The Big Company that Cried, “Green!”

Recently ExxonMobil has taken over the centerfold of the A Section of the New York Times, space they’ve used to trumpet their awareness of and concern about the problem of where future energy supplies will come from and the environmental impact of our use of fossil fuels. Generally, these ads have a personal element, featuring photos of company employees, clean cut and concerned, who are on the case, valiantly working to preserve The American Way of Life.

Truth and Justice? Not so much. Continued consumption? Oh yes! Oh yes!

One ad spotlighted a young, thin, somewhat preppy looking African American man, alongside a slightly older white woman.

Barack? Hilary! What are you two doing here?!

This is of a piece with British Petroleum re-branding itself as Just-Plain-BP and telling us that this stands for “Beyond Petroleum,” with GM telling us that the Chevy Volt is The Answer to our personal transportation problems (and/or to the Toyota Prius), with the nuclear power industry pushing the idea that nukes are a zero (carbon) emission source of electricity.

Working backwards, I am more focused on the fact that: our friendly neighborhood nuke people have long assured us that nuclear power is perfectly safe, although they can’t bear the cost of these accidents that will never happen; and forty or fifty years in, we have no permanent disposal site for nuclear waste (Yucca Mountain? Yucca Mountain?) so we’ve just been keeping it in pools at a-nuke-near-you for decades.

The Chevy Volt (due out in 2010), based on a battery that doesn’t yet exist, is quite appealing, at least as a stopgap, unless one hangs up on (who killed) the EV1. Burn me once. . .

As for BP, I’m a little queasy about relying on the kindness and the credibility of a company whose history includes complicity in the toppling of a democratically elected, if inconvenient, government: In 1953, BP (then the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company) conspired with the CIA in Operation Ajax, helping to depose the government of Iran. This brought us the Shah. He brought us the ayatollahs. They brought us the Iranian Revolution. Among other dividends, this brought us Hezbollah.

So. . . like any card carrying cynic, I’ll plead reality here. The energy and transportation industries extant have every reason to plan for a post-carbon business landscape. At the moment, they have the capital—both human and financial—and the infrastructure to begin moving us toward more sustainable modes of energy generation and usage. They say that’s what they are doing. All we have to do is bear with them and keep those subsidies coming.

I don’t believe them.

They want us to clap for Tinkerbell. I keep seeing the Cowardly Lion, eyes closed, chanting to himself, “I do believe in hydrocarbons, I do believe in hydrocarbons. I do, I do, I do believe in hydrocarbons.”

“Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.” “Don’t get fooled again.”

Republicans Want to Filibuster Energy & Climate Bills?

LET THEM!

A recent article in Rolling Stone Magazine suggested that Democrats in the Senate are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome—their time in the minority has left them even more timid than usual, and more prone (on almost any matter of any importance) to revert to “the Republicans won’t let this go through, and pushing it will just antagonize them. No point in trying really. . .”

And so sank a variety of energy and global climate change related bills that have risen and (quickly) fallen in the past week or so. Whaddaya gonna doo? If you don’t have sixty votes to shut down a filibuster, why bother? Lunch anyone?

In late 1995 and early 1996, Newt Gingrich spearheaded the shutting down of the federal government (14-19 November 1995; 16 December 1995-6 January 1996), a face-off that ended up hurting him and benefiting President Bill Clinton. The lesson some drew from this is that “obstructionism” is politically costly.

Personally, I’m more than ready for some obstructionism. Bizarre that this is a partisan issue (like one party being the Gravity Party and the other being the Anti-Gravity Party), but this is where we are.

The Republicans want to filibuster, among other things: 1. To protect the oil companies from the repeal of the billions of dollars of tax breaks they have long enjoyed; 2. To prevent the passage of an emissions reduction bill (likely through a market-based permitting and cap & trade regime) that would at least begin to address global climate change; 3. To protest the protection (link is to anti-protection, pro-drilling site) of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) from oil drilling.

LET THEM!

The Democrats should show just an uncharacteristic smidge of vertebral integrity and let the Republicans “stand up for what they believe in.”

First and foremost, they should do this because it’s the right thing to do and this is the right fight to fight. But I find it hard to believe that they would not benefit from this politically as well.

Think of the shock value: “Democrats standing up for—!” Well just the “standing up” part would be new and newsworthy.

And the Republicans?

We have seven weeks or so (w/ time out for the 4^th of July) until the Congress breaks for August recess. If the Republicans are committed to gridlocking the Senate for that period in order to stand up for Big Oil and to stare down environmental protection in all its nefarious guises. . .

LET THEM!