Lobbying
What can we do?
Whether you have watched your islands disappearing, are coughing to death in Delhi or are simply aware that fossil fuels have damaged our world, you probably wonder how this situation came about.
Let’s go back. The internal combustion engine and crude oil arrived about the same time. The motoring pioneers used a variety of natural fuels such as bioethanol (Henry Ford) and peanut oil (Rudolph Diesel). Fossil fuel was being refined to produce several products and a link was developed to the new engines. There was a lucrative prospect to supply all the fuel these new machines required.
The problem the oil companies faced
The oil companies faced a problem when capitalising on their opportunity. They had to dispose of the existing Rankine Cycle engines1 and the biofuels in use. That technology had been around for a century2 and is the basis for the Herbl™ engine and Herbl fuel™ we are going to use in the future.
You have not previously heard of this simple solution to the problem of harmful emissions from transport. You are not alone; a century of determined lobbying has closed the minds of generations of thinkers.
What the oil companies did
Using money and sophisticated arguments, the oil companies lobbied politicians and decision makers to make judgments in their favour. They advertised relentlessly and used gullible, greedy writers and scientists to condemn their opponents’ engines and fuel; there is the well-founded suggestion that Vanderbilt encouraged Prohibition.
Their latest successful strategy is the food to fuel fallacy, with it they have deceived governments and legislators throughout the world.
Their activities have provided us with transport that damaged the atmosphere and caused death and hardship worldwide. All this required the deliberate work of lobbyists and marketeers. Lobbyists, with the US Chamber of Commerce representing oil companies amongst others, are found at the seats of government.
Where are these lobbyists?
The Legal Dictionary says, ‘In the early 2000s lobbyists practice their trade not only in the halls of the U.S. Capitol and the corridors of state legislatures, but also on playgrounds, in boardrooms, in manufacturing plants, at cocktail parties, and in retirement homes’.
The level of influence a lobbyist has over the legislative process is often proportional to the resources—time and money—the lobbyist can spend to achieve its legislative goal. Some people think lobbyists in general have too much power. During his 1912 campaign for president, Woodrow Wilson remarked, “The government of the United States is a foster child of the special interests. It is not allowed to have a will of its own.”3
What has lobbying cost us?
In the US, there are 535 members of Congress and 11,140 registered lobbyists. Analyst James A. Thurber estimates that the actual number of working lobbyists was close to 100,000 and that the industry brings in $9 billion annually.
In the U.K., it is estimated that the lobbying industry employs 14,000 people and has an annual income of £1.9 billion. Every country has lobbyists.
The natural fuel companies are very much the underdogs in the lobbying battle.
Defeating the lobbyists
The lobbyists have persuaded the world’s motoring public that it should use a filthy fuel in an inefficient engine. Most people will keep doing so until we introduce the Herbl™ engine running on Herbl™ fuel. The oil companies would prefer you not to know what you have just read but we have a job to do; it’s urgent and we must clean up the mess in the atmosphere they have made. They are fighting to maintain their profits and won’t help us.
- The UK Locomotion or ‘Red Flag’ Act was repealed in 1897, before the internal combustion engine was manufactured, think about it.
- Trevithick created the first high-pressure Rankine Cycle engines in 1797 and drove the first car with passengers in 1801.
- www.legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Lobbying – recommended reading.
- US EIA 21.11.2017
