Big Oil knew. They knew right down to the year when the terminal cancer they sold to the world at great profit would begin to show unmistakable symptoms. Does anyone have doubts that they also have an end game plan to further lull us into complacency to keep their murderous profits flowing?
Big Oil buys itself time by pretending to mend its ways. They publicly support carbon taxes. They will promise you anything because they are lying. Make no mistake. We can not ”Work It Out” with the fossil fuel industry.
How Big Oil Blocked the Nation’s Greenest Governor on Climate Change by Marianne Lavele For InsideClimate News which “was co-published with The Weather Channel as part of Collateral, a series on climate, data and science.”
It was Valentine's Day 2018, and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee was about to be jilted.
Few outside Inslee's circle of advisers knew that one of the nation's most ardent advocates of climate action had been working for weeks to forge an alliance with one of the state's leading greenhouse gas polluters—the oil giant BP.
Now, on the day before a key hearing for Inslee's proposal to enact the nation's first carbon tax, the kind of comprehensive climate plan he had been talking about since taking office, BP was evasive.
"Will you be testifying tomorrow on behalf of BP?" Chris Davis, Inslee's senior climate advisor, wrote in an email to the company's Washington state lobbyist Denny Eliason. "Very needed right now."
Eliason put him off, indicating he'd know more after an upcoming call. But the next morning, Inslee's office still had no idea if his proposal would go before the state Senate's chief tax-writing committee that day with the influential backing of BP. The oil company was the best hope Inslee's team had for the endorsement of a big business directly affected by the policy—support that could win over conservative Democrats or even Republicans, whose votes Inslee needed for the measure to pass. "Any news?" Davis prodded in another email.
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BP's lobbyist delivered the final brush-off two hours before that afternoon's hearing. Despite BP's public support for carbon pricing and the concessions Inslee and Democratic lawmakers had made to win the oil company's support for their carbon tax proposal, BP wasn't going along. Eliason said BP would take no position on the bill—a silence that might as well have been a death knell.
Perhaps this disappointing yet educational experience was behind Candidate Jay Inslee’s strong response to former VP Joe Biden when he had said—“We could work it out” about phasing out fossil fuels.
INSLEE: We cannot work it out. We cannot work this out. The time is up. Our house is on fire. We have to stop using coal in 10 years, and we need a president to do it or it won't get done. Get off coal. Save this country and the planet. That's what I'm for.
Governor Jay Inslee was adamant that the next president must have the capacity to stand up to the fossil fuel industry. Walking into a meeting while holding a compromise already under their arm is not the way to do it. As the effects of our climate emergency become increasingly more deadly and undeniable, a climate president must have a preponderance of the public behind them and cannot grant the fossil fuel industry the right to refuse. The president must act. As seen in the duplicitous actions of BP with Governor Jay Inslee, Big Oil will come to the table only to scuttle the effort.
Further proof that the fossil fuel company has no intention of halting the drilling and pumping until the last drop of oil is safely in their back accounts is laid out in The Economist Reader article in February 2019 Big oil and the environment The truth about big oil and climate change.
In 2000 BP promised to go “beyond petroleum” and, on the face of it, the majors have indeed changed. All say that they support the Paris agreement to limit climate change and all are investing in renewables such as solar. Shell recently said that it would curb emissions from its products. Yet ultimately you should judge companies by what they do, not what they say.
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Yet amid the clamour is a single, jarring truth. Demand for oil is rising and the energy industry, in America and globally, is planning multi-trillion-dollar investments to satisfy it. No firm embodies this strategy better than ExxonMobil, the giant that rivals admire and green activists love to hate. As our briefing explains, it plans to pump 25% more oil and gas in 2025 than in 2017. If the rest of the industry pursues even modest growth, the consequence for the climate could be disastrous.
The fossil fuel industry is devoid of ethics. Its only purpose is to grow like a malignant tumor until it kills its host. The world requires a strong and steadfast American president to stand up to Big Oil.
We cannot work it out. We cannot work this out.
The time is up. Our house is on fire.
We have to stop using coal in 10 years.
We need a president to do it or it won't get done.
Get off coal.
Save this country and the planet.
Blogathon
September 20-27 on DK
September 20 is the launch of an entire week of global climate action. From Friday September 20 to September 27, people of all generations all over the world will be mobilizing.
Here are the dates for the climate strike
https://globalclimatestrike.net/
It has sign ups for strikes all over the world.