Big Oil Claims Climate Bill Would Shift Jobs Offshore, But Completely Ignores Border Tariff

At today's Senate hearing [1] on the Kerry-Boxer clean energy jobs and climate protection bill, the oil refinery lobby claimed, [2] "this legislation will export carbon dioxide emissions to other countries and take with it American jobs," proceeding to cite a discredited right-wing study projecting job losses of up to 11 million. [3]

But sometimes one wonders if the special interest lobbyist are even trying.

The National Petrochemical and Refiners Association in their Senate testimony didn't even bother to mention [2], let alone critique, the Senate committee's intention to include a carbon tariff [4] specifically to prevent industries from simply moving overseas, and exporting carbon-intensive goods back to us without penalty.

As my colleague Natasha Chart reported earlier [5]: "Section 765 of the draft version I've been looking at says, 'It is the sense of the Senate that this Act will contain a trade title that will include a border measure that is consistent with our international obligations and designed to work in conjunction with provisions that allocate allowances to energy-intensive and trade-exposed industries.'"

The devil is always in the details. Until Senate negotiators come up with specific language we can't assess how well it might work.

But if Big OIl actually cared about resolving the issue, industry executives would get behind a carbon tariff version they believed would work.

Completely ignoring the fact that Senators are actively trying to come up with such language only shows that oil execs don't really care about creating jobs as we cap carbon. They have no interest in creating millions of green jobs and dramatically expanding our manufacturing base. They just want to kill the bill.

I know. Shocking.

There plenty of challenges in crafting an effective carbon cap bill. Senate leaders are working on them. Special interests are ignoring them.