Exxon Supports A Carbon Tax Because...

A trading program, known as 'cap and trade,' 'inevitably introduces unnecessary cost and complexity' that reduces effectiveness, said [Rex Tillerson, CEO of the Irving, Texas based company]. They require a vast expansion of regulation, he said. A carbon tax 'can be more easily implemented' and is the 'most efficient means of reflecting the cost of carbon...'

'Such a tax should be made revenue neutral,' he said, which requires other taxes to be lowered so that the overall tax burden isn't increased"

But, given our last federal election result, is one still a viable policy option in Canada, or are we stuck with some version of C&T merely because it has the advantage being, in effect, a hidden tax, and thereby palatable to our bovine electorate?

B.C. will be the test case, I imagine. There Campbell introduced the tax between elections rather than trying to run on it, and it seems to me (though I am happy to be corrected) that some of the anger it generated has abated.

And of course there's the Quebec carbon tax, which certainly was not a drag on the Charest government last time around. But of course they're weird and Gallic and, at 0.8 cents per litre, the tax was barely noticeable in the first place.

Exxon Misleads On Funding Denialists

From The Environmental Law Prof:

This time last year ExxonMobil waged a campaign with bloggers to convince us that they recognized the reality of anthropogenic global warming and were serious about solutions.

[...]

I looked up ExxonMobil's contributions to 'Public Information and Policy Research' for 2006, when supposed ExxonMobil was not in the business of funding denialist nonsense. Well, there it is, $180,000 to Frontiers of Freedom and its CSPP. That's more than they gave to Brookings ($135,000), Asia Society ($90,000), Council on Foreign Relations ($110,000) or most of the legitimate organizations to which they contribute. I can't say they lied last year, but I can say they deliberately misled me.

Take a look at the CSPP website. If that's not denialist nonsense, I don't know what is!

Here is a link to the CSPP website, and indeed it is denialist nonsense.

Exxon Strikes Back! Yes Men Websites Shut Down After Calgary Prank

On June 14th, The Yes Men showed up at Calgary's Go-Expo, Canada's largest oil conference, and pranked 300 oil company representatives. Well, these petro-cowboys apparently don't have much of a sense of humour. From an email I received last night:

One day after the Yes Men made a joke announcement that ExxonMobil plans to turn billions of climate-change victims into a brand-new fuel called Vivoleum, the Yes Men's upstream internet service provider shut down Vivoleum.com, the Yes Men's spoof website, and cut off the Yes Men's email service, in reaction to a complaint whose source they will not identify. The provider, Broadview Networks, also made the Yes Men remove all mention of Exxon from TheYesMen.org before they'd restore the Yes Men's email service.

The Yes Men assume the complainant was Exxon. "Since parody is protected under US law, Exxon must think that people seeing the site will think Vivoleum's a real Exxon product, not just a parody," said Yes Man Mike Bonanno. "Exxon's policies do already contribute to 150,000 climate-change related deaths each year," added Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum. "So maybe it really is credible. What a resource!"

The current bottom line is that the Yes Men servers need a new home and a new sysadmin (who knows Linux). Any offers of help should be directed to people@theyesmen.org.

ExxonMobile Front Group Backs Baird On Climate Change

Not surprisingly, the Fraser Institute adds its voice to the doomsayers with this piece of pseudo-analysis today. Not surprisingly, it turns out that the Fraser Institute has received thousands ($120,000) from ExxonMobile over the years to fund its climate change "research".