Adam Werbach, once the youngest head of the Sierra Club and currently on the board of Greenpeace, must have a lot more "green" in his bank account today. As Fast Company reports, his green PR firm Act Now "has been scooped up by none other than the lovemark-man himself: Saatchi & Saatchi's Kevin Roberts. The new company, called Saatchi & Saatchi S, in which Werbach will remain CEO, plans on bringing sustainability to the ad agency's clients, which include A-listers like P&G, Toyota, and Visa. ... Pairing up with Wal-Mart was painful enough for the environmental establishment to swallow. Now Werbach will be owned by The Mad Men of Madison Avenue, the one place where greenwashing is most feared and excessive wastefulness still runs rampant." Werbach's current clients are presumably now clients of Saatchi & Saatchi S. They constitute a score of corporations, foundations, Big Green groups and others such as Amnesty International, Center for American Progress, General Mills, Nathan Cummings Foundation, National Wildlife Federation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Sierra Club and World Wildlife Fund.

The Democratic think tank / advocacy group Third Way has been working with Senate Democrats to help sell a controversial measure granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies, reports Matt Renner. The measure "is the major sticking point over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) legislation that is currently stalled in the Senate." During a meeting with Senator Jay Rockefeller's legislative aide for military and national security issues, Third Way's Matt Bennett suggested "talking points to help make the case for telecom immunity." Bennett said, "We thought it would be a bad idea to allow these companies to be held legally liable for cooperating with the government ... you want to encourage the cooperation of not just the telecom industry, but all other industries in the future." Third Way would not disclose whether the group receives telecom funding, but some of its board members do have telecom ties. Reynold Levy, for example, formerly served as AT&T's senior officer in charge of government relations.

As ExxonMobil breaks its own record to post the largest annual profit by a U.S. company, the American Petroleum Institute (API) is trying to tap some goodwill. At the Super Bowl U.S. football championship game, API is sponsoring "Kickoff to Rebuild," highlighting its work with Rebuilding Together, a nonprofit organization that promotes homeownership. API and Rebuilding Together are launching an "Energy Efficient Homes Initiative," which aims "to incorporate energy-efficiency measures in the more than 9,000 homes revitalized each year by Rebuilding Together." API has been battling the oil industry's negative public image for years, with increased outreach to journalists and bloggers. In related news, O'Dwyer's reports that Saudi Arabia's oil ministry paid the PR firm Hill & Knowlton $1 million, to promote OPEC's "message of hope and reassurance" around its November 2007 summit in Riyadh.

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