Firefighters cross flooded Sumpter Street at Exchange Street after heavy rain in Colonie, New York, on 29 July 2026. Photograph: Will Waldron/Albany Times Union via Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenFirefighters cross flooded Sumpter Street at Exchange Street after heavy rain in Colonie, New York, on 29 July 2026. Photograph: Will Waldron/Albany Times Union via Getty ImagesUS fossil fuel lobbyists also represent hundreds of cities fighting for climate damagesLocal governments working with firms also linked to fossil fuel giants, analysis of federal lobbying disclosures shows
Congressional lobbyists working for fossil fuel firms that are exacerbating the climate crisis are simultaneously representing more than 300 local governments raising funding to recover from climate damage, according to a new analysis.
The research by F Minus and Make Polluters Pay reviewed congressional lobbying disclosures for the first quarter of 2026, finding that another 568 local governments hired fossil fuel lobbyists to work on non-climate related issues during that time, some of which included climate adjacent issues, like healthcare and home insurance.
Dozens of lobbying firms were identified by researchers as working on both sides of climate action. James Browning, the founder and executive director of F Minus, said local governments who hire these firms to lobby for climate mitigation, disaster relief, and wildlife conservation likely don’t know that the same firms are working for clients like ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute (API), which critics say are pushing to further dependence on fossil fuels. “They are locked into these relationships with big firms and may also not know they are the ones blocking climate efforts,” Browning said.
For example, the analysis shows US multinational law firm Greenberg Traurig has lobbied for three fossil fuel entities (API, ConocoPhillips and the Western States Petroleum Association in California) that have opposed state-level legislation aimed at holding fossil fuel companies financially accountable for their historic climate-warming emissions and using that revenue, in the form of climate superfunds, to support climate mitigation costs. Miami-Dade county, in Florida, hired the firm to lobby for shoreline protection and Everglades restoration. “That’s a glaring conflict,” Browning said.
The mayor of Miami-Dade county didn’t respond to a request for comment about the perceived conflict of interest.
Westchester county and the city of Rochester, both in New York, also hired Greenberg Traurig, despite the fact that these local governments could lose mitigation monies if fossil fuel clients of the firm are successful in invalidating New York’s climate superfund legislation, Browning said. “Greenberg Traurig really represents the cynical extreme on this issue,” he said. “Between their congressional and state lobbying operations they work for all the opponents of these superfund bills and biggest funders of climate denialism.” Westchester county’s executive didn’t respond to a request for comment about the firm’s other clients with competing interests, nor did the city of Rochester’s mayor.
Greenberg Traurig also didn’t respond to a request for comment about working for local governments that are seeking funding for climate-related damage, while also representing fossil fuel companies. In a 2024 interview with LEADERS magazine, the lobbying firm’s executive chairman, Richard Rosenbaum, said that the firm has expanded its reach and capabilities “to advise clients who are building a more sustainable world”.
New York and Vermont passed climate superfund legislation in 2024. This year, another 13 states considered such laws. Cassidy DiPaola, with the pro-climate superfund campaign Make Polluters Pay, said that member groups in the states where superfund legislation has been introduced reported having encouraging conversations with lawmakers about the bills, only to later see those same lawmakers vote against the legislation. For example, in New Jersey, organizers saw more than a hundred business groups oppose climate superfund legislation, but more public testimony taken in favor of the bill overall.
“The bill was widely popular, so many people wanted this bill,” she said. “We felt like a lot of folks were on board and then all of a sudden all of our members were reporting that there were so many industry lobbyists at the capitol and they’d never seen it before.”
A different new report by Brown University shows that the majority of people and groups who testified on state-level climate superfund bills were in favor of the legislation. But across all four times climate superfund bills were introduced in New Jersey, more registered lobbyists opposed the legislation than supported it. In every state legislature where the bills were introduced, fossil fuel companies opposed them. “When we talk about getting dark dirty money out of politics that means fossil fuel industry dollars that are walking into the capitol in a suit, as a lobbyist,” DiPaola said.
The Brown University Climate and Development Lab (CDL) report looks at the “war of words” recorded in the publicly available testimony and lobbying records on climate superfund bills. But there is no way to systematically analyze the influence lobbyists have in closed-door meetings with legislators, said Timmons Roberts, who heads the CDL. “A lot of the powerful interests don’t speak up much. They work behind the scenes,” he said.
The Brown University researchers found that opponents of climate superfund legislation in New Jersey included business associations, fossil fuel corporations, conservative groups and labor unions. The groups repeated nine debunked claims, including the assertion that climate superfund legislation would increase costs for businesses and consumers by forcing fossil fuel companies to increase fuel prices, despite the fact that economists have pointed out oil is a global commodity and one oil company could not raise prices without risking sales to competitors.
“It’s fairly preposterous that a state proposing a fee on the big oil firms would change the price of oil in the state when it’s a global commodity,” Roberts said. “The way these claims work is they’re said with authority and conviction and repeated a lot.”
Trevor Culhane, the lead author of the Brown University report, said business associations often oppose climate legislation on the grounds of costs. But “residents are already paying for the costs of climate damages and these policies are intended to relieve some of the burden of climate change costs,” he said.
In April, legislation called the Stop Climate Shakedowns Act was introduced in the US House and Senate by Representative Harriet Hageman of Wyoming, and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, aimed at dismissing climate accountability lawsuits and prohibiting climate superfund laws. API, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, and Koch Companies disclosed lobbying on the Stop the Climate Shakedowns Act in the second quarter of 2026, according to the F Minus analysis.
In 2023, F Minus launched with a database of all the state level fossil fuel lobbyists. With the new analysis, the group has launched a new database of congressional lobbyists that work for both fossil fuel firms and local governments.
