Big Oil's Porky Bailout

"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.