WP: Energy Firms Come to Terms With Climate Change

[RedEarth]

While the political debate over global warming continues, top executives at many of the nation's largest energy companies have accepted the scientific consensus about climate change and see federal regulation to cut greenhouse gas emissions as inevitable.

The Democratic takeover of Congress makes it more likely that the federal government will attempt to regulate emissions. The companies have been hiring new lobbyists who they hope can help fashion a national approach that would avert a patchwork of state plans now in the works. They are also working to change some company practices in anticipation of the regulation

We have to deal with greenhouse gases," John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil Co., said in a recent speech at the National Press Club. "From Shell's point of view, the debate is over. When 98 percent of scientists agree, who is Shell to say, 'Let's debate the science'?"

Hofmeister and other top energy company leaders, such as Duke Energy Corp.'s chief executive, James E. Rogers, back a proposal that would cap greenhouse gas emissions and allow firms to trade their quotas. Paul M. Anderson, Duke Energy's chairman and a member of the president's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, favors a tax on emissions of carbon dioxide, the most prevalent greenhouse gas. His firm is the nation's third-largest burner of coal.

Exxon Mobil Corp., the highest-profile corporate skeptic about global warming, said in September that it was considering ending its funding of a think tank that has sought to cast doubts on climate change. And on Nov. 2, the company announced that it will contribute more than $1.25 million to a European Union study on how to store carbon dioxide in natural gas fields in the Norwegian North Sea, Algeria and Germany.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/24/AR2006112401361.html

[OneBlueSky]

1. it's not just the oil companies that have to come to terms with global warming . . .

ALL corporations must be held accountable for their environmental footprints and the damage they do to the earth, water and air . . .

the goal must be a zero environmental footprint by a date certain -- and heavy taxation of any continuing corporate environmental impact thereafter . . .

[Judi Lynn]

2. Hope we're going to start seeing more stories like this after the new Congress

is seated. It won't be one moment too soon.

Thank you, RedEarth. We need a reason to hope.

[truthisfreedom]

3. woo... 1.25 million dollars! *rubs hands in glee like dr. evil*

i wonder how i could get my hands on that fortune!

[wallwriter]

4. These guys have $1.25 mil in the couch cushions... n/t

[0rganism]

5. because they don't have a freakin' choice anymore

This whole "cast doubt on climate change" operation has been more of a farce than the "cigarettes don't cause cancer" lobby by the tobacco industry. Smoking leads to the end of hundreds of thousands of lives every year, but greenhouse-gas-induced climate change has a strong possibility of ending the whole goddam game.

Smart businessmen understand that killing off the biosphere is going to cut into their profits in a big way, and could reduce their long-term investment returns.