Calculating Hillary Clinton’s ties to the fossil fuel industry by analyzing contributions to her campaign and PAC is complicated.
The campaign finance system is convoluted, offering obscurity for donors. Yes, lobbyists with long ties to the industry have raised money for Clinton and her PAC, but maybe they weren’t influenced by their current and former day jobs.
Who knows?
However there is an easy way to analyze Clinton’s ties to the fossil fuel industry and fracking, its signature extraction process.
All we have to do is review her record of promoting fracking, when she was Secretary of State.
Fortunately, Mother Jones has already done the work. In a 2014 story titled “How Hillary Clinton’s State Department Sold Fracking to the World,” Mother Jones’ Mariah Blake outlines Clinton’s efforts to promote fracking.
ONE ICY MORNING in February 2012, Hillary Clinton's plane touched down in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, which was just digging out from a fierce blizzard...The previous year, Bulgaria had signed a five-year, $68 million deal, granting US oil giant Chevron millions of acres in shale gas concessions. Bulgarians were outraged. Shortly before Clinton arrived, tens of thousands of protesters poured into the streets carrying placards that read "Stop fracking with our water" and "Chevron go home." Bulgaria's parliament responded by voting overwhelmingly for a fracking moratorium.
What did Clinton do on seeing that masses of Bulgarians were trying to save their drinking water from the dangers of fracking?
Clinton urged Bulgarian officials to give fracking another chance. According to (Prime Minister Boyko) Borissov, she agreed to help fly in the "best specialists on these new technologies to present the benefits to the Bulgarian people." But resistance only grew. The following month in neighboring Romania, thousands of people gathered to protest another Chevron fracking project, and Romania's parliament began weighing its own shale gas moratorium. Again Clinton intervened, dispatching her special envoy for energy in Eurasia, Richard Morningstar, to push back against the fracking bans.
Under Clinton’s leadership, the State Department lobbied for fracking around the globe, Blake wrote. She appointed David Goldwyn a special envoy for international energy affairs to promote the Global Shale Gas Initiative.
When Goldwyn unveiled the initiative in April 2010, it was at a meeting of the United States Energy Association, a trade organization representing Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and ConocoPhillips, all of which were pursuing fracking overseas.
So yes, Clinton has pushed hard for fracking, has adopted the fossil fuel industry line that fracking — injecting massive amounts of water, chemicals and sand — into gas wells can be done safely. Her track record on fracking is clear: she favors it (lately, with conditions ).
But if Clinton has changed her mind again, evolved on this issue, no longer promotes fracking, she can take the Green Peace pledge.
After her brush with Green Peace activist Eva Resnick-Day, the environmental organization posted the following statement on its website:
While Clinton claims in this video to have taken money from “people who work for fossil fuel companies,” the reality is that her campaign and the Super PAC supporting her have received millions of dollars from the fossil fuel industry. We deserve a democracy that listens to the people, not corporate polluters. If you agree, then TAKE ACTION: Tell Hillary and all of the presidential candidates to sign the pledge to reject fossil fuel money and put people before polluters in our democracy.
Bernie Sanders has taken the pledge.
Hillary Clinton can follow suit, and put this matter to rest.
(Thanks to timely comments, Rolling Stone has been corrected to Mother Jones. Also noted that the photo depicts tar sands, not fracking in NYS)