Climate Change (Lobbying) Has Been Very Very Good to the Podestas

The Center for Public Integrity is reporting a delicious only-in-Washington-story in which members of the politically influential Podesta family are taking opposite sides in the capital's climate change fight. According to the Center:

In one corner, John Podesta, who served as co-chair of President Obama's transition and was White House chief of staff to President Clinton. John Podesta's think tank, the Center for American Progress, has been an ardent voice in favor of Congress taking bold steps to address climate change — making its views known on Capitol Hill through its action fund. American Progress has been especially critical of the coal industry's "clean coal" campaign, calling it a "smoke screen" aimed at delaying meaningful action on global warming.

In the opposite corner, John's brother, Tony Podesta, one of Washington's most successful lobbyists — who picked up a significant new client as the climate debate revved up in the House this spring, according to the just-filed lobbying disclosure forms for the second quarter of the year. The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) — the very industry group derided by John Podesta's group — paid Tony Podesta and five other lobbyists in his Podesta Group $50,000 in the second quarter to help represent its interests on the climate bill passed by the House in June.

The clean coal folks "have a great lobbyist working on behalf of them for an ignoble cause," said Dan Weiss, director of climate change strategy for the Center for American Progress and its action fund.

Gotta love DC!