OIL COMPANIES EMERGE FROM STONE AGE

This follows California Governor Schwartzenegger’s remark on last Sunday’s Meet The Press that Senator Inhofe, who denies man-made global warming, was stuck in the Stone Age:

Energy Firms Come to Terms With Climate Change
Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin, November 25, 2006 (Washington Post)

- 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…
- John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil Co., said…"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…
- 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…
- Sen. Barbara Boxer (Calif.), who calls global warming "the greatest challenge of our generation," will take the place of Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) as chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Inhofe refers to global warming as a "hoax."

- Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), the incoming Energy and Natural Resources Committee chairman, said he hopes to "do something on global warming." Even though the Bush administration's expected opposition might make the enactment of legislation unlikely in the next two years, many companies cannot put off decisions about what sort of power plants to build…
- One reason companies are turning to Congress is to avert the multiplicity of regulations being drafted by various state governments…The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a group of seven Northeastern states, is moving ahead…California is drawing up its program…"We cannot deal with 50 different policies," said Shell's Hofmeister. "We need a national approach to greenhouse gases."
- …Though many energy firms had already voiced support in recent months for federal regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions, the coming changeover in Congress has intensified the discussions…