Newsweek And Oil Lobby Team Up To Host Climate Change Event For Lawmakers

[spiritual_gunfighter]

Newsweek And Oil Lobby Team Up To Host Climate Change Event For Lawmakers
Zachary Roth | November 4, 2009, 11:29AM





Newsweek magazine is teaming up with an oil-industry lobbying group to host an event on climate-change and energy issues involving lawmakers, just as the Senate gets set to take up legislation on the subject.

The panel discussion, entitled "Climate and Energy Policy: Moving?", will feature Jack Gerard, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, and, as moderator, Newsweek columnist Howard Fineman, according to an email invitation sent by a Newsweek business staffer and obtained by TPMmuckraker.

"Newsweek is pleased to be co-hosting this panel discussion with API," says the email, which adds that "notable members of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate" have been invited. The event is scheduled to be held December 1 in a Senate meeting room.

It's not clear whether the discussion is on or off the record. A representative from Newsweek did not immediately respond to a request for comment from TPMmuckraker.

API has been a key opponent of serious efforts to address climate change, spending over $3 million lobbying on the Waxman-Markey climate change bill this year. This summer, Gerard sent a memo to API member groups that laid out a plan to create astroturf rallies at which industry employees posing as ordinary citizens urged Congress to oppose global warming legislation. Newsweek itself covered that news, as an example of "how astroturfing is taking over local activism."

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/newsweek_and_oil_lobby_team_up_to_host_climate_cha.php?ref=fpa

[NICO9000]

1. This week's issue has a cover story on Al Gore

But in order to appear "fair and balanced" they also include an anti-cap & trade piece by Karl Rove. I don't know enough about cap & trade to comment on it, but the fact that they give a forum to Rove is despicable. Of course, they've run George Will for decades and Mark Sanford on Ayn Rand a couple weeks ago. I've had a sub to it and Time for years (got very cheap rates for 'em both), and The Nation for two decades, but after their crap redesign, I won't miss it when the sub runs out in 2011.

[Blue_Tires]

2. the WaPo had a full-page anti-clean energy ad today, too...