PROVING THAT the Houston Chronicle business section has more sense than to believe what it reads in Houston Chronicle editorials:
Facing unwelcome changes to U.S. energy policy, some oil and gas industry leaders are calling for stepped-up efforts to defend the business publicly and dispel what they view as myths about the potential of renewables to meet the nation's energy needs.
(Brett Clanton, "Oil Industry eager to take case to public," Houston Chronicle, May 10, 2009)
This is 180 from Friday's editorial about the Offshore Technology Conference, where industry was portrayed as pretty much ready to go along to get along.
[T]he 2008 conference agenda also reveals an industry mind-set very much in touch with the new political reality in Obama's Washington. Dealing with global warming will amost certainly be part of business as usual for the energy industry. Congress has made up its mind that there will be a price on carbon dioxide, most likely via a cap-and-trade system. The question on most OTC attendees' minds has been how best to work within the new rules of the game.
(Editorial, "An OTC appreciation," Houston Chronicle, May 8, 2009)
The industry is right to contest "myths about the potential of renewables to meet the nation's energy needs," in no small part because the industry's hometown newspaper enthusiastically spreads those myths. Oil and gas are okay, the Chronicle said, as "a sturdy bridge to energy independence and eventual reliance on renewable energy sources."
"Eventual reliance on renewable energy sources" is the Sasquatch of energy policy -- a creature the existence of which is fervently believed against all evidence to the contrary by leftists, environmentalists, editorialists, and other shareholders of Bigfoot, Inc.
If the oil and gas industry and regular folks push back, the "new political reality" in Washington may turn out to look a whole lot like the old political reality in Washington.
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