Here’s a wonderful video presentation of Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire,’ the clever reminder that problems in the world are nothing new, and really nothing to get too concerned over. I infer that this philosophy must be quite dear to him, as he expresses it in many of his songs, e.g., The Angry Young Man:

There’s always a place for the angry young man

With his fist in the air and his head in the sand

He’s never been able to learn from mistakes

So he can’t understand why his heart always breaks

His honor is pure, and his courage as well

He’s fair and he’s true, and he’s boring as hell

And he’ll go to his grave as an angry old man.

….

I do believe I’ve passed the age

Of consciousness and righteous rage

I’ve found that just surviving was a noble fight

I once believed in causes too

I had my pointless point of view

But life went on no matter who was wrong or right.

While this is brilliant stuff, and extremely musical, it’s sickeningly wrong-headed.  I know I’m decidedly unhip, but remember Margaret Mead? She left us with:  “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” And how about Edmund Burke?  He reminded us: “All that’s necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing.” Ideas like these may not sell records, but there’s a lot of truth there.

In 2009 and 2010, the oil companies took $500 million, a considerable fortune, yet a tiny sliver of the profits they had retained, and invested it into lobbying Congress against climate change legislation. I don’t use the word “evil” lightly, but it’s more than appropriate here. And labeling this behavior as evil — and trying to do something about it — is not a “pointless point of view.”

I can appreciate the hedonistic viewpoint, and the rock stars who take their riches and party, well, like rock stars.  But I submit that there are other ideals worth pursuing as well.

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30,000 people in Ecuador are one step closer to achieving justice in their case against Chevron. On Wednesday, an appellate court upheld the $9.5 billion judgement that would force the oil giant to pay for the clean up of a huge tract of land, damaged by Texaco, before its acquisition by Chevron. If you have a strong stomach, the talking points of the Chevron C-suite and PR team are at ChevronThinksWe’reStupid.org. And here’s a video made by Amazon Watch, a small but fierce non-profit that’s been working hard to focus world attention — and bring justice — to this horrific matter.

But how close are we to a resolution? Don’t hold your breath. As I’ve mentioned, Chevron’s team of attorneys is among the largest and most talented bunch of people on Earth. They’re playing for blood, and they’re licking their chops over the success that ExxonMobil enjoyed in dragging out its payment on the Valdez oil spill in Alaska for more than 25 years before agreeing to pay a small portion — over a quarter of a century later. No fewer than 8000 beneficiaries of the ExxonMobil restitution died while they were waiting for their money to come in.

This looks like a long, hard slog. 

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When I have a few extra minutes, I blog on a range of other energy-related sites.  A reader of one of these, EnergyCollective.com, writes:

Great article (meaning this one).

It’s unfortunate that this piece couldn’t have been written ten years ago. I am one of those people that does not understand why the EV community has not been talking about why we have not been driving more affordable, longer range EVs for the last ten years and why we had to wait for Li-ion technology when there was proven, less expensive, longer-lasting and recycleable NiMH (nickel metal hydride). Every time I see my friend’s 10 year old Toyota RAV4-EV go 100 miles on its original batteries (PEVE 95), I think it’a a crime against humanity; everyone could have been driving an even better NiMH powered car.

For some time now, I have listened to Chevron’s excuses about how they sold Cobasys and how it’s not their hot potato anymore without admitting that they or GM still controls the rights to NiMH for EVs. Their smokescreen is aided and abetted by the press which chooses to play dumb or is afraid to address the issue. The fact is that Chevron and GM still control NiMH use and are responsible for at least ten years of increased consumer transportation costs and more pollution than 10 Gulf Disasters.

Craig, am I preaching to the choir?

Perhaps, but I appreciate what you’ve said there, and you’re 100% on target. I never thought of it as a “crime against humanity,” as you put it, yet it’s  actually quite apt.  Thanks for writing.

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Virtually no one doubts the basic concept. But how soon in our future (or how recently in our past) does that point lie? And what are its consequences?

A few weeks ago, a fine — and well-read friend told me over breakfast in New York, “Did you know that there’s enough oil under South Dakota to last 200 years?”

“That’s amazing,” I replied. “Then what’s all the fuss about?”

“Damn environmentalists.”

I’m not sure it’s that easy. The truth, which he, as an educated man should have known, is that we truly have exhausted the supply of easy-to-find oil, but that there is a huge deposit of shale/tar sands oil, whose economic and environmental costs of extraction are extreme.

Is there more oil? Yes. Does that provide us an easy answer? Not in the least.

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All Americans should be aware of what’s happening in Washington in this critically important area that affects every one of us. Earlier this week, 48 Senators, including three Democrats and all but two Senate Republicans voted to defeat a bill that would have ended tax breaks for the five biggest oil companies.

