We all know one of the few promises Obama kept in his 2008 campaign was he would bankrupt coal. We’ve all heard his words, but they should be ingrained in our minds so here is the video once more:

We all know about all the new regs from the EPA which has caused many coal plants to shut down, three in my area alone. We know about all the new coal plants which were planned years ago but plans have been scrapped because of the cost. We know about all the layoffs in the coal industry. We know the United Mine Workers did not endorse Obama for re-election. We know about all the miners in southeast Ohio who rallied in support of Romney’s pro-coal stance. We know that Murray Coal just threw up their hands and closed a mine in Ohio. We know Mike Bloomberg gave $50 million out of his own pocket to the Sierra Club in an effort to “dump coal.”  This is just the tip of the iceberg.

And we know that Obama and the Dept. of Interior is after not only coal, but natural gas and oil in favor of failed wind and solar energy. We are frustrated because Interior after the Gulf BP spill shut down the majority of drilling in federal offshore areas. We watched Shell Oil struggle to get a permit for drilling in Alaska’s Beaufort Sea and never got started this year because of equipment failure.

We were elated that cap and trade was never passed. But just as ACORN has rebranded itself and is still out there like cockroaches hiding from the daylight, so has cap and trade “rebranded itself” into a proposed “carbon tax.” From Bloomberg:

A carbon tax would force electricity producers, refiners and manufacturers to pay a fee for the greenhouse gases they emit. It is gaining interest as lawmakers and President Barack Obama pledge to simplify the corporate tax code and raise revenue to narrow the deficit. The devastation from superstorm Sandy following the wildfires and drought of this summer have also increased concern about global warming.

And guess who some of the major players are who have signed on to this proposal? None other than RoyalDutchShell, ExxonMobil and BP. And why?

The most obvious reason why big oil and gas companies would support a huge new tax on their own products is that it would kill coal first. Burning coal emits roughly twice as much carbon dioxide as producing the same amount of energy by burning natural gas. A $20 a ton of CO2 tax would roughly double the current price of coal used for producing electricity. That would provide a huge incentive for utilities to switch to natural gas. Exxon Mobil owns the world’s largest privately-owned reserves of natural gas. Shell and BP also own huge gas reserves.

Shell has it’s HQ in the Hague, BP in the UK, but even though Exxon is headquartered in the U.S. most of it’s drilling is done internationally. And it might surprise you who the “leader” is in this international effort to impose a *carbon tax*: none other than Prince Charles, The Prince of Wales:

You can scroll through all the signatories on his site, one other major player is Norway’s StatOil, and of course all the environmentalists.

“The source hit hardest is coal,” David Kreutzer, a research fellow in energy economics at the Heritage Foundation in Washington who opposes the tax, said in an interview. “The biggest substitution for coal is going to be natural gas.”

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) admits getting a carbon tax through Congress will be difficult, however we all know Obama’s propensity for back-door Executive Orders like amnesty and welfare DE-form.

So just like almost every other corporation, *Big Oil* is favoring “profits” over “principle.”

Crossposted at Unified Patriots and Grumpy Elder