Kate Sheppard

Reporter

Kate Sheppard is a staff reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. She was previously the political reporter for Grist and a writing fellow at The American Prospect. She can be reached by email at ksheppard (at) motherjones (dot) com.

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Her work has also been featured in the New York Times' Room for Debate blog, the Guardian's Comment Is Free, Foreign Policy, High Country News, The Center for Public Integrity, the Washington Independent, Washington Spectator, Who Runs Gov, In These Times, and Bitch. She was raised on a vegetable farm in southern New Jersey (yes, they do exist), but has adapted well to life in the nation's capital. She misses trees and having a congressional representative with voting power, but thinks DC is pretty great anyway.

Kerry to Enviros: Be More Like Tea Partiers

—By Kate Sheppard

| Thu Jan. 28, 2010 12:27 PM PST

Should climate campaigners take a page from the Tea Party playbook? That was the suggestion of Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) yesterday, who is heading up efforts to pass an energy and climate bill in the Senate.

"If Tea Party folks go out there and get angry because they think their taxes are too high, for God's sake, a lot of citizens ought to get angry that they're being killed, and our planet is being injured by what is happening on a daily basis with the way we provide our power and our fuel and the old practices we have," said Kerry in a speech on Wednesday at a clean energy forum. "That's something worth getting angry about, and I think it's time for people to do that."

"I want you to go out there and to start knocking on doors, and talking to people and telling people, 'This has to happen,'" Kerry told the gathered representatives from labor, environmental, and agricultural groups.

Asked by a reporter afterward whether he thinks the Tea Partiers have something to teach climate activists, Kerry backtracked a bit. What he and other advocates in the Senate need to do, he said, is draw from the lessons learned in the fights to pass the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. "We have done this before. We just have to get back to basics and make it happen again."

But Kerry was clearly frustrated at the lack of visible citizen advocacy for his efforts to pass climate and energy legislation. In theory, public support for tackling climate change is strong. As polls released last week by both the Democratic polling firm Benenson Strategy Group and Republican pollster Frank Luntz have affirmed, Americans overwhelmingly support both a cap on carbon dioxide pollution and a shift to renewable energy sources.

But, as a Pew Research Center poll released earlier this week found, Americans rank global warming dead last out of a list of 21 priorities for the Obama administration. While support for the concept of addressing climate change is high, there isn't much enthusiasm for actually doing anything in practice. Maybe there is a thing or two clean energy advocates could learn from the Tea Partiers.

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Will Sen. Dorgan Disclose His Potential New Employers?

—By Kate Sheppard

| Wed Jan. 27, 2010 1:58 PM PST

When Byron Dorgan announced earlier this month that he is retiring from the Senate to pursue, among other things, work on energy policy in the private sector, I wondered whether the North Dakota Democrat would land a job in the coal industry. Now others are asking questions about Dorgan's post-Senate plans.

PolluterWatch, a project of Greenpeace, sent a letter to Dorgan's office on Wednesday asking for information on whether the senator has been actively seeking work in a particular sector. Dorgan will likely have to vote on some sort of climate and/or energy legislation before he retires, so it's fair to inquire about what, if any, future employers he has been courting.

PolluterWatch also requested a list of energy lobbyists and their respective clients that Dorgan has had contact with about potential employment, as well as details of phone calls, emails, or meetings. And they ask him to pledge to "wait until after an energy bill is passed this year to engage in any further discussions about future employment with interests that lobby you."

"I am sure that you would not allow future career prospects to influence your legislative judgment," the group wrote."However, by releasing your records and pledging to refrain from any employment discussions, you can avoid creating any perception to the contrary."

Senate offices aren't required by law to disclose this sort of information, so it's unlikely that PolluterWatch will get a response any time soon. "We're not accusing him of any malfeasance at this point," PolluterWatch director Kert Davies told Mother Jones. "We're just asking the question and asking for transparency."

