Links tagged “Exxon”

Wind and solar do not eliminate the need for traditional power plants. This is the most disappointing problem of all. Because of intermittency, a backup system must always be on standby, ready to seamlessly take over the full load the instant the wind stops or the sun sets. The dominant source of that backup in the United States is natural gas (methane)—an improvement over coal but still a carbon-generating fossil fuel. Perhaps that is why so many fossil fuel companies strongly support renewables even as ExxonMobil and other fossil companies are budgeting billions over the next decade to expand their fossil fuel production. They seem to believe that wind and solar are, far from being a threat, a way to ensure a continuing need for their fossil fuels.

Jacobin Mag: "The fossil industry’s behavior constitutes a Crime Against Humanity in the classical sense: “a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack,” including murder and extermination. Unlike genocide, the UN clarifies, in the case of crimes against humanity, it is not necessary to prove that there is an overall specific intent. It suffices for there to be a simple intent to commit any of the acts listed…The perpetrator must also act with knowledge of the attack against the civilian population and that his/her action is part of that attack."

On climate, the precedent set in Nuremberg offers other lessons as well. It’s hard to think of a problem more widely attributed to “abstract entities” than global warming, allegedly the product of some unquenchable, ubiquitous human thirst for new stuff. That old Pogo cartoon still holds sway in the popular imagination: “We have met the enemy and he is us."