If you’re concerned about fossil fuels and climate change, consider an energy source that, according to its backers, will make everyday living “comfortable and healthier.”
What is this miraculous substance? Oil.
Huh? Yes, that filthy scourge of our planet and health, is being ballyhooed as our globe’s energy and environmental salvation! By whom? Of course: The American Petroleum Institute, the powerhouse lobbying front for ExxonMobil and other petro-profiteers. API recently bragged that it will pour tens of millions of dollars into a PR Blitz during this year’s presidential election to demonize clean energy sources and demand that government promote more fossil fuel production.
API’s campaign slogan is “Lights On Energy” – but the luminosity of its media message is mighty dim. Start with the fact that Big Oil has zero public credibility, having routinely gouged us on prices for years and knowingly lied to us for decades about not causing climate change.
Second, the demand by oil barons that government “quit intruding into the free market” by encouraging alternative energy is a whiney embarrassment. Hello – for more than a century, oil corporations have gorged on billions and billions of dollars in taxpayer handouts – and they are in line to keep getting $2.5 billion a year in corporate welfare for the next decade! (Didn’t their mommas ever teach them not to talk with their mouths full?)
Also pathetic is their partisan wail that President Biden is restricting their production and profits. Hello again: US oil production reached a record high last year, Big Oil’s profits are soaring, and they’re now jacking up our gas prices again. Meanwhile, 2023 was the hottest year our globe ever recorded.
Let’s reflect the heat back on these greedheads. For facts and action items, go to fossilfree4health.org.
Big Oil companies seem to have no conscience, no remorse at all, taking public subsidies, gouging in prices, lying about climate change and, knowing that fossil fuel use is polluting the oceans, warming the atmosphere and raising the global incidence of asthma and other health ills. We consumers are actually subsidizing their lies and corruption of our government through lobbying, campaign contributions and other forms of influence. It's a form of being taxed by privately held corporations so they can use our money to bend our government into acting for their benefit and against ours. How rotten is that?
And we're not even mentioning the amount of plastic produced from oil. Microplastics are in the oceans choking whales, killing fish and birds, and further poisoning the ecosphere.
Enough with the lies. I am tired of oil making huge profits, paying no taxes and keeping fuel prices high just so they can make more profit while contributing shamelessly to the destruction of our planet.
We're in deep climate trouble. I implore people to take advantage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which is largely a climate catastrophe prevention act, to get an energy assessment of your home, electrify your homes, install solar panels if possible, switch to heat pumps from fossil fuel furnaces - all at discounted costs. There are state level rebates and federal tax incentives. If you haven't done so, check with your local utility now for the climate programs they steward!
Did anyone else notice the story today that the melting of the ice caps due to human action is actually causing the earth's rotation to slow down? Gives new meaning to the old expression, "Stop the world, I want to get off".
Welcome to the Anthropocene Age of Planet Earth. Ban Fracking Now! Water For Life!
old sayings: Plato"To do is to be." Aristotle "To be is to do". Sinatra " Do, be, do, be, do,"
Here's a News story we read earlier this year:
"Six hundred and forty-five people died from heat in metro Phoenix in 2023, breaking the record set the previous year." (AZCentral.com)
They had six (6) weeks straight of over 100-degree weather and often it was 110!! Now just wait until the end of summer THIS year and then see how the industry is going to promote oil and gas and denigrate alternate sources of energy like wind and solar! Texas, too, had the hottest year on record, I believe. This year is amping up to be even worse!
We had a warm winter here in Northern California, and it's only just now Spring and 70-degree days already. Climate Change is a "thing," folks!
Well, like everything else people only want the happy talk. Al Gore wrote his book when?
Watch “The Sun Queen”, a woman had solar genius in the 30’s. Everything on our planet could depend on the sun . She even proved it at MIT…
At a car show in the 30’s in St.Louis there were 13 electric vehicles, 2 gas powered and many bicycles .
Enough?
Watch “Turning Point”From the bomb to the Cold War …. humans want to be led…. Those who get this take advantage .
