Meet the new whinge, same as the old whinge

Oh noes, the EPA is going to require that gasoline producers reduce the amount of sulfur in our gas. Cue the rending of garments, the "impossibility" argument, and the "it's going to cost so much" and "we're never going to be able to do it" typical bull. Sure, it's going to cost the industry money. IIRC, cost estimates are about $10 billion. Which sounds like a lot, doesn't it. I mean, how will the oil industry ever find that much money. Why they'll have to raise gas prices by $0.09 a gallon.

I mean, Exxon-Mobil by itself only had $9.6 billion in net profit the last quarter. You know, that money they like to say they need to have to plow back into their business so we shouldn't do anything like closing up the oil company's tax loopholes and deductions. It might mean a whole quarter of one oil company's profit plus the change they can find in the couch cushions to reduce the Medicare and Medicaid's cost (you know, what you and I pay) by $28 billion by reducing respiratory problems. Not mention reducing smog and increasing the life and productivity of our catalytic converters and engines.

Remember when Obama came into office and talked about alternative energy production and using natural gas as a bridging technology from coal? Remember the energy production companies wailing and moaning about how much that would cost and the "oh we can't ever move that fast, it'll take decades and require so much money in research, blah blah blah"? Say, did you know that in less than 5 years we reduced our dependence on coal by 80% by converting our power plants to natural gas? And all it took was for natural gas prices to nose dive to where power companies realized it would be cheaper to convert to natural gas. Did you see your electricity prices rise because of all the retrofitting? Remember the "we could never get our CO2 emissions below 1990 levels" wailing over Kyoto? I mean, we could never meet that goal by 2014. Except that we met that goal last year.

So, no, I don't believe the companies when they say they can't do or afford this. Like I said, it'll take just a little over one quarter's profit of one of the oil companies to pay for this.

Yea, I'm calling shenanigans.