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       #Post#: 234--------------------------------------------------
       Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet
       Pollution
   DIR By: AGelbert
       Date: April 8, 2022, 2:23 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       June 18, 2014
       [center]AGelbert NOTE: This goes WAY BEYOND the
       🦕🦖 Koch Brothers. [/center]
       [center]
  HTML https://youtu.be/WpcRPlQol5U[/center]
       [center]
  HTML https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/1/3-020818201645-1486464.jpeg[/center]
       #Post#: 235--------------------------------------------------
       Big Oil's Wartime Dividend Bump To Wall Street
   DIR By: AGelbert
       Date: April 8, 2022, 2:29 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       BailoutWatch
       Apr 05, 2022
       [center]😈 Big 🦖 Oil's Wartime Dividend Bump To
       😈
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422162639.gif<br
       />Wall Street[/center]
       SNIPPET:
       Amid high gas prices and war in recent month, the US's largest
       oil and gas companies have seen profits soar. These 20
       companies, who received billions in taxpayer dollars during the
       coronavirus crisis, are passing newfound profits off to Wall
       Street in the form of massive dividend payouts. Eighteen of the
       companies reviewed in the report linked below increased their
       dividends in the past year. Eleven of the companies increased
       their payouts by at least 100%, some from zero, since the first
       quarter of 2021. On top of record quarterly dividend payouts,
       five of the company's past further profits onto shareholders in
       the form of variable dividends.
       Read more:
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040422164555-532108.png
  HTML https://bailoutwatch.org/data/big-oils-wartime-bonus-dividends
       #Post#: 248--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet
       Pollution
   DIR By: AGelbert
       Date: April 11, 2022, 4:25 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       [center][img
       width=640]
  HTML https://ci5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/LLUQCRqgXegPHNlj-0yetW7ryPosZ5Lt_JmKf3IDCJlvDjY7iZDCqu97vugiHB_FgGqXOUPnoP1MIAFgSsG9vcmmaS8Kv5JBj2Sl2PKKeePu57fRg2nggl2wa8KBu0K8Wk5_Y4muMH93SO4wIEIIxrC3PSkaZQXi_fOXgn8T5Vbs-ee1JImha-vekXdqZ9k=s0-d-e1-ft#https://acb0a5d73b67fccd4bbe-c2d8138f0ea10a18dd4c43ec3aa4240a.ssl.cf5.rackcdn.com/10074/oilgouge_resized.jpg?v=1649708859000[/img][/center]
       #Post#: 298--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet
       Pollution
   DIR By: AGelbert
       Date: May 14, 2022, 3:19 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       Some time ago, I read Gulliver's Travels. There is a passage
       there that applies NOW to, not just to the
  HTML https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/1/3-250718205808.gif&#128127;<br
       />Alito legalese doubletalking, word salad, sophistry laden
       legerdemain, but the ENTIRE
  HTML https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-130418203402.gif<br
       />Judiciary system in the United States (and most other
       countries
       too). Read it and consider how long ago it was written (i.e.
       1726). Sure, it was satire, but I am 100% certain that he meant
       every word of it as the sad truth of the matter:
       [center]
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-240422194904-9142493.jpeg[/center]
       --- Quote ---
       > Gulliver then turns to the subject of England's legal system.
       The man in the right, he explains, is always at a disadvantage
       because lawyers are not comfortable unless they are arguing for
       the wrong side. In short, lawyers are the most stupid of all
       Yahoos; they are enemies to knowledge and to justice.
  HTML https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/g/gullivers-travels/summary-and-analysis/part-iv-chapter-4
       --- End Quote ---
       [center]
  HTML https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-251021154305.gif[/center]
       --- Quote ---
       > Swift attacks the legal profession by quoting many legal
       terms. The Houyhnhnms have no such words; natural virtue
       requires no lawyers. Besides being a satiric end in itself, this
       fun with words prepares us for the discussion of European social
       institutions.
       --- End Quote ---
       History is laced with nationalistic propaganda (i.e happy talk
       and bold faced, feel good lies):
       --- Quote ---
       > History, Swift infers, is the tool of politics; it is misread
       and miswritten for selfish reasons.  In the service of
       politicians, history lies — about virtue, wisdom, and courage.
  HTML https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/g/gullivers-travels/summary-and-analysis/part-iii-chapter-8
       >
       > Swift draws on a theory that Bernard Mandeville made popular
       in his Fable of the Bees. &#127913;&#128520; Mandeville held
       that private vices increased &#128176; business; thus private
       vices were public virtues &#128580;. In Swift's view, private
       vices are no excuse for money-making; they constitute a vicious
       circle. To him, . private vices are public vices
  HTML https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/g/gullivers-travels/summary-and-analysis/part-iv-chapter-6
       --- End Quote ---
       We REALLY NEED, like YESTERDAY, to completely condemn the Alitos
       of this world to insignificance. As long as their
       &#128520;&#129421; SOCIAL DARWINIST world view dominates our
       society, We-the-Homo saps have no future.
       [center]
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-010422145028.jpeg[/center]
       #Post#: 465--------------------------------------------------
       &#128681; An update on the new climate
       &#128176;&#129430;&#128520; bill
   DIR By: AGelbert
       Date: August 23, 2022, 2:31 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       August 23, 2022
       Collin Rees, Oil Change International  info@priceofoil.org to me
       
  HTML https://earthtrack.net/sites/default/files/u10/oilchange%20logo.jpg
       Dear Anthony,
       This is a different type of email for us — there’s a critical
       action to take, but we also want to share our take on the new
       “climate bill” signed into law by President Biden last week: The
       Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). There’s a lot to unpack, and the
       news headlines only tell part of the story.
