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.

2007 Energy Bill Sends Light Bulb Jobs to China

The GE Winchester, Virginia Bulb Plant makes incandescent light bulbs which the 2007 Energy Act outlaws in 2012 in some wattages and eliminates entirely in 2014. The plant with its 200 employees, along with other plants in Ohio and Kentucky with an additional 200 people, is being closed. GE is having compact fluorescent bulbs made in China to replace the regular incandescent bulbs they will no longer make. See a report by Timothy Carney in The Examiner.

The compact fluorescent bulbs have mercury gas in them, which is being dumped into regular landfills, though the bulbs commonly break and then the volatile liquid mercury escapes. These bulbs cost much more than incandescent bulbs upon sale as well. But, because they involve mercury and given environmental laws in the U.S., it is easier to make them in China. In fact, according to The Times of London, large numbers of Chinese workers have been poisoned by mercury which goes into the compact fluorescent bulbs. Of course, these Chinese workers are also paid less and labor regulations are less of a problem for GE.

Given the promises of the Obama gang that they are going to produce many "Green Jobs", GE is under pressure to provide some "Green Jobs" in the U.S., rather than in China. So, they are moving a Hybrid Electric Heat Pump operation from China to Kentucky, where they will be adding 400 jobs. The 400 jobs lost in Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky will be replaced with 400 jobs in Kentucky. No net gain as promised by Obama, but also no embarrassing net loss of jobs.

GE lobbied for the 2007 Energy Act, soon after it developed a high-efficiency incandescent bulb which was supposed to eventually be as energy-efficient as the compact fluorescent bulb. It was also safer, turned on instantly, and produced a more white light. Apparently, contrary to Carney's article, GE has abandoned developments on the high-efficiency incandescent bulb in favor of developing light-emitting diode (LED) and organic LED or OLED lighting technologies. GE has been relatively quiet about this, but a number of environmentalist blogs have been discussing this, beginning with one called Clean Break. The LED technologies are still more energy efficient, longer lasting, and more durable. But, it is not known when manufacturing of products to replace large numbers of today's incandescent bulbs will begin and whether this manufacturing will be located in the United States.