Coal Finally Gets a Voice in Congress

—By Kate Sheppard

| Tue Jan. 26, 2010 1:09 PM PST

The coal industry has never seemed to have much difficulty pushing its views on Capitol Hill. In 2008 alone, the industry spent more than $47 million on lobbying and ad campaigns aimed at winning lawmakers' loyalty—and thanks to its efforts, received $60 billion in the House cap-and-trade bill to develop coal capture-and-storage technology. Nevertheless, some legislators apparently feel that the coal lobby has been unfairly marginalized, and so they've formed a bipartisan coal caucus to stand up for "America's most abundant and affordable energy resource."

The new grouping includes Reps. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Jason Altmire (D-Pa.), Tim Holden (D-Pa.), Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.), John Salazar (D-Col.) and John Shimkus (R-Ill.). All of them voted against the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill. Their opposition came even as Rick Boucher (D-Va.), another reliable coal booster, hailed it as a boon for the industry. The new coal caucus seems to be concerned with being perceived as champions of coal above anything else.

But although the new caucus says it will speak with a "unified voice" on behallf of coal, its members' positions can be contradictory. In a statement Holden touted his support for government investment in carbon storage technology. Yet Shimkus believes that the planet is "carbon-starved" and worries that regulations on emissions means "taking away plant food from the atmosphere." If that's the case, why would the industry need generous funding to capture and store carbon dioxide?

The six are also seeking additional legislators for their caucus, and may manage to pick up a few extra members—perhaps Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) who jumped out of a plane to demonstrate his support for coal last year, or maybe one of the Republicans who let the industry write their talking points in the House.

Are the Swift Boaters Mounting a Stealth Climate Attack?

—By Kate Sheppard

| Tue Jan. 26, 2010 9:10 AM PST

Creative Response Concepts, the public relations firm behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth smear campaign, appears to be mounting an under-the-radar attack on climate action via Twitter. They just don't want me to know what they're up to.

Staffers over at CRC have been tweeting furiously on global warming issues for the past few months—attacking not only climate legislation but climate science.

A few examples, from CRC senior vice president Michael Russell:

UN Scientist admits issuing phony climate data to put pressure on world leaders http://bit.ly/7s6ezP #tcot

SF Chronicle on Copenhagen climate summit - many arrived in carbon burning private jets and limos http://bit.ly/4ZNvok #tcot cap and trade

Economist, author,Thomas Sowell writes on the "Science Mantra" of global warming and its hysteria. http://bit.ly/90D5kz #tcot cap and trade

CRC president Greg Mueller and account associate Marianne Brennan have also been hyping up stories about the "ClimateGate" hacked emails and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's inaccurate glacier data.

So who is CRC working for? It's not clear if their Twitter efforts are independent or on behalf of a particular client, though their list includes many players seeking to undermine climate science. The firm's clients have included the National Republican Congressional Committee, National Taxpayers Union, Republican National Committee, Free Enterprise Foundation, American International Automobile Dealers Assoc., Corn Refiners Association, and the creationists at the Discovery Institute. CRC also has close ties with the conservative media machine, using avenues like the Drudge Report and Cybercast News Service to push the Swift Boat story. I called CRC headquarters to find out more about their climate campaign, but Russell didn't return calls—and then blocked me from following him on Twitter. Of course, like anyone else I can still access the CRC staffers' Twitter page. Is there something that CRC wants to hide?

The Chamber's 2009 Lobbying Tab

—By Kate Sheppard

| Mon Jan. 25, 2010 12:04 PM PST

National Journal compiled the stunning graph below from the lobbying expenditures for the fourth quarter of 2009, which were submitted last week. The groups that traditionally devote the most money to lobbying on health care spent roughly the same as they did in 2008. But there was one major exception: the US Chamber of Commerce.

The Chamber dropped a total of $123.3 million on lobbying in 2009, compared to $62.3 million in 2008. Of course, it's important to note that the Chamber wasn't just lobbying on health care. They've been actively campaigning against a number of key issues on the Democratic agenda this year, including climate change legislation, financial reform, and the Employee Free Choice Act. But still, the image is impressive: