The Oil Companies Have Our Backs, Don’t They?

The oil companies would like you to believe that they have your best interests at heart.

You may have heard, for instance, that ExxonMobil is working on algae-based biofuels and developing the separators for the lithium-ion batteries that are the heart of our electric vehicles.  Both of these statements are true, by the way, though are they intended to make a dent in our planet’s consumption of fossil fuels?  Well, given that Chevron and Shell have both cancelled their algal fuels programs because it’s now clear that such technology isn’t feasible, a cynic just might think that Exxon’s meager efforts, combined with their sizable ad campaign, is so much greenwashing.

Election day here in the U.S. gives us a peek into what is actually happening on the ground vis-a-vis the sincerity of the oil companies to clean up our energy supplies.

Take Propositions 112 and 74 in Colorado as an example.  Prop 112 would prevent oil and gas exploration within a certain number of yards of schools, hospitals, and other public places, something Big Oil is desperate to kill.  What if it passes?  Enter Prop 74.

On the surface, it sounds perfectly benign: farmers should be compensated if their property values fall as a result of oil and gas exploration; it actually sounds like it could have been written to fight against Big Oil.

Here’s the voice-over from the ad:  I’m a proud Colorado rancher and veteran, honored to have served and fought for our way of life. I was raised to understand that our property belongs to us. So, when government makes decisions that impact the value of our property, we should be able to ask for fair market compensation. That’s why I support Amendment 74. No matter what kind of property you own or hope to own some day, you need to stand up for your rights. Vote yes on 74. It’s only fair.

But what it actually does is create an 11-words change in the state constitution that allows commercial enterprises to sue state and local governments, prohibiting the latter from restricting how and where they can drill.   I.e., oil companies see Prop 74 as a hedge against Prop 112.  I.e., if they are restricted by the passage of 112, they will sue under 74.

Of course, the oil companies can spend vastly more than the consumer protection groups.  The fossil fuel industry has spent $40 million promoting 74, with deceptive ads like the one above.  Do farmers actually support the bill too?  Yes, they contribute o.2% of the ad funding; the other 99.8% comes from the true beneficiaries.

Here’s some reporting on the subject from David Sirota (photo above), who graduated from the same small, independent Quaker school in Philadelphia, exactly 20 years after I did.  William Penn Charter School turns out approximately one out of every 31,000 high school diplomas here in the U.S., so it’s quite a lovely coincidence, as well as a considerable honor.

From his interview on Democracy Now this morning:

For years, Colorado’s environmentalists and residents of many communities have been asking the state legislature to pass laws that would compel  these oil and gas companies to set their fracking and drilling rigs farther back from hospitals, schools, child daycare centers and residential neighborhoods. And the oil and gas industry has used its enormous political power to block those initiatives in the legislature. And so, activists out here got enough signatures to get 112 on the ballot. And that has terrified the oil and gas industry, which is used to getting its way on everything in this state.

The oil and gas industry responded with this constitutional measure which would empower those companies to sue local communities if local communities pass laws to regulate the health and safety, and all sorts of other public interest ways, the oil and gas industry. So, if a town decides that it doesn’t like that it’s hearing reports from parents that they have found benzene in their kids’ blood and they’re living near fracking rigs and that town decides to pass any kind of law restricting or regulating that fracking activity in the town, Amendment 74 would effectively empower those companies to sue that local government for alleged profit losses, if it puts those laws into place. And so, the effect would be a deep financial disincentive, a threat of bankruptcy, if any local communities try to regulate the oil and gas industry at all.

This would serve as a template for other states. Where you have states pushing to deal with climate change, to try to reduce fossil fuel emissions, this is a template, this private property measure, that could be put onto the ballot in other states in a way that would effectively ban and block any state and local effort to deal with climate change and to reduce fossil fuel use.

Who’s behind these measures? It’s a huge amount of oil and gas money. About $40 million has been spent by the oil and gas industry.  Their ad makes it seem like this is an initiative for farmers and ranchers. And the Farm Bureau has been essentially the face of the Amendment 74, but it has been 99.8 percent oil and gas money behind these initiatives, because this is what these initiatives are designed for. They are not designed for the average farmer or rancher in Colorado. They are designed to have fossil fuel attorneys sue local communities. And the amendment was developed by those fossil fuel lawyers. That’s exactly what this is for.

And this had been resurrected from the past. About 10 or 15 years ago, states like Oregon had put these private property measures on their books, and it was disastrous. Again, it allowed a corporate interest to sue local governments to effectively eviscerate their basic public interest laws and their zoning laws.

The proponents of Proposition 112, the setback measure, and opponents of Amendment 74 have been wildly outspent. Nobody has seen the amount of money that the oil and gas industry has poured into these races; it’s just an absolutely unprecedented amount of money. And the folks who are pushing for setbacks, the folks who are against Amendment 74, have been vastly outspent because they don’t have the resources of the oil and gas industry.

And I want to go to 74 for one more moment here. You have to understand how deceptive the language on the ballot is. That’s part of the trick here. It proposes an 11-word change to our state constitution. And that constitutional question is also important, because that’s the law that governs all the other laws. But when you look at it on the ballot, it seems like a completely commonsense measure. It says, if the government takes an action, it should remunerate you for any loss of property value. And so there are a lot of voters out there who are progressive voters, Democratic voters, who think this is a commonsense measure that’s almost innocuous, and don’t generally understand who is behind it, because state officials here in Colorado didn’t compel the oil and gas industry to better explain what the measure was all about and what its effects could be. So, when you open the ballot, you may think you’re voting on an innocuous principle that won’t really change much of Colorado law at all, and yet this is a radical change to our takings laws, our eminent domain laws, in a way that is designed to narrowly and specifically benefit the fossil fuel industry.

This is the most radical ballot measure on the ballot in the entire United States of America in this election. It is designed to create a way for the fossil fuel industry to stop all regulations, at a time when scientists are telling us that we need serious regulations to reduce carbon emissions and fossil fuel use. If this passes in Colorado—and it’s not clear whether it will—if it does, you can expect to see this kind of ballot measure in most—in many other major fossil fuel states across the country.