       [b]Here’s the short version:[/b]
       The Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law last week,
       finalizing a rushed, closed-door negotiation between Senate
       Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Joe Manchin with
       essentially no opportunity for input from anyone else. While the
       IRA includes some important investments in renewable energy, the
       bill embraces a deadly ‘all of the above’ energy strategy and is
       riddled with hundreds of billions of dollars in fossil fuel
       giveaways and lifelines to the oil, gas, and coal industries.
  HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/1/3-120818180835-16271224.gif
       The IRA massively expands federal subsidies for ‘carbon capture
       and storage’ (CCS), an unproven and dangerous technology to
       prolong &#129430;&#128520; Big Oil’s &#129421; influence by
       capturing the carbon emitted from fossil fuel power plants and
       other sources. In reality, the overwhelming majority of that
       carbon is used to extract more oil, increasing emissions and
       threatening communities. The IRA also legally mandates the
       selling-off of millions of federal lands and waters for fossil
       fuel production, before any federal lands can be leased for
       clean energy development.
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       Perhaps worst of all, only a small portion of the funds in the
       IRA will reach people most in need — a far cry from President
       Biden’s professed ‘Justice40’ commitment to spend 40% of climate
       spending on impacted communities. These fossil fuel giveaways
       will be particularly destructive to Indigenous and Alaska Native
       communities, BIPOC communities in the Gulf South, coastal
       communities and communities near federal lands — yet none of
       these groups were consulted in the legislative process in
       negotiating the IRA.
       To top it all off, reporting has revealed that in negotiating
       the IRA, &#128520; Manchin obtained a commitment from &#128013;
       Schumer to attempt to pass a separate piece of so-called
       ‘permitting reform’ legislation in September. In reality,
       ‘permitting reform’ is code for a wishlist of Big Oil’s top
       priorities
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210509-141844.gif<br
       />
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110422205132-6451602.gif<br
       />&#129430;
  HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-130418193910.gif<br
       />— the bill would greenlight the fracked gas Mountain Valley
       Pipeline (MVP) by exempting it from necessary permits, gut the
       National Environmental Policy Act and other bedrock
       environmental laws, and remove safeguards that have protected
       environmental justice communities for decades.
       Here’s where you come in. The IRA is now law, but there’s still
       time to stop this disastrous fossil fuel side deal (the leaked
       draft appears to have been written by the American Petroleum
       Institute). Join us in urging leaders in Congress like Senator
       Chuck Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi to stop this brazen
       giveaway to the fossil fuel industry and kill Manchin’s dirty
       side deal.
       We won’t stop working to halt the worst parts of the Inflation
       Reduction Act — it’s more important than ever that we remain
       vigilant against dangerous distractions like carbon capture
       subsidies. But now is a crucial time to stop Manchin’s fossil
       fuel side deal in its tracks. We’ll be developing a plan over
       the next several weeks to pressure other members of Congress to
       stand up to Senator Manchin and publicly voice their opposition
       to these fossil fuel giveaways.
       Regardless of what happens in Congress, we won’t stop pressuring
       President Biden to declare a climate emergency, accelerate
       funding for renewable and just energy systems, and reject new
       fossil fuel infrastructure projects.
       Click here to urge Congress to reject this dirty side deal and
       protect environmental justice communities
  HTML https://act.priceofoil.org/sign/stop-dirty-deal/?t=3&akid=45010%2E416661%2EQXJhx9.<br
       />We’ll be in regular contact over the upcoming weeks with
       additional actions to pressure Congress and President Biden to
       act swiftly to weaken the fossil fuel industry’s stranglehold on
       our political system and ensure that Indigenous, BIPOC, and
       frontline community voices are leading our energy transition.
       Thank you,
       Collin Rees
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122257-657398.png
       United States Program Manager
       Oil Change International
       #Post#: 490--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet
       Pollution
   DIR By: AGelbert
       Date: September 1, 2022, 5:10 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       EcoWatch
       Updated: August 31, 2022 By: Kristina Zagame  Edited By: Karsten
       Neumeister (graphics by AGelbert)
       [center]The Supreme Court’s Environmental Report Card: Which
       &#128520; Justices are
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080822134118-17091258.gif&#129430;Failing?[/center]
       SNIPPET:
       [center]
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-010922180717.jpeg[/center]
       In assigning our “Eco-Grades,” we looked at the top
       [size=18pt]40 environmentally related cases decided by the
       Supreme Court since 1992 (when the longest-serving justice,
       Clarence Thomas, began his term) in order to evaluate the
       environmental track record of each justice.
       With more failures than passing grades, it seems our justices
       have some studying up to do.
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-010922185321.jpeg
       Supreme Court Justice                             Starting Year
       Eco-Grade
       Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
       F
       Associate Justice Clarence Thomas                     1991
       F
       Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito
       F
       Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor
       A
       Associate Justice Elena Kagan
       A
       Associate Justice Neil M. Gorsuch 
       F
       Associate Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh
       D
       Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett                  2020
       D
       Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson
       TBD
       [center]
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-250422162854-1034303.png[/center]
       Full article:
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040422164555-532108.png
  HTML https://www.ecowatch.com/supreme-court-environmental-report-card.html
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-010922195111.png
       [move]&#128226; "With half of the members of the extreme right
       supermajority on the Supreme Court having been nominated by a
       president who had lost the popular vote by 2.7 million votes and
       confirmed by senators who represent well less than half of the
       voters in the country, the court’s recent decisions move our
       country perilously close to minority rule." [/move]
       BY PAUL BLAND 08/23/22 5:30 PM ET
       [center]Congress needs to modernize the &#129429; [b]Supreme
       Court and bring it into the 21st century[/b][/center]
       SNIPPETS:
       In the last four years, my organization, Public Justice, has won
       three victories at the U.S. Supreme Court. Two of those
       victories were unanimous, and two of them were written by
       justices who had been nominated by Republican presidents. So one
       might think, given the court’s recent tendency to side with us
       in important cases, that everything is just fine. If so, you’d
       be wrong.
