5 Things You Need to Know About Prop 23 -- Big Oil's Shady Ploy to Thwart a Climate Change Measure
f there is lots of money going into building a clean energy economy, that must be making the dirty energy companies, like Big Oil, pretty mad, right? Not surprisingly, that's who is behind the funding for Prop 23. The deep pockets responsible for Prop 23 are Texas oil giants Valero and Tesoro -- their refineries in California are among the state's top 10 biggest polluters. They're also getting help from the billionaire brothers of Koch Industries, who've also been busying pouring their loot into the Tea Party's efforts.
So far Valero has kicked in over $5 million to bolster Prop 23 and Tesoro has donated just over $2 million. Flint Hill Resources, a subsidiary of Koch Industries, has given a million. Other big donors include a half a million from Marathon Petroleum Company LLC and from the Adam Smith Foundation ("an advocacy organization committed to promoting conservative principles and individual liberties in Missouri and beyond"); $300,000 from Occidental Petroleum Corp.; $200,000 from Tower Energy Group; $150,000 from CVR Energy Inc.; and about $100,000 from Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assoc., the National Petrochemical & Refiners Assoc. and World Oil Corp. Beginning to see a trend?
The unemployment rate statewide is just over 12 percent and in some counties it is as high as 20 percent. The state has lost 34 percent of its manufacturing jobs in the last 10 years. The architects of Prop 23, also called the "California Jobs Initiative," believe that reducing global warming emissions and cutting pollution is somehow bad for the economy and bad for jobs.
Research suggests otherwise. Clean energy jobs are one of the few growing areas of the economy. Between 1995-2008, the number of clean energy businesses has grown 45 percent and the number of clean energy jobs has increased by 36 percent -- more than 10 times the average job growth in California.
