Some Companies are Becoming Less Green -- With Caution

The scientific unraveling of the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming hypothesis, is now allowing some companies to become less its proponents.  BP PLC and ConocoPhillips, both large oil firms, and Caterpillar Inc., the heavy equipment manufacturer, have pulled out of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) according to today's Wall Street Journal.  This alliance of companies and environmental groups was formed in 2007 when many businesses decided it was better to be at the table making greenhouse gas restrictive legislation than to be on the table to be eaten.  The widening disillusionment with the Democrat policies to drive up the costs of energy and to cripple the economy with CO2 emissions restrictions and the scientific failure of the catastrophic greenhouse gas global warming theory have given these companies some cover to cautiously reduce their support for any such controls.  Royal Dutch Shell PLC, GE, and Honeywell International Inc. remain in the evil coalition with the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

ConocoPhillips, BP, and Caterpillar had previously opposed the legislation before Congress on various grounds.  The oil companies wanted all energy producers to be treated equally.  Caterpillar did not want tariffs to be imposed on other countries which did not match U.S. efforts to cut back on the minor greenhouse gases, the major one being water vapor, which is uncontrollable for sure.  Caterpillar is a heavy exporter of equipment and does not want to see tariff wars develop.  Now that gas emissions restrictions to deal with the fabled global warming are unlikely to happen via legislation before the 2010 elections, companies no longer have a great need to pretend their differences of opinion are unimportant compared to that goal.  The cautious play for these departing companies lies in their stated support for some kind of restrictions on the minor greenhouse gases and for some green causes.

In other news on the political front relating to greenhouse gases, Texas is taking legal action against the EPA's attempt to restrict greenhouse gases under the decades old Clean Air Act.  It is arguing that the EPA based its decision on the UN IPCC AR4 report of 2007 and that report has now been shown to be seriously defective.  The Virginia Attorney General, Kenneth Cuccinelli asked the EPA to delay its finding that it could and should regulate CO2 and other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act while new information is considered that the temperature increases have been exaggerated and that natural causes may have caused most of the temperature rise.