       Instead, our view is that the nation’s highest court has
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif<br
       />veered off the rails in troubling and extreme ways. Far from
       acting in a restrained, careful way, the court has recently
       issued drastic and extreme opinions that are harmful to American
       society. ... ...
       ... the
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080822134118-17091258.gif<br
       />&#129430; Court invented a new doctrine (not based in any
       serious reading of the text of the Constitution) sharply
       limiting the ability of the federal government to protect the
       environment, address the climate change crisis or limit
       pollution.
       And this builds upon other decisions in recent years that
       undermine democracy, such as Citizens United v FEC (which paved
       the way for billionaires to spend far more of their money on
       elections, multiplying their power) and Shelby County v. Holder
       (where the court greatly undermined the Voting Rights Act). And
       the list goes on.
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080422121435.png
       With half of the members of the extreme right supermajority on
       the Supreme Court having been nominated by a president who had
       lost the popular vote by 2.7 million votes and confirmed by
       senators who represent well less than half of the voters in the
       country, the court’s recent decisions move our country
       perilously close to minority rule. Each of the extreme decisions
       described above is badly out of touch with the views of the
       majority of the American people, and this fact is reflected in
       the court’s plummeting public approval rating.
       And
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-010922192452.gifhttps://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif<br
       />they’re clearly not done yet. ... ...
       The court has taken a case which raises the possibility that a
       heavily gerrymandered state legislature could overturn a
       presidential election &#128565; in which a candidate the state
       legislative majority disfavors wins the clear majority of the
       votes. ... ...
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422133654.gif<br
       />It is now clear that the court badly needs reforming and
       modernizing. That’s why we at Public Justice are calling on
       Congress to take action. First, the court should be expanded to
       13 justices
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422145344-560693.png.<br
       /> And second, term limits should be implemented, capping
       service
       at a maximum of 18 years
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422145344-560693.png.<br
       />... ...
       Expanding the court should not be the end of Congress’s work to
       modernize our judicial system, however. ... ...
       In the past, justices have seemed to struggle to understand such
       basic modern concepts as text messaging, social media and other
       modern-day devices and issues, despite being asked to make
       weighty and consequential decisions about them. Term limits
       would also help address the growing problem of justice being
       held as a political prisoner based on who happens to be
       president when a sitting justice decides to retire or dies.
       Absent death, justices increasingly step down when they believe
       a president who shares their philosophy will nominate their
       replacement. That hardly helps keep the court above the
       political fray; indeed, it drops our most important legal body
       right in the middle of political hurricanes. That was never
       meant to be the case.
       Full TRUTH FILLED &#128509; article:
  HTML https://thehill.com/opinion/congress-blog/3612817-congress-needs-to-modernize-the-supreme-court-and-bring-it-into-the-21st-century/
       #Post#: 496--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet
       Pollution
   DIR By: AGelbert
       Date: September 4, 2022, 3:01 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       [center]
  HTML https://ci6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/7Iwt1Obw1A9OF4rmgyl-UYRo4MEJDf68gFtbGNW6JHUtpykjdICNc8oASCFbrYsucF5Fg17XbLG86FfHFO8yE4EkX6gjGVlOvmRAD7s5dGscLlHcisQ_pzhkscbiV_-D4oBdJi6nkSe_a2el9qT1VJhzoNSsAEZvHHg=s0-d-e1-ft#https://gallery.mailchimp.com/d1f5797e59060083034310930/images/2f11cead-050f-4018-bfed-c12fb45691e5.png[/center]
       Make Nexus Hot News part of your morning: click [i]here
  HTML https://newsletter.climatenexus.org/20201214-paris-anniversary-tx-oil-waivers-blm-proud-boys-dc?ecid=ACsprvtP9LIRcx9cfOaFYJGFTo6Wo-VHrrTxoSZXBB1iNg-UWMM2aVQlzF1IwYIVqFD9L7s5CwS4&utm_campaign=Hot%20News<br
       />to subscribe.[/i]
       [center]
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040922163120.png[/center]
       #Post#: 545--------------------------------------------------
       Is there any doubt that these companies are now plotting to keep
       the profits rolling in, even as mega-hurricanes and roa
   DIR By: AGelbert
       Date: September 28, 2022, 10:50 am
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       Agelbert NOTE: Reposted due to pertinence to present political
       dirty deals and severe climate events.
  HTML https://www.nationofchange.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/logoretina.png
       December 11, 2021
       [center]
  HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-130418203402.gif<br
       />Big Oil’s new strategy: Profit today, fight again
       tomorrow[/center]
       [center]Despite countless investigations, lawsuits, social
       shaming, and regulations dating back decades, the &#129430; oil
       and &#129429; gas industry remains &#128013;
       formidable.[/center]
       By Naomi Oreskes &#10024; and Jeff Nesbit &#128077; -December
       11, 2021
       SOURCE The Revelalor
       This article is published as part of Covering Climate Now
  HTML https://coveringclimatenow.org/,
       a global collaboration of news
       outlets strengthening coverage of the climate story.
       Despite countless investigations, lawsuits, social shaming, and
       regulations dating back decades, the oil and gas industry
       remains formidable. After all, it has made consuming its
       products seem like a human necessity. It has confused the public
       about climate science, bought the eternal gratitude of one of
       America’s two main political parties, and repeatedly
       out-maneuvered regulatory efforts. And it has done all this, in
       part, by thinking ahead and then acting ruthlessly. While the
       rest of us were playing checkers, its executives were playing
       three-dimensional chess.
       Take this brief tour of the industry’s history, and then ask
       yourself: Is there any doubt that these companies are now
       plotting to keep the profits rolling in, even as mega-hurricanes
       and roaring wildfires scream the dangers of the climate
       emergency?
       The John D. Rockefeller myth
       Ida Tarbell is one of the most celebrated investigative
       journalists in American history. Long before Bob Woodward and
       Carl Bernstein exposed the Watergate scandal, Tarbell’s
       reporting broke up the Standard Oil monopoly. In 19 articles
       that became a widely read book, History of the Standard Oil
       Company, published in 1904, she exposed its unsavory practices.
