Oh yes, they entered it willingly, so friends and they themselves could get a nice job in the steering board after their career. There's nothing "illegal" here, only immoral, but lots of that.

> If you really believe the money was squandered, blame the politicians giving it away, not the energy companies.

why not both? believe me, we blame the politicians plenty too :)

> Lobbyism is not illegal, and in fact presumably necessary

It's illegal (and immoral) in most of the world.

> [Lobbyism is] illegal (and immoral) in most of the world.

Care to elaborate what you mean by that?

Wikipedia describes lobbying as "the act of lawfully attempting to influence the actions, policies, or decisions of government officials, most often legislators or members of regulatory agencies."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying

That in itself does sound neither intrinsically immoral or illegal.

Climate and environmental think tanks lobby in the same way as financial or industrial interests.

The very second paragraph from the link you posted reads:

"The ethics and morals involved with legally bribing or lobbying or influence peddling are complicated. Lobbying can, at times, be spoken of with contempt, when the implication is that people with inordinate socioeconomic power are corrupting the law in order to serve their own interests"

Here context is crucial: the sentence in the parent post was a response to "a long story of corruption and lobbyism".

In most countries it's illegal to hand money to politicians and its seen as corruption, with few strictly regulated exceptions.

In the US it's very different and the amount of money involved is staggering.

The term "a long story of corruption and lobbyism" is not referring to the legal and socially acceptable "lobbying" but the other one.

That makes no sense at all.