When your bread and butter is dead dinosaur byproduct …
The oil and gas industry may have thought it had killed the electric car, but sales -- boosted by generous government subsidies -- rose dramatically between 2010 and 2014, and energy giants are worried the thing may have come back to life.
Time to kill it again.
A new group that's being cobbled together with fossil fuel backing hopes to spend about $10 million dollars per year to boost petroleum-based transportation fuels and attack government subsidies for electric vehicles, according to refining industry sources familiar with the plan. A Koch Industries board member and a veteran Washington energy lobbyist are working quietly to fund and launch the new advocacy outfit.
The group plans to “use paid and earned media to push its pro-petroleum transportation messages, and do research to bolster the cause.” You know, benefits like asthma, and global climate change, and polluted groundwater. More benefits like that beautiful and mysterious smog that covers China’s biggest cities. And benefits like global unrest and war. You know, benefits!
But really, if they want to have a debate about government subsidies for energy producers, let’s have it! But really, this is about the long-term health of the Koch brothers themselves, and of the party they have taken over. Electric cars threaten the very money spigot that keeps conservatism solvent, and with GM, Tesla, Apple, Google, the German manufacturers, and many others getting into the game, the future of the internal combustion engine is limited.
But the Kochs won’t go down without a fight funded by millions of their dollars. They never do.