Something is wrong.
Lobbyists who work for conservation and environmental groups are also working for the fossil fuel industry.
New York City
The Council on the Environment and the Hall of Science share the lobbying firm Bolton-St. Johns with National Fuel Gas, which led the 2024 takedown of the NY HEAT Act. This bill would have helped NY transition away from using climate-killing gas.
Salem, Oregon
The Wild Salmon center shares the firm NW Public Affairs with NW Natural, Oregon’s largest gas utility, biggest GHG emitter, and loudest voice for climate denialism.
Baton Rouge, LA
The Environmental Defense Fund shares the Louisiana firm Southern Strategy Group with ExxonMobil and eight other fossil fuel companies, some of whom operate projects that are exposing people to carcinogens in the state’s Cancer Alley.
Springfield, IL
The firm Christopher Dunn & Associates lobbies simultaneously for Calpine, the largest operator of gas-fired power plants in the U.S., and for the Illinois Environmental Council, which advocates for limiting the use of gas in new buildings.
Sacramento, CA
In 2023, climate philanthropy New Venture Fund used the firm Arc Strategies to support a bill to help schools deal with extreme heat days–even as the firm lobbied against almost every other major climate bill in CA that year on behalf of oil driller Berry.
Something is wrong.
Local governments paying to deal with the climate crisis employ the very oil, gas, and coal lobbyists who are making the crisis worse.
Denver, CO
A study by F Minus and Brown University’s Climate and Development lab exposes a culture of CO lobbying firms supporting climate legislation on behalf of local governments at the same time they are opposing the legislation for their fossil fuel clients.
Salt Lake City, UT
The evaporation of the Great Salt Lake threatens to blanket nearby cities and towns with arsenic and other toxins, yet the government of Salt Lake City shares the firm Foxley & Pignanelli with four fossil fuel companies whose projects are accelerating global warming.
California
City and county governments in California face soaring costs for climate mitigation, yet many employ fossil fuel lobbyists, including the cities of Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, and Sacramento, and the counties of Alameda and San Mateo. Residents of these places overwhelmingly support a shift to renewable energy—so why are their governments hiring oil and gas lobbyists?
Florida
The climate crisis will cost Florida an estimated $76 billion by 2040, with much of the burden falling on local governments. Lobbyist registration data for 2023 reveals more than 200 local governments in Florida relying on fossil fuel lobbyists, including Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Tampa Bay, and Jacksonville.
Seattle, WA
King County uses the firm Insight Strategic Partners to secure funding for its parks, even as this firm lobbies on behalf of Chevron, one of the world’s biggest GHG emitters.
Something is wrong.
Colleges and universities—whose students are pushing for divestment from fossil fuels—continue to employ lobbyists who also work for ExxonMobil, the Koch Companies, and other funders of climate denialism.
Baltimore, MD
In Maryland, an F Minus audit of disclosures by a firm that represents both Johns Hopkins University and the American Petroleum Institute found the firm making incomplete and inaccurate disclosures to the Maryland Ethics Commission that concealed two instances of the firm opposing a climate bill that JHU supported.
New Hampshire
What do you get when you cross the Ivy League with Canadian tar sands oil? The answer, in New Hampshire, is the lobbying firm RYP Granite Strategies, which works for both Dartmouth College and Enbridge.
Palo Alto, CA
In 2024, Stanford University research about the health risks from gas stoves helped convince the California State Assembly to pass a bill requiring health warning labels on gas stoves. But lobbying against the bill on behalf of Southern California Gas was Stanford’s own lobbying firm, Cruz Strategies, as part of an effort that convinced Gov. Gavin Newsom to veto it.
Columbia, MO
In Missouri, agriculture is under threat from climate change, and flooding has caused more than $49 billion in economic damage since 1980. But the University of Missouri shares a lobbying firm with Koch Industries, which has funneled more than $145 million to groups that attack climate change science and policy interventions.
Berkeley, CA
In 2023, UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco testified in support of SB 252, a bill to divest the $750 billion California state pension fund from fossil fuels. Opposing them and helping to defeat the bill was oil driller Berry through its lobbying firm Arc Strategies, which also represents the University of California’s Office of the President.
Urbana, IL
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s climate action plan singles out the destructive impacts of coal, but the university shares a lobbying firm with Foresight Energy, the largest privately-owned coal company in the U.S., and the Prairie State Generating Company, owner of the second-largest coal mine in Illinois.
Is your lobbyist failing on climate?
Research by F Minus reveals more than 1,500 state-level lobbyists who are playing both sides of the climate crisis by working for the fossil fuel industry at the same time they are working for people, communities, schools, businesses, nonprofit organizations and others being harmed by the crisis.
F Minus is disrupting this dynamic. Use this database to discover the extent to which fossil fuel lobbyists are also representing victims of the climate crisis in your state.
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