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The fossil fuel lobby
#1
Quote:The tale is the latest in an illustrated series by the Oklahoma Energy Resources Board, a state agency funded by oil and gas producers. The board has spent upwards of $40m over the past two decades on providing education with a pro-industry bent, including hundreds of pages of curriculums, a speaker series and an after-school program – all at no cost to educators of children from kindergarten to high school. A similar program in Ohio shows teachers how to “frack” Twinkies using straws to pump for cream to emulate shale drilling. A national programsponsored by companies including BP and Shell claims it’s too soon to tell if the earth is heating up, but “a little warming might be a good thing”.
Pipeline to the classroom: how big oil promotes fossil fuels to America's children | US news | The Guardian
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#2
The Koch's are at it again

Quote:Transportation recently overtook the electricity sector as the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Not satisfied with that dubious achievement, a front group backed by petrochemical billionaires Charles and David Koch has launched a series of videos attacking electric vehicles. Last month, Fueling U.S. Forward put out a heart-wrenching video about how batteries use cobalt mined by children. This week, they put out another video, claiming that taxpayers are subsidizing rich white men (yes, this is an ad from the Koch brothers) to buy Teslas.

There is a lot wrong here. Most people can agree that children should not be mining anything. But it’s a false dichotomy to suggest that because of child labor, we shouldn’t use electric cars. Children aren’t being put to work because of electric vehicles. Children are being put to work because of a global economic system that exploits the poor and the vulnerable. It’s also misleading to say that because children are being exploited for one product, we should necessarily use another product. It’s flat wrong to say, as the ad does, that electric vehicles are “more toxic to humans than average cars.” 

The group’s second ad is equally as misleading. The Koch-funded group crows about how white men making more than $150,000 are the biggest demographic of Tesla buyers, and that Tesla buyers get thousands of dollars in subsidies. The oil industry receives an estimated $4 billion in subsidies every year

But if that isn’t enough to make this argument seem ridiculous, consider why the United States has decided to encourage people to buy electric vehicles: It’s a new technology that, with widespread adoption, could have massive environmental and economic benefits to the country. When someone buys an electric vehicle — even more so if that vehicle will be charged with renewable energy — the entire community benefits from less pollution. That can’t be said of fossil fuel extraction, which primarily benefits another set of rich, white men.
A Koch front group is putting out misleading attack ads on electric vehicles
  • Yes, children are abused in mining cobalt. But children are abused in many other industries, thanks to the kind of unregulated capitalism that the Koch brothers are proposing.
  • Yes, Tesla's are subsidized, and so they should as the benefits to society exceeds the private benefit to the buyer (the produce positive externalities). It's exactly the opposite with gasoline driven car, which produce negative externalities (pollution, CO2) so the societal benefits are less than the private benefits and they should be taxed with the difference.
  • The oil industry is also receiving massive subsidies ($4b a year).
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#3
Quote:The largest five stock market listed oil and gas companies spend nearly $200m (£153m) a year lobbying to delay, control or block policies to tackle climate change, according to a new report. Chevron, BP and ExxonMobil were the main companies leading the field in direct lobbying to push against a climate policy to tackle global warming, the report said.
Top oil firms spending millions lobbying to block climate change policies, says report | Business | The Guardian
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#4
You never really know with these companies, at times their public stance is really quite different from what's going on behind the scenes..

Quote:Just a week after Chevron announced a plan to install electric vehicle (EV) chargers at some California gas stations, it has been revealed that one of the company’s lobbyists has been pushing a secret effort to block charging stations in Arizona.
Chevron’s two-faced approach to electric cars – ThinkProgress
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