In my ongoing effort to bring the kind of balance to this blog that you have come to expect from big media, here are excerpts from today’s Financial Times:
Washington’s energy and environment policy risks plunging the US into an economic tailspin that could turn it into “the world’s cleanest third world country“, one of the US oil industry’s most successful chief executives has warned.
James Hackett, chairman and chief executive of Anadarko, one of the US’s largest independent oil and gas companies, said in an interview: “The histrionic and maniacal focus on carbon dioxide is intellectually repugnant to me.”
Mr Hackett’s assessment echoes the private views of many oilmen less willing to be quite so direct and reveals the fissure developing between the industry and Washington. His views contrast with those of cautious, politically and environmentally correct European oil executivesRoyal Dutch Shell. [sic]
Yeah, well “environmentally correct European oil executives” ain’t what they used to be — see “Shell shocker: Once ‘green’ oil company guts renewables effort” and “Investors warn Shell and BP over tar sands greenwashing” and “I see a green wash and I want it painted black” and “Shell spanked for greenwashing ad.”
Actually, I decided to excerpt this interview mainly because of two words added by the reporter, Carola Hoyos:
As with many industry veterans and proponents of improved energy security, he warns government officials and environmental advocates to stop suggesting that solar and wind could reduce the US’s need for petrol.
Instead, he said focusing on solar and wind would work against Washington’s goal of reducing the US’s dependence on foreign oil as it would displace sources of energy produced domestically, such as uranium, natural gas and coal. Somewhat predictably, opening more US land to drilling would be his solution.
Finally, some much needed snarkiness from the mainstream media. You go, Carola.
I’m filing this whole thing under humor because
- I don’t have a category for “tragedy.”
- Hackett claimed uranium is produced domestically, when, in fact, we import the vast majority of the uranium we use. What a comedian!
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I am slightly impressed with the phrase “intellectually repugnant”
That has a nice zing. But I am sure he meant commercially repugnant.
Because I find his statement to be scientifically repugnant. logically repugnant, morally and ethically repugnant, even poetically repugnant.
Jeekers.
The age of carbonic acid contamination (burning of fossil fuels) of the ecosphere must end for our continued sustenance on Earth. Climate change damages we are experiencing today are from carbon dioxide of decades past. Last year’s 33 billion tons of worldwide CO2, along with total accumulations to date, will create havoc during this and future centuries. And contaminating our biosphere with ionizing radiation from atomic fission (“nuclear power”) is a ponzi type financial fraud of further ecological impoverishment.
The president has my full support for a clean energy economy.
If I recall correctly, James Hansen suggested not long ago that fossil fuel industry executives who knowingly deceive the public about the reality of anthropogenic global warming, and the reality that their profitable products are chiefly responsible for it, in order to maintain their profits at any cost in human suffering and death, might be engaging in crimes against humanity.
I think that’s quite reasonable and nominate the “intellectually repugnant” James Hackett to be among the first to be prosecuted.
I’m glad Joe posted this in the Humor section because it is incredibly funny that the mainstream media somehow considers it “news” to reveal that an oil company executive is against CO2 reduction.
I am shocked and stunned to discover he feels that way. :)
I don’t think he has an intellect to be rupugnized. :-)
Shell continues to greenwash. I wrote about a Shell tar sands announcement yesterday; it a nutshell, they have no intention of meeting GHG emission standards promised just two years ago…
let’s see, we have to bring a multiple trillion dollar commodity, carbon energy fuels, down to zero usage eventually. That can bring up some strong emotions.
Wow, an oil exec thinks gradually moving to superior forms of energy (i.e. not 20th century scarce resources he vested in) will turn the U.S. into a third world country. Can someone say “alarmism”?
You will all be equally shocked to learn that the Energy Supply Association of Australia (aka Australia’s coal-fired power generators) think the lights will all go out in Australia unless they get free permits and complete compensation for pricing carbon emissions: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25330984-11949,00.html
Pure idiocy. What a shame to see these oil men taking us to extinction. And a countryman like Ollila in Shell. There is a tragedy.
MSM has arrived. Check out this TIME front cover…
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,7601090413,00.html
Hey Joe.
