Big Oil Companies Behind "Citizen" Protests Of Climate Bill

nytimes.com:

HOUSTON -- Hard on the heels of the health care protests, another citizen movement seems to have sprung up, this one to oppose Washington's attempts to tackle climate change. But behind the scenes, an industry with much at stake -- Big Oil -- is pulling the strings.

Read the whole story: nytimes.com

Comments

[disambiguist]

04:52 PM on 08/21/2009

Rightie blogospherians suffered shortness of breath upon news that Obama's administration had loaned $2 billion to Brazil's Petrobras associated with a major offshore oil find.
Near apoplexy ensued because billionaire George Soros had recently taken advantage of the spread between two types of U.S.-listed Petrobras shares, since the common shares were 21 percent more expensive than preferred. (That’s why he’s a billionaire)

Boooo-Hooooh Oh Noooooooo, get me a Valium!

The US uses ~ 20M barrels/oil/day.
The US produces ~8.5M barrels/oil/day
The US has < 2% of proven crude oil reserves.
75% of same reserves are under the control of nations not always “friendly” to the US.

Importing over 11.5 million barrels of oil daily, the United States depends on its trade partners for more oil than any other single country.

The Petrobras oil find is the biggest oil discovery in the Western hemisphere in three decades and has a potential reservoir of 5 to 8 billion barrels of recoverable light oil and natural gas.
WIth international credit crunch, Petrobras was stalled in obtaining financing to launch this project.
China pledged in February it would lend Petrobras $10 billion. The US loan is equal in value to a similar credit line agreed to with the China Development Bank.

This administration is securing energy resources to power our economy.
The US will benefit from guaranteed supplies of crude under a US-loans-for-oil agreement with Brazil as our reserves decline.

[TxAggie]

10:01 PM on 08/20/2009

is it a surprize that oil companies and their employees would be against cap and trade? Anyone with a job that actually produces a product ought to be against it. Now if you are a consultant or you are Al Gore, that is a different matter. If you do not have to produce a real product, don't worry about it.

[buckeyedave]

10:43 PM on 08/20/2009

well stated

[MaximMaximus]

01:13 AM on 08/21/2009

Nonsense. There are production technologies whose environmental footprint in virtually every industry. Some industries, including the oil industry, refuse to modernize their infrastructure and invest in R&D. They've gotten used to enormous profits while crapping into the environment.

[rblackbird]

04:19 PM on 08/20/2009

Oil companies' spending to galvanize opposition to cap & trade is not surprising. Neither are the efforts of Al Gore and Goldman Sachs to promote cap & trade making them hundreds of millions of dollars. If Congress decides that cap & trade is foolish, as Jim Hansen-the godfather of the global warming movement-has decided, Gore would be ruined.

Global warming alarmists mirror birthers, tea baggers, death panelists and loaded-gun-toters. All have been seduced by myth and alarm created by people who have a profit motive. None of them is willing to listen to the evidence that contradicts their positions.

The evidence, including sophisticated peer-reviewed reports prepared by ph.d- level scientists, is global warming is unproven and that the planet is actually cooling. One piece of evidence is the growing glacier in the crater of the Mt. St. Helens volcano. The initial explosion left a massive crater. t Afterwards, a new glacier began growing inside the crater on the south wall. Its average height is now 300 feet with a high point of 600. Meanwhile, the volcano has erupted often from the crater floor, creating an immense lava dome. Despite this heat the original glacier has not melted; it has grown around the dome. Additional crater glaciers have formed. Present glacier ice exceeds pre-eruption ice. How did global warming miss this glacier growing in the crater of an active volcano next to recurrent lava flows?

[madisonhack]

07:52 AM on 08/20/2009

China is building a new coal fired powered plant every week. In the mean time, their young people come to the U.S. and study and excel in engineering, physics, and the technical sciences that the world will need to employ to move out of the carbon age and into something "green"...wind, solar, whatever. The Chinese are using cheap and DIRTY power to build their economy as fast as they can while simultaneously funneling as much money as possible into clean energy "green" technologies. Then, they will sell that technology back to us. Meanwhile, we not only sit on our hands and do nothing, but we allow our primitive energy companies to obstruct our growth in these green technologies while China finishes and implements it's plan of total world domination.

[Poster99]

11:48 PM on 08/19/2009

This argument- oil companies are behind the denier movement has lost all credibility, when House of Representatives passed a Cap and Trade legislation (without even seeing some 300 pages of it) that hands future profits from CO2 limits to Goldman Sachs and friends. This carbon credit market is estimated to reach 2 trillion dollars and will dwarf anything oil industry does.
There are much more powerful special interests behind the "solution" to global warming than the oil companies can ever hope to be.
No wonder oil companies are trying anything to stop Cap and Trade. They are seeing their world and fruits of years of work overtaken by greedy bankers.
If this was about reducing CO2 there would be no need for Wall Street to get involved. This would be a perfect way for the Government to assume some of these profits and possibly pay for health care or a number of other programs in need of money. You know damn well the taxes from cap and trade markets will be non existent as the bankers are good at hiding their money.
And don't even try to come up with free market solution being best excuse. We have free market insurance companies taking care of peoples health. Enough said.

