According to the Canadian journalist, Naomi Klein, in her new book 'This Changes Everything' (2014)about the politics of climate change:

In 2013 in the US alone, the oil and gas industry spent just under $400,000 A DAY (!) lobbying Congress and government officials and doled out a record $73,000,000 in federal campaign and political donations in the 2012 election cycle.

In Canada, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers spoke with government officials 536 times between 2008 and 2012 whilst TransCanada, another fossil fuel corporation spoke 279 times. By contrast The Climate Action Network spoke only 6 times.

Klein suggests that, in the UK, "it has become increasingly difficult to discern where the oil and gas industry ends and the British government begins". She also tells us that at least 50 employees of fossil fuel companies have been placed within government, to work on energy issues in the last 4 years. They are provided free of charge and work for secondments of up to 2 years. In the first year of David Cameron's government, energy industry representatives met with officials from the Department of Energy and Climate Change roughly 11 times more frequently than with green groups.

I don't know about you, but that all sounds like a (non-theoretical) conspiracy to me - and one which, sadly, is a matter of public record. Why do we let them get away with it?