Can you explain why the Arctic ice keeps growing this year? See cryosphere today and the NSIDC site. It just won’t quit! The Antarctic is now well above last year and well above average! How can we explain the fact that Arctic ice is now ABOVE the 30 year average…and temperatures keep falling.
Another ice age is happening and you are still here with your tiny blog with 10 comments per entry when McIntryre, Icecap and Anthony Watts are getting 1 million hits a month as skeptics.
Better start changing your beliefs in CO2… versus natural cycles such as solar bombardment.
Bye Joe…you will soon be looking for a new job.
EARTH MATTERS
Joy, since apparently reading is beyond your capabilities or you would already know better, try watching this series instead:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/extremeice/program.html
Has anyone noticed how CO2 seems to be rising faster than ever? This chart shows the monthly global measurement:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_trend_gl.pdf
The last 6 points are in the part of the annual cycle where levels rise. The gradient seems to get steeper each year, even compared to just a few years ago.
So much talk – so little action. It would be nice to see some tiny weeny glimmer of hope in the data. I don’t see any.
Joy, here’s another, shorter explanation. Greenman’s other videos are also worth watching.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nruCRcbnY0&feature=channel
Robert, you are correct. 10 years ago, I believe, the average growth was 2 parts per million (ppm) per year (and not long before that (20 – 30 years) I believe it was around 1ppm) and I believe its averaging about 3 ppm (although maybe the world economy slowdown will slow it some for a while) now, with the projection that it will keep accelerating if business as usual continues.
Makes sense when you consider all the developed contries are producing as much or more CO2 as they did previously and growing countries like China are adding to it every year. Until action is taken it will continue to accelerate…also the carbon sinks (ocean and forests) are slowing their uptake of CO2 (another unanticipated side effect of climate change) so we’re loosing that helping brake on CO2 growth.
Leave it to Joy to be distracted by maximum annual sea ice extent in the Arctic, where the only room for growth is outside the Arctic Ocean basin, and ignore continued minimum ice extent within the basin and record minimum ice age and thickness.
Joy Rider : I hope we see you back here in August to discuss Arctic sea-ice. The Sun’s barely risen in the Arctic.
What scares me most is Shell’s determination to make oil-shale development in the Green River Basin economical. If it ever does proceed with its plan — to heat up the ground with electrical-resistance heaters — it will make the oil sands look like Germany’s biogas industry.
I realize people are hypnotized by sparkly phraseology like “intellectually repugnant” , but has anyone noticed that it makes no sense even if you agree with him?
Repugnance is an emotion and thus stands in contrast to intellecual functions. If he thought the histrionic and maniacal focus on carbon dioxide were intellectually expugnable I’d be all for him. But he lost his chance; I guess I’ll have to stick with the clean coal deniers.
Dirty energy is cheap, and cheap is good for prosperity. CO2 reduction will cost money and make no profit. The “free market” logic seems to point inevitably to global disaster.
China and India and the “Third World” neo-capitalist countries complain that colonialists just want to retard their economic development, using CO2 as an excuse. So voluntary measures seem unlikely — even Kyoto was a flop.
The only hope, therefore, is to make CO2 a resource, so there would be enough profit in recycling it (to make synfuel or carbon nanotubes, for example) to justify the cost of saving the planet.
It depends on how you define prosperity, and that depends, among other things, on which system you’re embedded in and believe in when you define it.
We have other forms of logic than our particular hyper-productive model of the free market, which after all is not so logical, since its main answer to the problem of the commons is to accelerate destruction of the commons exponentially. Education is the first answer, to teach people they have a connection to the commons (all people, other beings and the Earth); of course when psychological or institutional blocks to that education arise they must be dealt with psychologically and anti-institutionally (ie, r/evolutionarily).
Given our past history with the third world any such suspicions are perfectly justified; we have to allay their fears by giving them whatever help they need to become our economic equals (defined within an ecologically-ensconsed economy, which means we may have to come down and meet them partway.)
Don’t we make carbon a resource when the government starts buying it? AKA a carbon tax. Or maybe we will have to prohibit it, like we have prohibited other forms of vandalism and murder.