Making the US a Petro-State: White House Keeps Alive GOP Hopes for Lifting the Oil Export Ban
Update: Thanks to the people at ForestEthics, we have key Senate phone numbers for you in nice graphic form. Time to make those calls?
Short and brutally ugly. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment. The White House is reportedly the chief negotiator on behalf of Big Oil's attempt to lift the crude oil export ban. As part of the government shutdown negotiation, the White House, in collusion with Democrats in the Senate, is willing to lift the crude oil export ban in exchange for "renewable energy ... conservation benefits ... and other party priorities" (see below for this language). More here; search for "oil".
To be clear, lifting the four-decades-old crude oil export ban would be a disaster. In particular, it would:
1.Give the GOP and the American Petroleum Institute (API) a huge win on a top-priority item.
2.Throw a lifeline to struggling U.S. oil producers, many of whom are terribly over-leveraged and would otherwise default on their debt. (This is one reason API wants the ban lifted so badly.)
3.Bail out the industry's debt-holders (banks and other entities), whose money is at risk should these oil producers fail (yes, another bank bailout).
4.Add a great deal to the carbon that enters the atmosphere by removing a choke-point for bringing extracted U.S. carbon to the global market. (Think of this as offsetting the Keystone pipeline rejection. Instead of preventing carbon from coming to the market, this would enable it.)
5.Offset any good Obama may be trying to do in Paris, by a lot.
6.Offset or destroy his attempt to create a "good on carbon" legacy. Obama, simply put, is acting like a "Big Oil enabler," and should the deal go through, he deserves to see that phrase on his tombstone every time he looks at it.
Bottom line, President "good on carbon" Obama and the White House are the driving force behind a Big Oil top priority, if it can traded for "other party priorities." For perspective, realize we have to strangle fossil fuel production and consumption, not enable it, to have a hope in hell of surviving the chaos that's about to be locked in. Obama, the Republicans, and every Democrat in Congress who votes Yes to lifting this ban is voting to end your children's future, not preserve it.
(They probably think their own climate-chaos exit is secure, as Chris Hedges notes here: "Those who are despoiling the earth do so for personal gain, believing they can use their privilege to escape the fate that will befall the human species." I'm not sure they're going to escape successfully. The carbon-enabling elites had better be living in Sweden, with Blackwater mercs surrounding their isolated compounds, when the cascading collapses occur — though I'm not sure Sweden, or Canada, will let them all in.)
Make no mistake. While the world works hard on a deal in Paris to stave off carbon emissions, the White House and the Senate are brokering a deal (currently S.1372) to "pave the way for the US to become a petro state," as one commenter put it.
See more at: http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/#sthash.gAaXgqjJ.dpuf
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