Corporations run America into the ground

Congress, supposedly the people's instrument of oversight, accepts no blame for its delinquency.

In April the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Democrats and the Senate Committee on The Budget published a joint staff report titled “Denial, Disinformation, and Doublespeak: Big Oil's Evolving Efforts to Avoid Accountability for Climate Change.” It’s good to see that part of Congress finally acknowledges what has been known for a long time: “‘Shell knew’: oil giant's 1991 film warned of climate change danger.”

The long-overdue conclusion of the report is:

The investigation and this report have set out new evidence about the extent of the fossil fuel industry’s evolving efforts to avoid accountability for climate change. As previously understood, fossil fuel companies first approached climate change by branding it a “hoax” and denying outright that the burning of fossil fuels contributed to a warming planet. But as the science about climate change became too overwhelming to continue to deny its existence, Big Oil needed to pivot. Accordingly, as new documents set out in this report demonstrate, the fossil fuel industry engaged in an elaborate campaign of deception and doublespeak—supported by its armada of trade associations—marked by public claims to support climate action and significant private steps to avoid it as well as disinformation about the climate safety of natural gas and its role as a bridge fuel to a fossil-free future. For more than half a century, Big Oil has misled the American public about its role in the climate crisis, doing everything in its power to keep the United States and the world dependent on its polluting products. It is long past time to hold Big Oil accountable for its deception campaign and to take action to undo the harms it has perpetrated.

In fact, that scam has been going on for decades and Congress as much as corporate America is to blame.

The joint report also mentions:

Despite the risks of methane emissions, fossil fuel companies advocated for natural gas expansion and promoted natural gas as a “bridge fuel,” and eventually even a safe “destination fuel.” Behind the scenes, industry leaders recognize the methane-related risks of natural gas while acting to lock in dangerous emissions for decades to come.

The report fails to mention that the lesser-evil-but-evil-nonetheless Obama administration bought into the methane “bridge fuel” idea. Also the Biden administration, in spite of talking out all five sides of its mouth, has not given up on fracked shale gas as the following chart shows:

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61926

U.S. Government has understood the problems associated with carbon dioxide since the 1965 report submitted to the White House by the President’s Science Advisory Committee, titled “Restoring the Quality of Our Environment,”

Gustave Speth served as Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality in the Carter Administration. Speth also acted as an expert witness for Juliana v. United States, which, as reported last week, the Department of Justice helped quash. In his testimony he relied on his extensive knowledge of the federal government's understanding of climate change, climate science, and sources of the energy system other than fossil fuels.

In his book “They Knew,” Speth republished and slightly expanded this testimony. His 2018 summary is brief, powerful, and devastating:

Defendants’ [the U.S. Government’s] actions on the national energy system over the past several decades are, in my view, the greatest dereliction of civic responsibility in the history of the Republic. And it is worse today than ever. This shocking historical conduct, government malfeasance on a grand scale, has left current and future generations enormously vulnerable to substantial danger.

The prize for being most depraved of all—the competition for this recognition has been brutal!—goes to the Trump administration. This is not the place to summarize “They Knew,” which has a long list of climate abominations committed by the Trump Administration. One of the relatively minor items on that list is the following, which is in the chapter Speth added after filing his testimony for Juliana v. Unites States:

• Put tariffs on solar panel imports.

Compare this with this week’s news report that the Biden administration slapped major new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, advanced batteries, and solar cells.

The sociopaths who lead the world fail collectively to understand that global problems, such as the climate catastrophe and the risk of thermonuclear war followed by nuclear winter, can only be solved cooperatively. Without cooperation humanity is at risk of self-destruction.

The following dramatic illustration is from Chomsky's speech at the 2022 World Social Forum.

You are all, I presume, familiar with physicist Enrico Fermi's famous paradox. In brief, "Where are they?" Distinguished astrophysicists knew that there are a huge number of planets within the reach of potential contact that have the conditions to sustain life and higher intelligence But with the most assiduous search we can find no trace of their existence. So, where are they?

Well, one response that has been seriously proposed, and cannot be dismissed, is that higher intelligence has indeed developed innumerable times. But it has proven to be lethal. It discovered the means for self-annihilation, but did not develop the moral capacity to prevent it.

Human systems of governance surely select against those who have such moral capacity. This indeed may lead to the destruction of human life on Earth, leaving others in the cosmos asking “So, where are they?”