The Marathon Petroleum Refinery in Reserve, La. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Watching Louisiana’s oil-soaked politicians madly embracing carbon capture to reduce greenhouse gas emissions recalls a famous saying from the 1960s: Long hair can cover a red neck.

Yes, the world desperately needs to reduce emissions any way it can if Louisiana’s coastal zone is to survive climate change. But are Steve Scalise, Garret Graves and the rest of our GOP gang in Congress suddenly turning greener than Rachel Carson?

Or is there another reason behind their sudden change?

Well, there is. And, as always with this group, it’s about getting the public to pay fossil fuel companies to do the right thing.

Here’s the deal.

For decades, these petrol-patriots said efforts to reduce emissions at their refineries was bad for America. It would cost them money and hurt consumers, and was unnecessary because climate change was a hoax — and they were not the problem, anyway.

But last year President Joe Biden got his Inflation Reduction Act passed, providing roughly $374 billion dollars in grants and tax incentives to encourage American industry to reduce emissions. A large chunk of that will be available to the energy industry to capture and store their refinery emissions underground. The credits start at $45 a ton and could reach a whopping $180 a ton.

Such a deal! You and I will be paying them to stop adding to the emissions responsible for larger hurricanes already wreaking greater economic disasters on us, ruinous rises in insurance rates and surging sea levels that could swallow our bottom third in the next 40 years.

Best of all (for them), they can still make the fossil fuels that will produce even more carbon than will be captured at their refineries. All while continuing their fight against taxpayer grants to increase green energy.

It’s like paying a thief to stop stealing just some of your money.

Meanwhile, oil giants like Chevron and Exxon-Mobile see the potential of trillions in profits by providing the pipelines to remove the crisis-causing carbon their refineries and products produce. They made untold billions pumping the poisons into our air, causing this crisis, now they see even more profits taking it out.

Read the rest of the article at The Times-Picayune.