"You have to hand it to the Exxon Mobils of the world. Not to be
outdone by Wall Street executives, in the three days since the
bailout originally failed, Big Oil's and King Coal's legions of
lobbyists managed to convince Congress to bail them out too--under
the guise of energy and global warming solutions."
"In the wee hours of the night, a bailout originally intended to
rescue us from the credit crisis now contains billions in subsidies
for oil shale, liquid coal, and unproven schemes to store carbon
dioxide from coal and oil."
The bailout expands a tax credit to refinery property that is
used to directly convert oil shale and tar sands into liquid
transportation fuels. The extraction, refining and combustion of
oil from shale is likely to generate more than 50 percent more
greenhouse gasses than conventional fuels and would be mined from
some of our most precious wildlands in the Rocky Mountain West.
The plans to store carbon emissions underground will require
billions more in additional taxpayer subsidies to be developed,
have never been proven at a commercial scale, and won't be online
for nearly decade--long after the window to act on global warming
has closed, according to scientists.
Relying on liquid coal could nearly double the global warming
pollution per gallon of transportation fuels and increase the
damage of coal mining to communities and ecosystems across the
country. This fuel has yet to emerge as a significant
transportation fuel in the United States and is not a viable fuel
in a world where carbon must be reduced.
"At a time when Americans are losing their jobs and their homes,
billions in new handouts to energy companies does nothing to help
the economy, the energy crisis, or global warming. What should have
been a solution for getting the economy back on track, turned into
corporate wellfare at its worst," Passacantando said.
"To make up for the damage it did today, Congress needs to pass
global warming legislation early in 2009 that will make any
investment in oil shale or new coal projects impossible," he
said.
VVPR info: CONTACT: Mike Crocker, Greenpeace USA Media Officer, 202-215-8989
Notes: More details on polluter pork in the bailout bill: http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/enviro-tax-letter.pdf
The Bailout’s Missed Opportunity: New data on how investing in a green economy would have created about twice the jobs as the Wall Street bailout: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081013/hurowitz
False Hope: why carbon capture and storage won't save the planet:
http://www.greenpeace.org/ccs