       In 1911, federal regulators used Tarbell’s findings to break
       Standard Oil into 33 much smaller companies.
       [center][img
       width=640]
  HTML https://i1.wp.com/therevelator.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Standard-Oil-1914-postcard-Steve-Shook.jpg?w=696&ssl=1[/img][/center]
       [center]Standard Oil postcard from 1914. Scanned by Steve Shook
       (CC BY 2.0)[/center]
       David had slain Goliath. The U.S. government had set a
       monopoly-busting standard for future generations. John D.
       Rockefeller, Standard Oil’s owner, lost. The good guys won — or
       so it seemed.
       In fact Rockefeller saw what was coming and ended up profiting —
       massively — from the breakup of his company. Rockefeller made
       sure to retain significant stock holdings in each of Standard
       Oil’s 33 offspring and position them in different parts of the
       U.S. where they wouldn’t compete against one another.
       Collectively, the 33 offspring went on to make Rockefeller very,
       very rich. Indeed, it was the breakup of Standard Oil that
       tripled his wealth and made him the wealthiest man in the world.
       In 1916, five years after Standard Oil was broken up,
       Rockefeller became the world’s first billionaire.
       Say it ain’t so, Dr. Seuss!
       One of the offspring of Standard Oil was Esso :o (S-O, spelled
       out), which later launched one of the most successful
       advertising campaigns in history. It did so by relying on the
       talents of a young cartoonist who millions would later adore
       under his pen name, Dr. Seuss. Decades before authoring the
       pro-environment parable The Lorax, Theodore Geisel helped Esso
       market “Flit,” a household spray gun that killed mosquitoes.
       What Americans weren’t told was that the pesticide DDT made up
       5% of each blast of Flit.
       When Esso put considerable creative resources behind the Flit
       campaign, they were looking years ahead to a time when they
       would also successfully market oil-based products. The campaign
       ran for 17 years in the 1940s and 1950s, at the time an unheard
       length of time for an ad campaign. It taught Esso and other
       Standard Oil companies how to sell derivative products (like
       plastic and pesticides) that made the company and the brand a
       household name in the minds of the public. In its day, “Quick,
       Henry, the Flit!” was as ubiquitous as “Got Milk?” is today.
       At the time, the public (and even many scientists) didn’t
       appreciate the deadly nature of DDT. That didn’t come until the
       1962 publication of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring
  HTML https://bookshop.org/books/silent-spring-anniversary/9780618249060.<br
       />But accepting that DDT was deadly was hard, in part because of
       the genius of Geisel, whose wacky characters — strikingly
       similar to the figures who would later populate Dr. Seuss books
       — energetically extolled Flit’s alleged benefits.
       Geisel later said the experience “taught me conciseness and how
       to marry pictures with words.” The Flit ad campaign was
       incredibly smart and clever marketing. It taught the industry
       how to sell a dangerous and unnecessary product as if it were
       something useful and even fun.
       Years later, ExxonMobil would take that cleverness to new
       heights in its advertorials. They weren’t about clever
       characters. But they were awfully clever, containing few, if
       any, outright lies, but a whole lot of half-truths and
       misrepresentations. It was clever enough to convince the New
       York Times to run them without labeling them as the
       advertisements that they, in fact, were. Their climate
       “advertorials” appeared in the op-ed page of the New York Times
       and were part of what scholars have called “the longest, regular
       (weekly) use of media to influence public and elite opinion in
       contemporary America.”
       Controlling climate science
       Big Oil also saw climate change coming. As abundant
       investigative reporting and academic studies
  HTML https://gizmodo.com/exxon-acknowledged-climate-change-internally-but-still-1798342694<br
       />have documented, the companies’ own scientists were telling
       their executives in the 1970s that burning more oil and other
       fossil fuels would overheat the planet
  HTML https://gizmodo.com/exxon-predicted-2019-s-ominous-co2-milestone-in-1982-1834748763.<br
       />(Other scientists had been saying so since the 1960s.) The
  HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-130418203402.gif<br
       />companies responded by &#128520; lying about the danger of
       their
       products, &#128520; blunting public awareness, and
  HTML https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-291021174027.gif<br
       />lobbying against government action. The result is today’s
       climate emergency.
  HTML https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-301021140812.gif
       Less well known is how oil and gas companies didn’t just lie
       about their own research. They also mounted a
  HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-250817135149.gif<br
       />stealth campaign to monitor and influence what the rest of the
       scientific community learned and said about climate change.
       The companies embedded
  HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/1/3-250718205137.gif<br
       />scientists in universities and made sure they were present at
       important conferences. They nominated them to be
  HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-010519192319-22081169.jpeg<br
       />contributors to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
       the U.N. body whose assessments from 1990 onward defined what
       the press, public and policymakers thought was true about
       climate science. While the IPCC reports, which rely on consensus
       science, were sound, Big Oil’s
  HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/1/3-250718205808.gif<br
       />scientific participation gave them an insider’s view of the
       road
       ahead. More ominously, they introduced the
  HTML https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-050921221152.jpeghttp://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-311013200859.png<br
       />art of questioning the consensus science in forums where every
       word is parsed.
       The industry was employing a strategy pioneered by tobacco
       companies, but with a twist. Beginning in the 1950s, the tobacco
       industry cultivated a sotto voce network of scientists at scores
       of American universities and medical schools, whose work it
       funded. Some of these scientists were actively engaged in
       research to discredit the idea that cigarette smoking was a
       health risk, but most of it was more subtle; the industry
       supported research on causes of cancer and heart disease other
       than tobacco, such as radon, asbestos and diet. It was a form of
       misdirection, designed to deflect our attention away from the
       harms of tobacco and onto other things. The scheme worked for a
       while, but when it was exposed in the 1990s, in part through
       lawsuits, the bad publicity largely killed it. What
       self-respecting scientist would take tobacco industry money
       after that?
