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At first glance, this would appear to be encouraging news.
Confronted with a sharp change of priorities in Washington, international oil executives are expressing an eagerness to work with President Obama to fashion new policies to tackle global warming.
At an industry conference here this week, the executives struck a conciliatory tone on how to limit the emissions that are contributing to climate change, with many of them sounding like budding conservationists as they stressed energy efficiency and the need to develop renewable fuels.
Believe it or not, one of ExxonMobil's top executives is even backing a carbon tax, "while criticizing a so-called cap-and-trade approach." And Dan Yergin of Cambridge Energy Research Associates says that the oil companies "are not arguing about basic philosophy anymore, but about practical steps."
It all sounds good, so why aren't I getting too excited? Mainly, because looking at these companies behavior - including funding global warming deniers - I don't trust 'em as far as I can throw 'em. In addition, I worry that the involvement of oil companies in fashioning measures to tackle global warming will simply water them down until they're worthless, sort of like Virginia House Republicans just did to the smoking ban. Still, I admit to a bit of optimism that Big Oil might really be seeing the political writing on the wall. Should I be optimistic, or is Big Oil simply putting out public relations talking points here? What do you think?
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At first glance, 