In Oct '23 I shredded my diesel car and got an '18 BMWi3. You're welcome.
Wifey has a Chevy Volt, but rarely uses gas.
We have no kids.
We never run the cooler and don't run the gas heater unless it's below 61º in the house. At bedtime the heater goes off.
No lawn, no lawn mower.
The next step is to follow Ms. Green's suggestions!
Pretty darn oily. Maybe it’s a really dangerous OIL SLICK!!!
Why is it not so easy to just switch over to renewable energy sources and not just make money but help heal the Earth plus life on Earth as well.??
This sounds like the fossil fuel corporations response to the message given them by the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP28) weakly calling for a fossil fuel phase -out. What energy lobbyists won't acknowledge is that science is true whether you believe it or not. Earth Science weather is happening now and the good health of the life of this planetary balance is not controlled with arrogance and money. That's only people acting as cogs in the Corporate Economic Money Matrix. Pop Goes the Weasel !
This oil is dark as the souls who promote it to make money & kill the ,future & health of all the earth.Wake up to the sunshine,it is the energy source of clean energy from the Creator & we are just beginning to understand it.
More than any other factor, Big Oil is responsible for the high inflation coinciding with the wind down of the pandemic (No, not Biden). Don't believe me? The top five oil companies all had record high quarterly and annual profits, some of them the largest corporate profits in the history of the world. Of course, we lowly humans paid for a lot of that, but the companies from whom we buy food, furniture, clothing, cars, and everything else had higher expenses too, further compounding inflation. Such taxes should be almost totally taxed and funds used to reduce taxes for everyone else. Oh yeah - does anyone else remember paying $4.50 a gallon for gas during the W admin? The elephants were not rampaging about that!
Sorry - That should be "Such profits should be almost totally taxed and funds used to reduce taxes for everyone else."
Lobbying in a foreign country is called graft and corruption.
In the USA it is legal even if they lie.Perhaps the good citizenry of our nation can end this malpractice.
At some point in the future oil will no longer exist. At the rate the world producers are pumping it, it may be gone in the next 100 years. Hopefully the human race will still be here to survive what's left of the planet. The government needs to eliminate the $2B dollar welfare check they give to big oil and put it to better use, say funding social security so the GOP can quit with their scare tactics and threats to cut the program.
Soon enough the population will be so decimated by poisonous chemicals in our water,and food supplies,no one will live long enough to get a Social check ! I’m amost certain that the politicians and CEO’s will enjoy having Their Older family members at Their Christmas Table ! Hmmmmm ! What the F is wrong with this world 🌍??? Didn’t even consider the Pharmaceuticals that They pump into our asses at astronomical prices!
I don’t think my paying to be a lab rat is in my best interest ! Some day someone will benefit greatly by our testing the myriad of unneeded drugs that we are currently prescribed! Ain’t gonna be anyone in the lower class ,you can bet YOUR LIFE on That
Jim the politician line doesn’t include the good guy’s of which you are one ☝️!
This is the- Lot to Learn Group
Not your best effort, Sir. I found your arguments to be one sided and uneven. Almost - but not quite - like the misguided people on the right. There are too many cartels in American industry, fossil fuels being one of them. TRC is another.
That said, keep on sounding off, Be calm and drive on, Pun intended! ;>)
March 28, 2024 completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline?
I think that l will make a donation to Greeneace and renew my membership.
1. Exxon Valdez is very old news and wasn't a big deal anyway. Same for BP Deepwater Horizon. [Never mind the lingering effects and the decade it took to settle claims.]
2. Fracking is beneficial; it brings needed energy to American homes. [Never mind that petro corporations are after big profits and social concerns are irrelevant.] Brown, oddly smelling tap water? Well, harms haven't been proven. After all, correlation is not causation. Besides, all energy production involves risk.
3. Supposed impacts also haven't been proven; climate change, especially as global warming, is still very controversial. [Never admit that science is not about some final proof. Ignore that it's not a weakness that scientists change their minds because any theory is subject to updated data. Keep saying "only a theory" and never acknowledge that in scientific usage theory doesn't mean some silly idea without proof, but a reasonable and persuasive explanation of accumulated evidence.]