       The oil and gas industry learned from that mistake and decided
       that, instead of working surreptitiously, it would work in the
       open. And rather than work primarily with individual scientists
       whose work might be of use, it would seek to influence the
       direction of the scientific community as a whole. The industry’s
       internal scientists continued to do research and publish
       peer-reviewed articles, but the industry also openly funded
       university collaborations and other researchers. From the late
       1970s through the 1980s, Exxon was known both as a climate
       research pioneer, and as a generous patron of university
       science, supporting student research and fellowships at many
       major universities. Its scientists also worked alongside senior
       colleagues at NASA, the Department of Energy and other key
       institutions, and funded breakfasts, luncheons and other
       activities at scientific meetings. Those efforts had the net
       effect of creating goodwill and bonds of loyalty. It’s been
       effective.
       The industry’s scientists may have been operating in good faith,
       but their work helped delay public recognition of the scientific
       consensus that climate change was unequivocally man-made,
       happening now, and very dangerous. The industry’s extensive
       presence in the field also gave it early access to cutting edge
       research it used to its advantage. Exxon, for example, designed
       oil platforms to accommodate more rapid sea-level rise, even as
       the company publicly denied that climate change was occurring.
       [b]Don’t call it methane, it’s ‘natural gas’[/b]
       Methane is an even more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon
       dioxide, yet it has received far less attention. One reason is
       that the oil and gas industry has positioned methane — which
       marketing experts cleverly labeled “natural gas” — as the future
       of the energy economy. The industry promotes methane gas as a
       “clean” fuel that’s needed to bridge the transition from today’s
       carbon economy to tomorrow’s renewable energy era. Some go
       further and see gas as a permanent part of the energy landscape:
       BP’s plan is renewables plus gas for the foreseeable future, and
       the &#129430; company and other
       &#129429;&#129429;&#129430;&#128013; oil majors frequently
       invoke
  HTML https://heated.world/p/misleading-climate-ads-from-big-oilhttp://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-080419191019.png<br
       />“low carbon”
  HTML https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/what-we-do/gas-and-low-carbon-energy.html<br
       />instead of “no carbon.”
       Except that methane gas isn’t clean. It’s about 80 times more
       potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide
       is.
       [center][img
       width=640]
  HTML https://i1.wp.com/therevelator.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/15638777475_3cc2d06b7b_c.jpg?w=696&ssl=1[/img][/center]
       [center]Flaring at oil and gas wells release methane into the
       air. Photo: WildEarth Guardians, (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)[/center]
       As recently as a decade ago, many scientists and
       environmentalists viewed “natural gas” as a climate hero. The
       oil and gas industry’s ad guys encouraged this view by
       portraying gas as a coal killer. The
  HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/1/3-250718205137.gif<br
       />American Petroleum Institute paid millions to run its
       first-ever
       Super Bowl ad in 2017
  HTML https://www.api.org/news-policy-and-issues/news/2017/02/05/api-launches-power-past-impossible-campa,<br
       />portraying gas as an engine of innovation that powers the
       American way of life. Between 2008 and 2019, API spent more than
       $750 million on public relations, advertising, and
       communications (for both oil and gas interests), an analysis
  HTML https://climateinvestigations.org/trade-association-pr-spending/american-petroleum-institute/by<br
       />the Climate Investigations Center found. Today, most Americans
       view gas as clean, even though science shows
  HTML https://cca-reports.ca/reports/environmental-impacts-of-shale-gas-extraction-in-canada/<br
       />that we can’t meet our climate goals without quickly
       transitioning away
  HTML https://gizmodo.com/pledges-are-not-plans-world-s-top-methane-hunter-cal-1848005460<br
       />from it. The bottom line is that we can’t solve a problem
       caused
       by fossil fuels with more fossil fuels. But the industry has
       made a lot of us
  HTML https://tomdispatch.com/naomi-oreskes-a-green-bridge-to-hell/<br
       />think otherwise.
       There’s little chance the oil and gas industry can defeat
       renewable energy in the long term. Wind, solar and geothermal,
       which are clean and cost-competitive, will eventually dominate
       energy markets. Researchers at the University of California,
       Berkeley, GridLab and Energy Innovation have found that the U.S.
       can achieve 90% clean electricity
  HTML https://www.rewiringamerica.org/
       by the year 2035 with no new
       gas
  HTML https://energyinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Pathways-to-100-Zero-Carbon-Power-by-2035-Without-Increasing-Customer-Costs.pdfand<br
       />at no additional cost to consumers.
       But the oil and gas industry doesn’t need to win the fight in
       the long term. It just needs to win right now so it can keep
       developing oil and gas fields that will be in use for decades to
       come. To do that, it just has to keep doing what it has done for
       the past 25 years: Win today, fight again tomorrow.
       A spider’s web of pipelines
       Here’s a final example of how the oil and gas industry plans for
       the next war even as its adversaries are still fighting the last
       one. Almost no one outside of a few law firms, trade groups, and
       congressional staff in Washington, DC, knows what the
  HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-040718162655-14231561.gif[size<br
       />24pt]&#129430;[/size] Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
  HTML https://www.ferc.gov/
       is or does. But the oil and gas industry
       knows and it moved quickly after
  HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-270117175421.png<br
       />Donald Trump became president to lay the groundwork for
       decades
       of future fossil fuel dependency.
  HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/1/3-120818180835-16271224.gif
       FERC has long been a rubber stamp for the oil and gas industry.
       The industry proposes gas pipelines, and FERC approves them.
       When FERC approves a pipeline, that approval grants the pipeline
       eminent domain, which in effect makes the pipeline all but
       impossible to stop.
