September 2007
By James Verini
On a hot spring evening in early May–the kind that elicits nervous global-warming jokes–a crowd of powerful and wealthy people are gathered at a cocktail party, in the banquet hall in the Hart Senate Office building on Capitol Hill, sipping wine and talking carbon.
The advocacy group Environmental Defense is throwing the party, but mixed among its staff and the requisite Democratic lawmakers are attendees who normally wouldn’t be caught dead in the company of career tree-huggers: bankers, energy company executives, suits from General Motors, Chevron, nascar–yes, nascar–and a bunch of right-leaning multimillionaires. Virginia Senator John Warner is here, with his lupine frown. Warner, of course, is a Republican, as is Indiana’s Richard Lugar, who spoke earlier in the day at E.D.’s board meeting. Both men rated a whopping 20 percent from the League of Conservation Voters last year.
See Full Story
