Greenpeace Activist Confronts Coal Lobbyist at Energy Event

- by Connor Gibson of Greenpeace

At a well-attended energy forum hosted by Politico, I shed some light on the role of coal lobbyist Jeffrey Holmstead in blocking pollution reductions for his coal utility and mining clients after he said we can’t “regulate our way to clean energy.” Here’s the video:

(Click for transcript of interruption)

UPDATE 11/16: Holmstead was later confronted on camera by Gabe Elsner of the Checks and Balances Project after the disruption at the Politico forum. Watch Holmstead re-write the history of his attacks on mercury pollution laws:

As I waited inside for Mr. Holmstead to step on stage, members of Greenpeace’s Climate Crime Unit stood outside handing out WANTED posters of both Holmstead and chief oil lobbyist Jack Gerard of the American Petroleum Institute, who was also present.

Jeff Holmstead, who is often quoted in newspapers as a former Air and Radiation Administrator for the George W. Bush Environmental Protection Agency or a “partner” (read: lobbyist) at Bracewell & Giuliani’s corporate law firm here in DC, is rarely credited as an influence peddler for some of the most notorious polluters in the country.

Polluters like Duke Energy, Southern Company, and Arch coal are paying Holmstead’s bills. These laggard coal-reliant companies are responsible for ecologically destructive coal mining and the carbon dioxide emissions that drive global climate change, not to mention a litany of dangerous pollutants.

Jeff Holmstead’s job as their lobbyist is to delay any clean air rules, clean water rules or climate change laws that threaten the billions in profit these companies make by getting to pollute for free. Since he started officially working for them, his firm has been paid over $13.7 million dollars for the dirty work of Holmstead and his partners at Bracewell & Giuliani. He is the perfect example of the political revolving door: he was a coal lobbyist who was placed at the head of our government’s clean air department before jumping back on the payroll of coal companies to dismantle the rules he was supposed to uphold.

Here are some of Holmstead’s greatest polluter hits:

• Eight years of delay for mercury pollution controls at US power plants. As part of the George W. Bush EPA, Holmstead swapped out a technology-based solution to mercury emissions from coal plants with a rule that was later declared illegal by a US District Court. This bait-and-switch happened in December, 2003; it took the US EPA until Dec. 2011 to put the effective mercury rule back in place. EPA currently estimates that up to 11,000 people’s lives could be saved each year by controlling mercury pollution–see EPA Factsheet.
  
  
• Led the Bush administration’s “Clear Skies Initiative,” a deceptively-titled name for a series of proposed air pollution laws that actually allowed for more coal pollution.
• Attacks on greenhouse gas regulations through the Clean Air Act: Holmstead was the infamous co-author behind the scenes of Senator Lisa Murkowski’s “Dirty Air Act” in 2010.
• Ongoing attacks on pollution controls through ERCC front group: the “Electric Reliability Coordinating Council” is a coal industry front group run out of Holmstead’s office. They have worked to block any regulation of poisonous coal ash, greenhouse gas emissions from coal and the mercury pollution controls that Holmstead already delayed for eight years.
• Work for a Koch front group that denied the existence of acid rain: “Citizens for the Environment” was a spinoff of the Koch-founded Citizens for a Sound Economy, which eventually became David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity. Citizens for the Environment had no actual citizen membership, according to the New Yorker.

FOR MORE: See Jeff Holmstead’s PolluterWatch profile.

TRANSCRIPT OF INTERRUPTION:

“Mr. Holmstead, Southern Company and Duke Energy pay you to block those regulations. They pay you to block climate legislation. They don’t want clean energy. You need to be reported as the coal lobbyist that you are. When you were in the George W. Bush EPA you blocked mercury controls on power plants for eight years. Eight years—do you know how many thousands of people may have died as a result of that decision, Mr. Holmstead? You need to be held accountable for that. You need to be held accountable as a lobbyist for coal interests.”
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This article was first published by Greenpeace here.