       [center]
  HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-260217143301.png[/center]
       [center]
  HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-130418193910.gifhttp://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/1/3-120818204546.gif[/center]
       Eminent domain gives a company the legal right to build a
       pipeline through landowners’ properties, and there is nothing
       they or state or county officials can do about it. A couple of
       states have successfully, though temporarily, blocked pipelines
       by invoking federal statutes such as the Clean Water Act. But if
       those state cases reach the current Supreme Court, the three
       justices Trump appointed — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy
       Coney-Barrett — are almost certain to rule in the industry’s
       favor.
       Oil and gas industry executives seized upon Trump’s arrival in
       the White House. In the opening days of his administration,
       independent researchers listened in on public trade gatherings
       of the executives, who talked about “flooding the zone” at FERC.
       The industry planned to submit not just one or two but nearly a
       dozen interstate gas pipeline requests. Plotted on a map, the
       projected pipelines covered so much of the U.S. that they
       resembled a spider’s web.
       [img
       width=640]
  HTML https://i2.wp.com/therevelator.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/dakota-access.jpg?w=696&ssl=1[/img]
       [center]Dakota Access Pipeline being installed between farms, as
       seen from 50th Avenue in New Salem, North Dakota. Photo: Tony
       Webster, (CC BY-SA 2.0)[/center]
       Once pipelines are in the system, companies can start to build
       them, and utility commissioners in every corner of America see
       this gas “infrastructure” as a fait accompli. And pipelines are
       built to last decades. In fact, if properly maintained, a
       pipeline can last forever in principle. This strategy could
       allow the oil and gas industry to lock in fossil fuel dependency
       for the rest of the century.
       In hindsight, it’s clear that oil and gas industry leaders used
       outright climate denial when it suited their corporate and
       political interests throughout the 1990s. But now that outright
       denial is no longer credible, they’ve pivoted from denial to
       delay. Industry PR and marketing efforts have shifted massive
       resources to a central message that, yes, climate change is
       real, but that the necessary changes will require more research
       and decades to implement, and above all, more fossil fuels.
       Climate delay
  HTML https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/09/big-oil-delay-tactics-new-climate-science-denial<br
       />is the new climate denial.
       Nearly every major oil and gas company now claims that they
       accept the science and that they support sensible climate
       policies
  HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/1/3-250718210558.gif.<br
       />But their actions speak louder than words. It’s clear that the
       future they want is one that still uses fossil fuels abundantly
       — regardless of what the science says. Whether it is selling
       deadly pesticides or deadly fossil fuels, they will do what it
       takes to keep their products on the market. Now that we’re in a
       race to a  clean energy future
  HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-251117174622.jpeg,<br
       />it’s time to recognize that
       &#129430;&#128024;&#129429;&#128013;
       they simply can’t be trusted as partners in that race. We’ve
       been
  HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-040718162656-14241872.gif<br
       />fooled too many times.
  HTML https://www.nationofchange.org/2021/12/11/big-oils-new-strategy-profit-today-fight-again-tomorrow/
       [move]The &#129429;&#129430; Hydrocarbon &#128121; Hellspawn
       Fossil Fuelers DID THE Clean Energy Inventions suppressing,
       Climate Trashing, Government corrupting, human health depleting
       CRIME. Since [Color=Brown]they have ALWAYS BEEN liars and
       conscience free
  HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-200419205214.pnghttp://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-130418193910.gifcrooks,<br
       />they are trying to AVOID [/color]DOING THE TIME or PAYING THE
       FINE!  Don't let them get away with it! Pass it on!
  HTML https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-300919160023-2284203.png[/move]
       #Post#: 578--------------------------------------------------
       Believe it or not, the Deepwater Horizon &#128165;&#129430; oil
       spill was even worse than previously thought
       &#129318;&#8205;&#9794;&#65039;
   DIR By: AGelbert
       Date: October 7, 2022, 4:41 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       The Real News Network
       October 7, 2022
       [center]I survived the &#129430; rig &#128165; explosion that
       caused the &#129430; Deepwater Horizon oil spill. This is what I
       saw.[/center]
       It’s been 12 years since the oil spill caused by &#128127;
       British &#129430; Petroleum devastated the Gulf. A people’s
       history of this disaster has yet to be told.
       SNIPPET:
       This stuff is all out there for all of us to see. It is not
       hidden. We know what these &#129429;&#128520;&#129430;&#128013;
       companies and our
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080822134118-17091258.gif<br
       />[size=24pt]&#129430; governments are doing to the
       planet.[/size]
       [center]
  HTML https://grist.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/oil-spill.jpg[/center]
       [center]Believe it or not, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill  was
       even worse than previously thought
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422145533-5671050.gif
  HTML https://grist.org/energy/believe-it-or-not-the-deepwater-horizon-oil-spill-was-even-worse-than-previously-thought/[/center]
       I think we tend to push that stuff down so that we can get
       through our days, because the reality is just too monstrous to
       confront, but we have to confront it. We have to. We are really
       and truly running out of time here. Yes, nature can heal from
       one-off industrial disasters, but when perpetual disaster
       becomes the mere price of doing business, and when that
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-1406786.gif<br
       />business takes priority over everything else, not even mother
       nature can recover from that. And the proof of that is all
       around us.
       [center]
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-140822180758-1895204.pnghttps://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-140822180603-18901594.jpeg[/center]
       As always, we’ve included links in the show notes to this
       episode for listeners who want to read more on the topics that
       are discussed in the episode. And I want to encourage folks to
       do that, because I also don’t want to give the impression that
       one two-hour conversation between me and Leo can possibly cover
       everything that needs to be covered here, and I didn’t want to
       put that impossible burden on Leo, either. I also knew and
       understood going into this recording that talking about the day
       of the explosion, the chaos on the rig, the deaths of his
       brothers and fellow workers, and the traumatic aftermath, all of
       that is extremely difficult for Leo. I wanted to give Leo the
       space to tell the story through his eyes the way he wanted it to
       be told, and I didn’t want to push him for more than he was
       willing to give.
