Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
Chevron CEO sees smoke and mirrors in cap and trade
“If you liked credit derivatives swaps, you’re going to love cap-and-trade.”
One can presume that Chevron Chief Executive David O’Reilly is not a fan of the current deep worldwide recession — which was worsened by a credit-market lockup blamed in part on hard-to-value securities.
And, he made it very clear on Thursday that he is not enamored of the system the Obama administration hopes to use to reduce U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide, which are produced through the burning of fossil fuels sold by the No. 2 U.S. oil and gas company.
“It’s smoke and mirrors,” O’Reilly told a Boston business group. “Personally, I think it’s going to be a difficult system. I don’t think the American people trust it.”
Do green jobs cannibalize other jobs?
President Obama has promised to help create millions of new green jobs, saying that doing so will spur the U.S. economy toward recovery — and has held out Spain as having “surged ahead” of the rest of the world by investing in renewable energy.
But a new study of Spain’s renewable energy initiatives has found that creating green jobs actually destroys jobs in other sectors — and most of the time doesn’t lead to permanent employment.