***About that climate "controversy"-- made up by the same 5 scientists, Cold War fanatic physicists with no background in climatology, biology, or medicine. Who, coincidentally, testified for Big Tobacco, sowed doubt about acid rain and the ozone hole, plus shilling for Reagan's star wars (SDI.) See the book or film //Merchants of Doubt// by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway. The same right wing think tanks sponsoring this defense of the indefensible are also going after Rachel Carson. Why--especially decades after the fact? Because if she is ever considered reliable, then The Market might be construed as having failures and then government could interfere, which in their belief system is pure evil!!! You know, like FDR and the New Deal.
What is your point?
The last paragraph makes it obvious--I hope people read the book or look at the film, which are invaluable. The numbered items are actual claims made by defenders of the indefensible plus [reasons not to believe them.]
1) Not to mention the so-called "recyclable" plastics they sell
2) We breathe this miasma of volatile organic compounds daily and wonder why we get cancers
3) This country, with its usual failure to understand what is important, has no serious plan for renewable energy
4) The infrastructure continues to decay and if you want a real security issue, consider potential hacking of the grid
5) On the bright side, it is not coal
I sometimes with Biden really was the Communist that trump accuse him of being. (For a week or so) Any communist worth his red scarf would liquidate the plutocrats and fascists. I would in a heartbeat and I am not even a Leftist, let alone a Communisit.
A pox on Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big AG--all of them conspire to make the ordinary citizen's life not only worse, but more expensive. Here in Georgia, Georgia Power (and a double pox on them) has built nuclear reactors (yes, you read that right) that are fifteen years over due and over budget, and because people pay NO attention to the people who run for the "Public Service" Commission, every request that GA Power makes for the users to pay for their mistakes is approved. Please, folks, when elections come around, understand that the people you elect to the PSC and the Insurance Commission have direct, and too often, dire, consequences on your bank account.
Yes sireee ,Memorial is coming soon,it’s time to start inflating the gas prices ! Doesn’t matter the real cost or the available supplies, it’s now an accepted rite of spring! Goes down 5cents in late June ,then right back up for Labor Day! It’s all about” supply and demand ….." bullshit!🤢🤮🤮it’s bad enough that they’re killing the planet 🌎 they’re raping us monetarily,to help them do it super profitably ! Good thing the world’s going green ,the oil will not be flowing soon ! Oh shit they own all the renewable technologies!🤬😵💫😳 and we Paid for all of it! Some how that doesn’t make sense ,but what I do know is it’s time to straighten out the corruption in the government , and tame the corporate monster narcotic,that we have allowed to make our addiction to complacency , an excepted norm . The habit of letting others think for us is not how this country was intended to work! It’s time we own up to the fact that we have to constantly be responsible for our own lives ,and not be lazy about it! This mess we find ourselves in is of our own making , plain and simple ! By the People is our way ,the American way ,It’s past the time that we smarten up ,we have to get off our lazy comfortable asses and start the fix !🇺🇸ALL OF U.S . ! If we don’t keep moving forward,..THEY WILL just throw dirt on U.S.!🪦😑☠️ THEY is not U.S.
WE IS U.S.🇺🇸
The US 334,000 people giving up all the oil advantages will really help the 8 billion people on earth ?
Tim, you seem to have left off 3 zeros from the end of the US population. And the answer to your question is yes, because the US puts out a ton of oil pollution. The point is not to be uncomfortable, but to switch to renewables - like sunshine.
Thank you Amme,
Setting people’s perceptions correctly helps all of us. America along with China pollute our Earth more than anyone. If one really believes in God, one would want to be asking for forgiveness. Otherwise one would want to become as well educated as one could be by reading books .
The mind set that many carry and have “ locked in” is that in some way they (THEY) will be the one to survive. What a sad and lonely life that would be. Oh, and by the way , even “THEY” need oxygen and water , or have I been reading the wrong books?
How about