Climate Change Bill a Rorschach for Special Interests

The same day that the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives, the oil industry examined the loopholes. The bill, which has yet to pass the Senate, would make refiners "buy allowances for carbon dioxide spewed from their plants and from vehicles when motorists burn their fuel. Imports would need permits only for the latter." So, oil companies "will probably cope ... by closing fuel plants, cutting capital spending and increasing imports." In Canada, the bill's passage rattled companies invested in Alberta's tar sands, an especially carbon-intensive oil source. However, "we're delighted that low-carbon fuel standards are not in the Waxman-Markey bill," said an executive with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. Meanwhile, Niger Innis of the Congress of Racial Equality -- a former civil rights group that now accepts industry funding, including from ExxonMobil -- bemoaned the bill's impact on "poor and working families" while criticizing measures that would lessen household costs as "energy welfare payments." Lastly, Our Country Deserves Better, an anti-Obama political action committee with links to the PR firm Russo Marsh & Rogers, has launched a "stop cap & trade" campaign. Fundraising appeal emails from the group call Waxman-Markey a "big government, quasi-socialistic policy" that's "predicated on the fraudulent 'junk science' of global warming alarmism."