Big Oil's "Voices for Energy"

From Natalie Gaber, Sierra Club Media Intern

I don’t know about you, but I really hate being lied to. It bothers me almost as much as when I see someone put a plastic bottle in the garbage can when there is a recycling bin literally 2 feet away. So, needless to say, Big Oil’s latest campaign to take down federal climate legislation, which has more factual holes in it than Swiss cheese, really irked me.

Valero’s “Voices for Energy” campaign webpage, patriotically themed and adorned with snazzy images of the American flag and Uncle Sam, wastes no time in getting to the lies. The first paragraph ends with the statement, “If this type of climate legislation becomes law, it will have enormous negative impact on the economy, the consumer and the refining industry.”

Specifically, Valero claims that, “The hidden tax on commodities imposed by this legislation will lead to a significant increase in the price of gasoline and other energy sources, and more than a million job losses in our already crippled economy - with no measurable improvement on global climate change.” They then go on to assert that, “If Congress passes cap & trade legislation, YOU WILL PAY THE PRICE. ‘Cap and trade’ will cost you 77 cents or more a gallon.” Conspicuously absent from this bold declaration, however, is a source for this information.

Where to begin with poking holes in these arguments?

I’ll start with the claim that climate legislation will result in a “hidden tax.” This statement is a gross misinterpretation of the facts. Professor Reilly of MIT, one of the authors of the 2007 study that the GOP is mis-using to make this claim, has categorically rejected the GOP’s “tax” message, and he even wrote a letter to Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) explaining that Boehner was distorting the truth and lying to the American people. Furthermore, multiple studies by the Union of Concerned Scientists and the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy http://www.aceee.org/press/e091pr.htm have shown that the proposed legislation will actually save consumers between $64 and $168 billion in lower electricity and natural gas bills. Call me naïve, but since when does a “tax” amount to saving money?

As for the supposed 77 cent/gallon increase in the price of gasoline, it may be true that gas prices will increase if the climate legislation passes, but this increase will be insignificant compared to the cost of doing nothing. An Environmental Defense Fund synthesis of five university and governmental studies found that comprehensive energy and climate policies would lead to only 0.5 % less growth in the GDP by 2030 and only 0.75% less growth in GDP by 2050. Meanwhile, a 2008 Natural Resources Defense Council study projected that, if current trends continue, the total cost of climate change in the United States could be as high as 3.6% of GDP by 2100. Given these predictions, it seems only fair that dirty energy sources like gasoline should be more expensive.

The job losses claim is likewise easily refuted by the simple fact that although jobs at dirty energy companies like Valero will disappear, they will be more than replaced by clean energy jobs. According to a Union of Concerned Scientists analysis of a renewable electricity standard, similar to the one included in the Clean Energy Jobs Plan, requiring all utilities to obtain 25% of their electricity from renewable energy sources by 2025 would add 200,000 jobs to the economy. The University of Massachusetts’s Political Economy Research Institute reports that investments in wind and solar power create nearly 3 times as many jobs as the same investment in coal; mass transit and conservation would nearly 4 times as many jobs as coal. And finally, a report by Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council projects that use of off-the-shelf clean energy technology would create 14.5 million more new jobs by 2050 than would be created by meeting our energy needs with continued dependence on fossil fuels. Even if these estimates are overly generous, the point remains: there will be no net loss of jobs.

And now to address the most specious of all Valero’s claims: the proposed climate legislation will have “no measurable improvement on global climate change.” The UCS study cited above projects that the Renewable Electricity Standard will reduce global warming pollution by 277 million metric tons a year by 2025, the equivalent of the current annual output of 70 average-size coal-fired power plants. Furthermore, according to The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, in the year 2020, a national energy efficiency standard could reduce heat-trapping emissions by 262 million metric tons. So unless 250+ million metric tons now qualifies as un-measurable, it seems Valero got its facts wrong. 

The bottom line is, Big Oil is scared and greedy, so they are resorting to scare tactics in efforts to maintain the status quo. Unfortunately, the status quo means huge profits for oil companies ($155 billion in 2007 alone) and a planet that is rapidly become inhabitable for the rest of us. So we face a choice: we can go the Valero route and delay and be left behind, or we can act now and become the global leaders in clean, renewable technologies to drive economic growth and protect our national security for years to come.

Comments

[Andrew]

Thanks for info. I found one of these Voices of Energy fliers at the gas station and should have known that it was Volero...

They will stop at nothing.

[Steve]

Thanks for the thoughtful rebuttal. Better proofread that last paragraph though.