       So if you’re looking for gory details and a drawn out
       play-by-play of the explosion, I’m going to let you know right
       now that you’re not going to find those in this conversation.
       But I hope and pray that people listen regardless, because
       everything Leo says is so important and I am so grateful to him
       for talking with me, for honoring his fallen coworkers, and for
       speaking the truth. This is his story.
       Leo Lindner:  My name is Leo Lindner, I live in South Louisiana.
       And after a brief stint working at a university, it inspired me
       to try to make more money, and I went to work for a mud company
       called MI. And I spent 10 years with the company, and spent my
       last five years on the Deepwater Horizon, and I was on the rig
       the night of. And my career ended after the explosion. I went
       out to the DD III to help drill the relief well to try to
       actually stop Macondo from leaking. And that’s where I decided I
       had had enough, I couldn’t go back, because I saw a lot of the
       same faces, same kinds of people on the DD III that were on the
       Horizon, good guys, and struggling with the same things those
       guys struggled with, and I just couldn’t be a part of it
       anymore.
       Maximillian Alvarez:  Well Leo, it’s such an honor to get a
       chance to chat with you, man. I really, really appreciate you
       taking time to hop on a call with me. As listeners can hear,
       we’ve got a lot to discuss here. We all remember where we were
       and what we were feeling when we watched the catastrophe at
       Deepwater Horizon. And I genuinely can’t even imagine what it
       was like for you and the other folks who were on the rig that
       day.
       But in a lot of ways, this is still part and parcel of what we
       try to do on this show, is to remind people that it was flesh
       and blood human beings making that rig work, it was flesh and
       blood human beings with lives and backstories and families who
       experienced that horrific tragedy, like yourself. And so even
       though we’re going to be talking about some extremely heavy and
       catastrophic stuff today, I do want to follow our usual Working
       People format where we get to know more about you, and we can
       talk to you about how you got into doing this work, what it was
       like doing that work before, as you said, you couldn’t do it
       anymore. And so again, I just really want to thank you for
       coming on and being willing to chat with us and speaking out
       about this. I genuinely appreciate it.
       Leo Lindner:  I’ve got to tell you Mr. Alvarez, I really
       appreciate you talking to me today.
       Maximillian Alvarez:  Thank you brother, and that means a lot.
       And yeah, you’re a fascinating guy, so I want to get to know
       more about you. You said that you [inaudible] –
       Leo Lindner:  Well, now you set it up, now it’s just going to be
       disappointing. [Max laughs] No, just kidding.
       Maximillian Alvarez:  And did you grow up in Louisiana?
       Leo Lindner:  My parents were from North Louisiana. My dad’s
       actually from Victoria, Texas, they moved there. My grandfather
       worked in the oil field, and we moved down South. My father got
       a job at a paper mill. So I grew up in Lafourche Parish, went to
       Cut Off Elementary, that was the name of the town. And so yeah,
       I spent my life in South Louisiana.
       Maximillian Alvarez:  Now keep in mind you’re talking to a
       Southern California boy, so apologies if my questions are really
       stupid.
       Leo Lindner:  [inaudible].
       Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, when you describe this, are we
       talking one of those parishes that you need to get on a boat
       through the Bayou to get to? How South Louisiana are we talking
       here?
       Leo Lindner:  Sure, yeah, we walked on the alligators to go to
       school. No –
       Maximillian Alvarez:  [both laugh] I knew it.
       Leo Lindner:  No, no. Lafourche Parish, it’s a very long parish,
       actually, Port Fourchon is at the very tip of it at the Gulf of
       Mexico. And it’s very influenced by both shrimping and the oil
       field. Those were the two main ways to make a living. But no, no
       alligators, no swamp going to school, nothing like that, nothing
       that exciting.
       Maximillian Alvarez:  And what was it like… So how old were you,
       and what was it like moving from Texas to Louisiana at that
       point?
       Leo Lindner:  Well it was different because I didn’t have the
       accent. The Cajun kids made fun of me because I said dee instead
       of dah. But that’s okay. I mean, it was good to grow up down
       here. It’s just, I always felt like a little bit of an outsider,
       but I think everyone feels that way at some point.
       Maximillian Alvarez:  Yeah, that’s the great joke of adolescence
       and childhood is everyone feels like an outsider when no one’s
       on the inside, really.
       Well, what did you… I guess paint me a picture here. Did y’all
       have a big family? And what was it being a kid in that
       environment? Did you have friends whose parents were shrimpers,
       and what did you guys do for fun?
       Leo Lindner:  Oh, yeah. Well we lived in a very rural place, but
       it ran like a straight line. But if we walked a few acres west,
       we hit the 40 Acre Canal, and it was full of woods. We did
       hunting and fishing, that kind of thing. And I grew up with a
       set of neighborhood kids that were really cool. I was always
       friends with the older kids, really.
       But no, growing up in South Louisiana, it was a positive
       experience, I suppose. But it was always under this kind of
       shadow of… Because people were very poor, even though a few
       people had it really good working in the oil field or whatever.
       If your dad owned Rouses, which is a big supermarket, you were
       okay. If your dad owned a boat company, yeah, you were really
       hot. We had a guy like that, he drove to school in a Ferrari, if
       you can imagine, in the ’80s, a kid driving school Ferrari. But
       his dad owned a boat company.
       But for the working class people it was really tough, it was
       really tough. The prospects were tough. So the culture here, it
       sees itself as very working class, but it’s also got a kind of
       mean spiritedness to it, because people are desperate, because
       people want to… If you don’t have money, you don’t feel like
       you’re a person or whatever. So there’s a kind of conflict
       there. The working people don’t feel like they’re comrades, they
       don’t feel like they have stuff in common, they feel like
       they’re in competition with each other.
