Tag Archives: big oil
The billion-dollar rebrand: How Big Oil is trying to change its image
Paid actors faked public support for a power plant in New Orleans
Investigative news site The Lens reports that two men hired local actors to attend New Orleans City Council meetings in October and February. Participants were paid $60 to show up, clap for anti-renewable energy comments, and wear T-shirts in support of a new power plant. They were paid extra cash to read a speech.
Entergy, the company that proposed the power plant facility, denies any involvement in the hires. The plant later got the city council’s approval.
This kind of stunt is called “astroturfing” — garnering fake grassroots support for a cause. Surprisingly, it appears to be legal in Louisiana, The Lens found. That didn’t stop the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice and the Sierra Club, among other groups, from pushing the local government to figure out who’s behind the scheme.
If Big Oil were involved … well, we wouldn’t be surprised. It’s been caught astroturfing before, and it has employed some pretty shady tactics over the years.
The industry has been taking notes from the tobacco industry’s playbook to hide the negative impacts of its product. For example, Exxon knew the risks of global warming long ago — and naturally, it funded scientific studies with the intent of challenging the established science of climate change.
Documents released last month show that Shell also knew it was on the hook for climate change. By the mid-’80s, it had even calculated that it contributed to 4 percent of emissions worldwide. Nonetheless, the company ran ads implying that carbon dioxide actually helps the planet. News flash: It doesn’t.
Original post:
Paid actors faked public support for a power plant in New Orleans
Big Oil doesn’t even need Keystone — all the more reason to kill it
Big Oil doesn’t even need Keystone — all the more reason to kill it
17 Nov 2014 6:16 PM
Share
Share
Big Oil doesn’t even need Keystone — all the more reason to kill it
A day before the Senate is expected to vote to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline, Bloomberg hits us with the (not shocking) news that the oil industry doesn’t need the much-fought-over pipeline anyway.
Turns out, the industry wasn’t holding its breath in expectation of a quick Keystone approval in the first place. Instead, Big Oil went to work finding other ways to get its product to market: According to Canadian analyst Patrick Kenny, railroads will soon be capable of transporting around 700,000 barrels of Alberta tar sands per day (a scary thought), and the industry is planning new and expanded pipelines to carry far more of the goop than the 830,000 barrels-per-day Keystone is designed to handle.
But the fight over Keystone is about more than just oil. Ever since James Hansen, then of NASA, wrote that building the tar-sands pipeline would be “essentially game over” for the stable climate, the (debatable) factuality of that statement ceased to matter. The issue became fiercely political: It was climate activists versus Big Oil.
And while some have questioned the wisdom of that fight, there are many good reasons beyond climate change to fight against the planned pipeline: Last week, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of South Dakota announced that authorizing the pipeline would tantamount to an act of war.
Perhaps most importantly, the Keystone XL fight has built a climate movement where there was previously none. And symbolic or otherwise, the people in that movement want to win this one.
Clearly, Keystone’s supporters are thinking the same way: The U.S. energy industry doesn’t need Keystone so much anymore, and early claims of prodigious job creation have proven largely inaccurate – yet Republicans remain committed to ramming the project down Americans’ throats.
The good news for climate hawks is that President Obama has hinted that even if the Senate approves the pipeline, he will veto it. A veto would provide further proof that he is committed to the climate, while sending the oil-stained GOP a clear message that it is on the wrong side of this debate — and the wrong side of history.
Source:
Keystone Is ‘Kind of Old News’ for Oil Industry
, Bloomberg.
Find this article interesting?
Donate now to support our work.Share
Please
to view the comments.
Get stories like this in your inbox
Jump to original:
Big Oil doesn’t even need Keystone — all the more reason to kill it
