Desperate times, desperate measures

First off, it is WAY too hot outside.

But we aren’t the only ones feeling the heat these days. Obama’s energy plan is facing stiff resistance from grassroots protesters who, in keeping with the style of the times, are funded by corporate interests. A large protest in Houston, TX earlier this week that was “as much a celebration of oil’s traditional role in the Texas way of life” as it was a chance to bitch at the federal government was put together by Energy Citizens, a group backed by the American Petroleum Institute. In fact, many of the protesters were oil company employees who’d been brought in from work by buses to air their bosses’ grievances.

And it gets worse. The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity got busted for hiring a PR firm to send forged letters against climate change laws to Congressmen. Worse, the letters were sent under the pretense of concerned minority activist groups like the NAACP. Dick move, guys.

Why all this acrimony? Oil companies strongly object to setting limits on emissions of heat-trapping gases because they’re too cheap to buy emission permits. Their supporters and paid sycophants denounce the proposed legislation as an energy tax that undermines the economy of oil-rich states.

We’ve seen sponsored protests across the board in recent months, much of it from the conservative end of the spectrum, but Corn Car has long suspected that oil companies were propping up most of the anti-energy reform crowd, so that isn’t surprising. What really sucks longterm about astroturfing, though, is that it’s becoming impossible to just be an aware, outspoken citizen without being on someone’s payroll, or being suspected of it. As far as we know, our blog doesn’t have any corporate sponsors. Unless the interns are hiding the checks from us, the little bastards.