As if we needed any more reasons to win the health-care fight.
The New York Times is reporting that "Big Oil" (yes, it even calls it that) has begun copying some of the same tactics as the Insurance companies and is starting to engage in Astroturfing campaigns against comprehensive climate change reform.
If we lose the health-care battle, we're just validating that this dirty tactic works.
From the article:
HOUSTON — Hard on the heels of the health care protests, another citizen movement seems to have sprung up, this one to oppose Washington’s attempts to tackle climate change. But behind the scenes, an industry with much at stake — Big Oil — is pulling the strings.
Hundreds of people packed a downtown theater here on Tuesday for a lunchtime rally that was as much a celebration of oil’s traditional role in the Texas way of life as it was a political protest against Washington’s energy policies, which many here fear will raise energy prices...
The event on Tuesday was organized by a group called Energy Citizens, which is backed by the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s main trade group. Many of the people attending the demonstration were employees of oil companies who work in Houston and were bused from their workplaces.
This was the first of a series of about 20 rallies planned for Southern and oil-producing states to organize resistance to proposed legislation that would set a limit on emissions of heat-trapping gases, requiring many companies to buy emission permits. Participants described the system as an energy tax that would undermine the economy of Houston, the nation’s energy capital.
While these rallies may now have a large percentage of oil company employees, it certainly won't be long before more conservatives join in the rallies just to spite President Obama and the Democrats in Congress.
As you may know, the Senate will be taking up a greenhouse gas reduction bill soon -- the House narrowly passed a version of such a bill back in June, 219 to 212.
How threatened by this bill are the energy companies? Enough to send fake letters to Congress on multiple occasions falsely claiming to be from charities opposed to climate change legislation.
In fact, just today, the NY Times ran yet another story, More Fake Letters to Congress on Climate Change:
Congressional investigators have uncovered five more letters sent to members of Congress that falsely claimed to be from charities expressing opposition to climate change legislation.
The new letters bring to nine the number of nonprofit organizations whose identities were appropriated by Bonner & Associates, a Washington lobbying firm that says it specializes in developing grass-roots support for lobbying campaigns...
"We’ve seen fear-mongering with our nation’s senior citizens with health care, and now we’re seeing fraud-mongering with senior citizens on clean energy," Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, said in a statement.
If people want something to be afraid of, they can just consider the article earlier this month, Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security:
WASHINGTON — The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.
Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.
Of course, to Oil Companies, the Republicans and Corporate Democrats who are in their pockets, a scarier headline might read Climate Change Bill Seen as Threat to Oil Company Profits.
If we allow health insurance companies' dirty astroturfing tactics to be validated by a victory, expect to see more and more of this.
Of course, I'm preaching to the choir here, but it again underscores what an important fight we're in.