10-3-08 by dugan
"Left undisciplined, unregulated and unsupervised, they created chaos." That was Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s acid, and correct, judgment of the nation’s financial behemoths after Congress forked over $700 billion taxpayer dollars to bail them out. The same should be said of oil companies and markets. Yet instead of starting to rein in an industry that continues to deepen the U.S. recession, Congress today rewarded it with a slew of new tax credits.
As the Greenwash Brigade blog recently noted, "in addition to renewables, the Senate’s energy incentives include oil shale and coal-to-liquid projects that were previously resisted by the House and appropriately deemed "fuels from hell" by Thomas Friedman."
The tax credits were thrown in with the renewable energy credits, and ultimately into the bailout package, to appease coal-state and Western legislators and their energy industry supporters. That doesn’t make it less vile to lump filthy coal fuel and shale oil with wind and solar energy. Here’s an letter from Earthjustice, Greenpeace, Public Citizen and others with details about the worst parts of the tax credits.
What can be done can be undone. But the credits’ inclusion today forecasts an oil and coal lobby that will remain embedded in government, no matter who is elected in November. That doesn’t mean major energy policy reform is impossible, only that we still can’t hope for it to come without continuing to do battle.