The American Petroleum Institute, perhaps realizing that it has finally lost its decades-long, oil industry-funded war against the science undergirding human-caused climate change, has come with a new plan to ward off Congressional interference in the energy business: Dress up in a skirt.
Seriously, on Wednesday, API decided to play the gender card by bringing female oil industry employees to Washington. (Found via Environmental Capital.)
Women working for America's oil and natural gas companies in 11 states are on Capitol Hill this week to meet with policymakers and discuss their concerns on major issues affecting their industry. Geologists, petrophysicists, land professionals, refinery workers and others from Louisiana, Illinois, Texas, Arkansas, Alaska and beyond -- all active, contributing members of their communities and their states, are using the opportunity to talk about how legislation under consideration would affect them, their communities and all American consumers.
Aisha Raga, a senior geologist at Andarko Petroleum: "The oil and gas industry is many faces. It's not just middle-aged men. It's women too."
"Cheryl Gomez, a technical engineering manager for ExxonMobil, said she wants to tell lawmakers how important it is to open new areas for oil and natural gas development."
I, for one, am convinced. Until this week, I had assumed that the oil industry only employed men. And since these guys were busily destroying the world, I had no qualms about crushing them under my feet, about blowing up their refineries and offshore platforms and pipelines and sowing salt in their fields and wiping their memory from the face of the world. But now that I see the fair faces and hear the gentle lamentation of the kind-hearted women-folk of oil, my cold heart is softening, and I don't mind that American Petroleum Institute lobbyists went to work for the Bush administration and distorted climate change science and I don't mind that Exxon poured millions of dollars into promoting climate skepticism and I don't mind that greenhouse gases generated by burning fossil fuels are screwing with the planet in potentially catastrophic fashion. You see, I have a daughter too, and I would never blame her for global warming. She's way too cute!
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