Exxon Mobil and the Carbon Tax: ‘Upon Further Review’
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 10, 2017“With a new political outlook in Washington, DC with climate and energy policy, Exxon Mobil should formally reject both cap-and-trade and a carbon tax.”
Rex Tillerson, whose confirmation hearing is scheduled for tomorrow, presided over a major public policy change while CEO of Exxon Mobil, reversing the prior policy of the principled realist Lee Raymond. Political forces, as well as a doomed attempt at appeasing its enemies (ending up in the state State Attorney General investigative war), led Exxon Mobil to reluctantly embrace a tax on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
My interpretation of Rex Tillerson et al.’s (failed) policy shift finds support for “it was just PR” rather than a fundamental belief in climate peril. As such, this shift is easily reversible by Exxon Mobil’s new CEO, Darren Woods.…
Continue ReadingMy Time at Enron: For the Record (again)
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 9, 2017The Institute for Energy Research (IER) and its advocacy arm, the American Energy Alliance (AEA), are in the news.
As reported last month in the Los Angeles Times, and more recently in Bloomberg Politics, IER/AEA are involved in the free-market directions that the president-elect and his team have followed to date.
One account described the founding of IER as follows:
The Institute for Energy Research was founded to be a clearinghouse for energy information in 1989 in Houston by Robert L. Bradley Jr., a speechwriter for Enron chief executive Kenneth Lay, who was later convicted of securities fraud.
Given that this association is part of the political conversation (Joe Romm started it in 2009: see below), and the continuing attention that is ahead for IER/AEA, I wish to revisit the historical record about my time at Enron that overlapped with IER.…
Continue ReadingCornwell Alliance Petition for EPA Administrator Nominee (real environmentalism, not dogma)
By E. Calvin Beisner -- January 7, 2017“Some radical environmentalists and religious activists oppose Mr. Pruitt because he does not embrace their exaggerated fears of human-induced global warming—fears that go well beyond the empirical evidence crucial to genuine science—or their antipathy to the development of the abundant, reliable, affordable energy indispensable to lifting and keeping whole societies out of poverty and the disease and premature death that invariably accompany it.”
January 5, 2017
Dear President-elect Donald J. Trump:
We write to you as evangelical and mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish scientists, economists, legal scholars, policy experts, and religious leaders in support of your nomination of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to the office of Administrator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA has the crucial task of writing and enforcing regulations that apply statutes passed by Congress and signed by the President to protect the life and health of Americans.…
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