Energy Companies Plan for Carbon Costing

As with the big insurers, some of the big energy companies know climate change is going to change the way they’ve been doing business– and they’re planning for it.

More than two dozen of the nation’s biggest corporations, including the five major oil companies, are planning their future growth on the expectation that the government will force them to pay a price for carbon pollution as a way to control global warming.

The development is a striking departure from conservative orthodoxy and a reflection of growing divisions between the Republican Party and its business supporters.

A new report by the environmental data company CDP has found that at least 29 companies, some with close ties to Republicans, including ExxonMobil, Walmart and American Electric Power, are incorporating a price on carbon into their long-term financial plans.

Both supporters and opponents of action to fight global warming say the development is significant because businesses that chart a financial course to make money in a carbon-constrained future could be more inclined to support policies that address climate change..

One of the corporations not preparing for necessity is that owned by the birthright John Birchers, David and Charles Koch

Koch Industries, a conglomerate that has played a major role in pushing Republicans away from action on climate change, is ramping up an already-aggressive campaign against climate policy — specifically against any tax or price on carbon. Owned by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, the company includes oil refiners and the paper-goods company Georgia-Pacific.

Koch Brothers: Libertarian Except When their Profits Benefit from the Government

From Think Progress

Think Progress

“Americans for Prosperity, a national political organization that claims to uphold libertarian values, is showing its true intentions: Protect government support of fossil fuel interests.

Founded and partly funded by the oil billionaire Koch Brothers, AFP has become a leading organizer of the Tea Party. The organization has thrown millions of dollars behind national ads attacking clean energy that fact checkers have called “ultimately ridiculous.” (Even more ridiculous, AFP recently bussed in protesters to picket a small event where kids were flying kites on the beach in support of wind power).

Given AFP’s ties to the oil industry and its blatant disdain for renewable energy, its latest campaign to end a key tax credit for wind shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who follows the group. But what’s truly remarkable about AFP’s latest effort to kill wind tax credits is the mind-bending contradiction between its stance on renewable energy tax policy and fossil fuel tax policy….

See all at Think Progress