Links tagged “Exxon”

"We uphold feminist, anti-racist, anti-colonial norms..."

“Mediocre Careerism, Respectability Politics, and Bad Behavior by Senior Scientists Erode Global Climate Leadership,” was given last week at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union:

“… effective action on climate change has been impeded for 30 years because of the political assassination and anti-democratic campaigns (a form of extortion, lies, intimidation, bribery, and toadery) waged by ExxonMobil, Shell, British Petroleum and other fossil fuel companies…. Their transactions of power are so damaging and genocidal….”

“Here we find the genocidal systems of white supremacy, fascism, nationalism, colonialism, neoliberalism, and capitalism. Here we find the billionaires, the oligarchs, the war mongers, the predators, the enablers. The veins and axes of power that maintain white patriarchy are the same axes of power that fossil fuel companies operate from.”

“… progress at any cost is what we must fight for. In this frame, racist, misogynist, colonialist behavior are just unfortunate externalities of having to move fast and break things.”

"We uphold feminist, anti-racist, anti-colonial norms and practices, to train scientists, students, and STEM practitioners in public scholarship and climate leadership…."

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."