[oli33]

11:45 PM on 08/19/2009

Obama just backed off shore drilling. Guess he isn't much different than Bush when it comes to oil deals. Interesting to see if the green movement attacks this or stays quiet.

[sherwoodforest]

06:25 PM on 08/19/2009

The oil companies spend more on lobbyists fighting global warming than they do on new green technology- almost 2 to 1. The worst abusers are still EXXON and Mobil.
Boycott Exxon/Mobil
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhExwgiSxt8

[wyomingredneck]

11:22 PM on 08/19/2009

instead of sueing every company that wants to drill a well somewhere why don't the enviro groups spend that money and time doing something productive like research and develeopment of all this wonderful and free green energy?

[rapriffmaster]

05:11 PM on 08/19/2009

DUH!!!!

[RyKi]

03:45 PM on 08/19/2009

I like the sign "Stand up!" yet everyone is sitting there complacently on their well-cushioned behinds, sign fail?

[RyKi]

03:35 PM on 08/19/2009

I live in Houston and this was not a public event, you couldn't even get in the door unless you are employed by the petroleum industry. So I wouldn't really call this a movement quite yet.

[Crass Innuendo]

01:59 PM on 08/19/2009

Sigh, another "reply" post not going where it's supposed to go.

[Crass Innuendo]

01:55 PM on 08/19/2009

Well, I got through your intro. Then the lumping and straw-men came out. It's possible I might have even agreed with you in part or in whole. Now I'll never know, alas.

Have a nice day.

[DesertDogAlpha]

01:36 PM on 08/19/2009

Yet another outrage, an absolute outrage!

First, who do these so-called Americans who work for oil companies think they are - behaving like citizens and speaking up for the 6 million other so-called Americans who work in their industry. Harrumph.

Don't they know that they'd be much better losing their good jobs (with health benefits) and spending their days complaining about the rich and demanding that other people pay for their benefits? Then they wouldn't have to pay taxes and could demand that others do it for them.

And, what in the heck do these companies think they are doing, standing up for themselves when EVERYBODY knows that Greenpeace is absolutely right about everything.

Let's not get confused by the fact that the Chinese and Indians won't do anything (unless we pay them to do it) since their per person carbon footprint is only 25 percent of that of Americans. And if they ever get to an American lifestyle with equivalent per person carbon footprint, whatever costs Americans impose on themselves won't matter.

No one here is prepared to go back to $4/gallon gasoline, but without market signals (directly via higher prices and taxes, or indirectly through some Rube Goldberg and highly inefficient cap and trade system) Americans won't reduce CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions. This is far more complex than the average American progressive's sophomoric thought process can compute.

[lbrty 2112]

01:46 PM on 08/19/2009

Ddog, I like the way you think.

[walkonsatisfied]

02:18 PM on 08/19/2009

I would gladly pay more now in the short term than face the long-term consequences that our present oil consumption cannot be sustained, no matter how much you drll. You think you're paying more now?

As for Asia, why would they listen to us if we are just as much a polluter as them? Do you not think that alternative energy costs would eventually be pennies compared to what we're paying now?

Think outside yourself. Heck, just think. I don't want a corporate lobby representing me. They're not representing my interests, only their pocketbooks and anyone who believes different is either naive or just plain ignorant.

[DesertDogAlpha]

03:46 PM on 08/19/2009

I'm glad you will pay more. Now you just have to get 60 Senators (including some good Dems from, say, North Dakota and Montana, where people often drive 75 miles for groceries and have energy intensive lifestyles, to agree with you. Good luck, enlightened one.

[lbrty 2112]

01:36 PM on 08/19/2009

Oh Boy! The mileage these people are trying to get of big this and big that behind this or that protest.. Imagine for once that people are against big government.

It's kinda hard to sell some global warming related baloney when it's mid Aug. and snowing in Colorado. and the north eastern part of the country is just beginning to experience 'summer-like' temps.

[RyKi]

03:16 PM on 08/19/2009

In my mind that's because glaciers are melting and cooling the oceans, but once they are all melted that's when the real warming will start. Its like having a glass of ice-water in a hot room. The water doesn't warm up first, the ice melts first and then the water warms up.

[lbrty 2112]

03:53 PM on 08/19/2009

yeah, will that happen before, during or after the next iceage?

[BlackWidowPilot]

12:26 PM on 08/19/2009

Know your enemy:

http://www.publicintegrity.org/articles/entry/731/

IMHO what underscores the *psychosis* of the corporate mind is the willful denial of empirical evidence of a trend that could prove ultimately *fatal* to our civilization, if not our species, yet the corporate CEOs and their paid minions simply do not care as long as they can make their next quarter's profits.

"Power attracts psychotics -always."

Leland R. Erickson

Citizen