Alan Prendergast at Westword tells the story of Rep. Jared Polis’ successful effort to stop a new $25 million giveaway for the failed energy source oil shale. And he starts it with the best headline we’ve ever seen: Jared Polis, zombie killer, dispatches undead oil shale subsidies
(Also, thanks for the shout out Alan)
Excerpt:
You might think that the idea of killing off an unnecessary subsidy for a technology that’s never been demonstrated to be commercially viable — or, for that matter, environmentally tolerable — would be a no-brainer. Shelling out public funds and tax breaks to well-heeled energy companies so they can rip up rocks and cook them, in the hope of producing a crude version of crude oil, just seems wrong. Especially if you’ve lived in Colorado long enough to remember Exxon’s abrupt pullout from its gung-ho pilot project on the Western Slope in 1982, which wiped out thousands of jobs overnight. (For a brief history of a century of dashed hopes about oil shale, check out this report from the Checks and Balances Project.)
Read Alan’s full story.
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