States.

So, that companies that are in that business would become more politically active as the chances for such a bet-the-economy proposition improve is not particularly surprising.

Given the huge amount of money that’s being spent, is Congress listening? Are they getting access?

Well, members of Congress that serve on the Senate Environment Committee or the Senate Energy Committee or the House Energy and Commerce Committee knew when they took the seats on those committees that they would have a great deal of responsibility for the development of climate change policy and energy policy generally. They knew that going in. They knew that they would want to hear from the regulated community, like the power companies, the technology providers, the public interest community and consumer interests and the American public at large.

They knew they would hear from all of those. But in particular, they knew that there would be valuable information that would be within the grasp of the power sector. So, I don’t believe that money spent in political action is the key ingredient that makes sure that that information gets into the hands of those committees. I think that, from the get-go, there was an understanding that there’s information that’s in the possession of the public interest community, information in the possession of private interests, and even good natured disagreements between companies in the same industrial sector.

And that if you served on those committees at a time when climate change legislation was serious business, you were going to have to pay attention to what all of those interests had in mind, or you would not have a complete picture of what was going on in this country.

Why did these interests spend 10 million bucks on these two committees? Are they just throwing their money away?

Well, part of it, I think, is a reflection of the fact that those companies are spending more time with those committees, and that the giving of political funds just creates additional opportunities to see and be seen. And to hear what members have on their mind. I don’t think anybody gives political contributions because they think that they can come up with the ultimate conclusion.

I mean, look, you won’t get me to deny that there’s an access quotient to why people give money. It creates opportunity for people to be heard. Now, public interest groups have their own ways of creating opportunities for access. They might create events. They might frankly give their own money. The League of Conservation Voters, for example, will give a rating of how a member votes. And so, it is up to the member to be very conscious of what the LCV might say.

So, there are all kinds of ways to create opportunities to communicate message. And I think, in fact, there are very few interest groups in Washington as powerful or as effective as the environmental community at communicating their message. They do a very good job of it. They do it partially through political contributions, too. But, they create other opportunities in other ways. Events management is probably one of the best things they do.

You were saying that the debate’s kind of over about the science of global warming or global climate change. Do you think that the planet is warming? Some people, including with members of NOAA, are basically saying there is enough CO2 out there that even if all of these standards are out, it’s kind of too late, and to prevent way more serious climate disruption, these standards have to happen.

Well, first, stipulating that I am not a climate scientist. But I’ll pledge you my entire art history and history of the South degrees that I have, and I’ll even raise you my law degree, I have a particular personal view on this. Is the earth’s temperature changing, indeed, is it warming? I think that the data shows that it is. Are [anthropogenic] or man-made sources of emissions contributing to that effect?

I think the data is that they are. Do we know enough to undertake public policy that addresses that phenomenon? Yes, we do. Do we know how much man-made emissions contribute, and therefore exactly how to calibrate that legislation so as to reduce global warming? There, the consensus is far weaker. And anybody who points to the work of the inter-governmental panel on climate change at the United Nations and says there’s a consensus on every aspect of global warming is misrepresenting the work of the IPCC.

The broad parameters that I’ve just discussed is where the consensus lies. So, we are moving forward with public policy that we hope will address the environmental consequences of the way we generate energy and will also stimulate our energy independence and the diversity of our fuel mix. These are all things that would be smart to do, whether we were 100 percent sure or only 80 percent sure about global warming.

So, long answer short, I do believe that there are changes afoot in the climate, and I do believe that man-made emissions contribute to it. The consensus is weaker over how to exactly calibrate public policy. And that’s what makes the debate over the climate change bill so darn difficult. Because no one can guarantee that a reduction of X amount in global greenhouse gas emissions will result in a reduction X amount in warming.

So, we base it on general principles over which there is agreement. And then we drill down hard on questions of fuel diversity, investment, what technology can do, economic impact and containing cost.

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