       Maximillian Alvarez:  Yeah, I mean that is all too familiar. I
       was smiling when you were talking about it, because that’s
       something that I always try to impress upon people when I talk
       about growing up in Orange County, California. Everyone knows
       the TV shows like The OC and Laguna Beach and stuff. And so when
       they come there they’re like, oh, you’re all rich and live in
       mansions on the beach? Well not exactly, right? I mean –
       Leo Lindner:  [laughs] No, those are the ones who get the TV
       show, right?
       Continue reading…
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040422164555-532108.png
  HTML https://therealnews.com/i-survived-the-rig-explosion-that-caused-the-deepwater-horizon-oil-spill-this-is-what-i-saw
       #Post#: 778--------------------------------------------------
       The GOP and Big Oil
   DIR By: AGelbert
       Date: January 14, 2023, 9:22 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       [center]
  HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/1/3-020818201645-1486464.jpeg[/center]
       [center]The  GOP and Big Oil  can't escape blame for climate
       change [/center]
       By Dana Nuccitelli
       Mon 6 Aug 2018 06.00 EDT
       SNIPPET 1:
       The New York Times
  HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-311013201314.png<br
       />magazine blames ‘human nature
  HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-130418202829.png,’<br
       />but fingers have already been pointed at the true culprits.
       &#128073; &#128009;&#129429;&#129430;
       SNIPPET2:
       In the key 1983 press briefing, Nierenberg
  HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-250817135149.gif<br
       />basically lied about the climate report’s findings, claiming
       it
       found no urgent need for action. Nierenberg’s false summary made
       headlines around the world and stymied climate policy efforts
       for years to come. Only after 1985 when the discovery of ozone
       depletion captured worldwide attention was climate change able
       to ride its coattails back into serious policy discussions.
       SNIPPET 3:
       Culprit #2: the fossil fuel industry
       &#128009;&#129429;&#129430;
  HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-130418203402.gif
       In his unfortunate Prologue, Rich also describes the fossil fuel
       industry as “a common boogeyman.” He argues that the fossil fuel
       industry didn’t mobilize to kill the 1989 Noordwijk negotiation.
       That’s true, because it didn’t have to; had the treaty even
       succeeded, it would have just been the very first step in global
       efforts to cut carbon pollution.
       --- Quote ---
       > Leah Stokes
       > (@leahstokes)
       > Of course Exxon wasn’t running a denial campaign until the
       1990s. They didn’t need to yet. The threat of policy action was
       remote. When action became more likely, that’s when fossil fuel
       companies started their lying in earnest. 6/
       > August 1, 2018
       --- End Quote ---
       Immediately after the Noordwijk shot came across its bow, the
       fossil fuel industry launched a decades-long,
       many-million-dollar campaign to undermine public trust of
       climate science and support for climate policy. For example, the
       Global Climate Coalition (GCC) fossil fuel industry group formed
       in 1989. By the time the 1992 Rio Earth Summit rolled around,
       these polluter industry organizations began heavily investing in
       disinformation campaigns to undermine international and domestic
       climate policies. Speaking about the Rio summit, Bush &#129408;
       sounded like Donald Trump &#129408;, saying:
       --- Quote ---
       > I’m not going to go to the Rio conference and make a bad deal
       or be a party to a bad deal.
  HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/1/3-250718205808.gif
       --- End Quote ---
       Bill Clinton proposed an energy tax to try and meet the treaty
       goals anyway, but the GCC invested $1.8m in a disinformation
       campaign, and Congress voted it down. The GCC then spent $13m to
       weaken support for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, and the Senate voted
       95-0 to pre-emptively declare its opposition to the treaty.
       Since then, Exxon
  HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/1/3-250718205137.gif<br
       />alone has given $31m to climate-denying organizations.
       [move]&#128226; It’s been three decades since 1989 &#128544;
       [/move]
       The fossil fuel industry is one exceptionally wealthy,
       influential, and powerful ‘boogeyman.’ As Rich notes in his
       Epilogue, it’s also been quite successful:
       More carbon has been released into the atmosphere since the
       final day of the Noordwijk conference, Nov. 7, 1989, than in the
       entire history of civilization preceding it
       Apparently at a private dinner the night before his piece was
       published, Rich described the fossil fuel industry as being
       “guilty of crimes against humanity.” It’s a shame that his story
       took on such a different tone. As Benjamin Franta, PhD student
       in the history of science at Stanford summarized it:
       One common mistake in this NYT magazine piece is the idea that
       companies like Exxon somehow changed from “good” (doing research
       in the 1970s and ‘80s) to “bad” (promoting denial in the ‘90s
       and 2000s). Exxon’s own memos show that the purpose of its
       research program was to influence regulation, not to solve the
       climate problem per se. The industry-organized disinformation
       campaign that emerged at the end of the 1980s was in response to
       binding policies that were just then being proposed. If such
       policies were proposed earlier, it stands to reason that the
       industry response would have occurred earlier as well. To say
       that industry disinformation isn’t the whole story is to knock
       down a straw man: the fact remains that it is a major--and
       perhaps the most important--part of the story.
       In the alternative universe where the Bush administration didn’t
       sabotage the Noordwijk climate treaty, the fossil fuel industry
       would still have crippled global climate policies through its
       misinformation campaign and by purchasing the Republican Party’s
       climate denial complicity. 1989 was a missed opportunity, but
       the fossil fuel industry and GOP can’t escape responsibility for
       the ensuing three decades of climate failures.
       Full article:
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       [center]
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       [move][I]The Fossil Fuelers &#129430; DID THE Clean Energy
       Inventions suppressing, Climate Trashing, human health depleting
       CRIME,[COLOR=BROWN]   but since they have ALWAYS BEEN liars and
       conscience free crooks &#129408;, they are trying to AVOID
       [/color]  DOING THE TIME or     PAYING THE FINE!     Don't let
       them get away with it! Pass it on!   [/I][/move]
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