I wish Exxon/Mobil and the other giant energy companies would use their enormous warchests to diversify the kinds of things that they do rather than to fund pseudoscience and the spread of stupidity about the climate. Back at the turn of the 20th-Century, if you made a living making saddles would you have been better off transitioning to car batteries or in trying to kill road construction?
At this point, I am beginning to consider Big Oil as a truly evil force that should be combatted with force.
Heck, I’d even be happy if they diverted the money they spent greenwashing themselves. They spend far more money crowing about how enviro-friendly they are (Remember “Beyond Petroleum”?) than they actually spend doing the things they want people to think they’re doing.
So…invade their companies, fire their leaders and convert everyone to socialism? Bring it on!
And the problem is that there’s really no way to “protest” these sorts of things. As much as Bill and the rest of the tar sands activists are doing, it’s not really doing anything but gaining publicity. That’s fine and all, but it’s not going to have the impact they desire. You need to figure out how to disrupt Capitol Hill’s lives in order to get people to care, embarrass them, or figure out some way to make the public themselves care. But the public DOESN’T care because climate change is intangible, they can’t see it.
So how can we use civil disobedience as a tool to stop this madness? I wish I had an answer. I think we’d be better off looking for other methods, personally…
Also, check this video debunking a rabid claim that researchers at CERN have confirmed global warming is the result of cosmic rays:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvztL9r47MI&feature=feedu
It is much more difficult to use civil disobedience in a homeland security state, as a 71-year-old retired plumber found out at a Rotary Club meeting at which Paul Ryan was speaking. It is even hard to engage these nitwits in dialog.
Well, Big Oil ain’t going to go gentle into that good night. Nationalization is the best solution, when you get down to brass tacks; but I don’t see that happening any time soon, perhaps not in my lifetime. Incrementally, we could force them to start paying some fucking taxes.
First, of course we should stop subsidizing oil exploration. Let them pay for all of it. And next time one of these oil apologists uses that ald familiar “The gub’mint shouldn’t pick the winners and losers” argument about clean energy, remind them that by subsidizing big oil, we already do.
OT, but 31 million people watched Obama’s Job Speech last night!
Having the speech before the game was a good idea, and I contend that more people watched it because of the “speech-timing” kerfluffle. If Boehner was trying to “trick” POTUS by having the speech the same day as NFL kick-off, it certainly backfired.
here’e the write up from reuters:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/09/us-obama-idUSTRE7887GA20110909
More people watched the speech than the actual NFL kickoff game by about 4 million
For comparison, over 30 million people watched the POTUS Jobs for America speech, but only a little over 6 million watched the GOP debate: 5.4 million.
Boner vs Obama vis a vis speech-gate: Obama game, set, match = WIN!
That doesn’t count the folks who streamed it, either directly from whitehouse.gov or Cspan or through various links on blogs.
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Wow! After World War II all conflicts of the Western countries have been about oil. It started with the overthrow of Iran’s Mossadeq by our CIA and BP. Add all conflicts from Vietnam to Libya today.
BP is nicknamed Blair Petroleum
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."And before World War I, some of the drivers of the conflict was competition for oil and other strategic resources by the major powers in Europe.
And in the 1880s, the US saw Hawaii and the Philippines as strategic as coaling stations for a global fleet.
Vietnam was not a conflict over oil, nor was Panama or Grenada. And Libya fundamentally is not a conflict over oil; Gaddafi has significant oil contracts with the West and with US companies after he was brought back in from the cold by Bush and Blair.
The strategic resources for arming and provisioning militaries are a significant component of all international conflict. Which is why folks are worried about rare earths and other materials key to high technology alternative energy and electronics.
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Learned from a researcher at Dutch/British Shell Petroleum – French geologists and Vietnam. Of course now everyone knows the potential of the Asean coast.
Churchill, Oil and the Iraq War
The rare earth metals are located in China and some in Afghanistan.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."It is one of the characteristics of old technologies that they cannot gracefully adapt to new technologies. It would require the decommissioning of too many existing assets before you built up the market in the new technology.
You saw this in IBM’s slow response to personal computing until…it took the market by being open hardware. And Microsoft’s missing the internet until they introduced IE as the first free browser (well Mosaic was free, in effect). You saw it in the response of telephone companies to the bandwidth requirements of the internet. Competing technologies developed by small companies pioneered the market. But in all these cases, the major players were smart enough to buy up enough of the new companies to become players. Or in the case of IBM and Linux use open source software alliances to their advantage.
Tobacco companies, oil companies, and Microsoft depend on lawyers to keep them in business in the face of problems with their products or problems with regulation. It’s cheaper than real dramatic market-disruptive R&D. Especially the D part.
Those depreciated off refineries are a big weight preventing rapid adaptation to alternative energy sources. Plus the reluctance to learn new technologies and new business models.
fuck it, then. Buy up General Foods and sell cereal. Acquire different kinds of businesses until you’re not even primarily an energy company anymore. They have more money than most countries. They can do whatever they want.
Phillip Morris (er Altria) has tried that. Tobacco is still their most profitable profit center and all the other stuff gets periodically sold off and another brand acquired.
The do what their ROI calculations tells them is profitable. They really do not do whatever they want.
It is the operating assumptions of the industry that are a problem. Traditional electric utilities are having the same problem moving to alternative sources.
Buggy and buggy manufacturers had the same problems.
Even easier, require them to pay for Navy escorts through dangerous seas, etc. Make them pay for oil exploration by not providing them with government funded maps of where the oil is. Charge them large premiums for taking oil out of the ground (or offshore.)
Make them pay the real cost of producing their product. Petroleum products should cost in America what they do in Europe. Like $8/Gallon for gas.
The free market should force them out of the business (or into another one) but they don’t have to deal with free market forces as long as they have the US Government covering so many of their costs.
Evil? You mean THIS evil?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4FQoznrVwU