What could cause such outrageous behavior? How about the $39.5 million that the oil and gas companies spent lobbying Congress in the first quarter of this year alone? Or might it be the fact that the industry donated nearly $18 million directly to the political campaigns of Senators who voted against ending these subsidies — five times more than to Senators who supported ending them?

Yet the measure to end these handouts to the oil industry came fairly close to passing (we needed 60 votes, and got 52). The message: if you care about things like this (and I have to think that most readers here do indeed), I urge you to exercise your rights as a citizen and let your elected leaders know where you stand on this.

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In my mind, what makes this all the more disgusting is where it happened, and why it happened there.  We’re talking about a company whose leaders premeditated to commit an atrocity in a part of the world populated with men, women and children in whom “civilization” simply has no interest.  The people of the entire region are invisible; they hold no currency; they do not matter.  If they had perpetrated the same thing in the US, the executives responsible would have been making license plates for the next 15 – 20 years — and they knew it.  We have clear laws in place  — and a judicial system that does manage to lock up an occasional CEO or two for gross violations.  So the folks in charge thought they would make some money by destroying a remote part of the world, and its forgotten people — all with total impunity. 

And even though decades of jurisprudence finally produced a crystal-clear guilty verdict, they just might pull it off.  Chevron has deployed many hundreds of the world’s finest and best-paid litigators to the case, and have vowed to fight this to the bitter end.  Besides, they must be heartened by the success that ExxonMobil enjoyed in dragging out its payments on the Valdez oil spill in Alaska for more than 25 years before agreeing to pay a small portion — over a quarter of a century later.   No fewer than 8000 beneficiaries of the ExxonMobil restitution died while they were waiting for their money to come in.  I have to imagine that Chevron finds this travesty most encouraging. 

Sorry to have to bring you news like this.  And it’s not all that good for me either, as I routinely take considerable flack when I present stuff of this kind. 

But I do it anyway.

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Those of us who have seen the film documentary “Crude” — as well as millions of others following the story — were heartened today as a court in Ecuador has ordered the oil giant Chevron to pay $8.6 billion for dumping billions of gallons of toxic oil waste into Ecuador’s rain forest. The judgement is one of the largest ever imposed for environmental contamination in any court.

However, we were not at all surprised to hear that Chevron said it would appeal the ruling.  Hell, ExxonMobil robo-appealed the Valdez judgement, consistently postponing the payment of damages.

The Exxon Valdez tanker spilled more than 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound, and eventually contaminated approximately 1,300 miles of shoreline. Yet, according to Climate Change, the group Time Magazine hails as “Internet’s most influential climate-change blogger,” Exxon fought paying damages and appealed court decisions multiple times, and they have still not paid in full.

“Years of fighting and court appeals on Exxon’s part finally concluded with a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2008 that found that Exxon only had to pay $507.5 million of the original 1994 court decree for $5 billion in punitive damages. And as of 2009, Exxon had paid only $383 million of this $507.5 million to those who sued, stalling on the rest and fighting the $500 million in interest owed to fishermen and other small businesses from more than 12 years of litigation.

“Twenty years later, some of the original plaintiffs are no longer alive to receive, or continue fighting for, their damages. An estimated 8,000 of the original Exxon Valdez plaintiffs have died since the spill while waiting for their compensation as Exxon fought them in court.”

Is there any reason to expect that Chevron will behave any differently?  Sure, the cases have some radically different features.  In particular, Chevron’s acts were not simple accidents stemming from negligence on its part; they were willful acts of criminality, deliberately and brazenly perpetrated against a people whom Chevron (then Texaco) erroneously presumed to be too weak and poorly represented to defend themselves.  One could argue that Chevron would be well advised to get this atrocity out of the news and safely behind them so that they can immediately hire some high-priced public relations firm and get to work rebuilding some sort of credibility as a decent corporate citizen.  It’s going to be a very long road — why not start now?

But that won’t happen; I would have found it astonishing to hear that Chevron had taken a different tack here.  They made a cool $5.3 billion last quarter, and they employ the very best lawyers on Earth.  Why pay up — and clean up — when you can put that legal team to good use?  

And it will be equally amazing if they don’t ultimately enjoy a similar experience to Exxon’s thrill of victory in abusing the legal system until this judgement is overturned or reduced to a tiny sliver of the $8.6 billion.

It’s shameful stuff.  But sadly,  it’s the new standard. 

Btw, in addition to comments supporting what I’ve written here, I’m fully expecting the normal barrage of hate mail that I receive every time I send out a post like this, suggesting that I’m a “lefty” or somehow “unAmerican.”  I couldn’t be less concerned; please feel free to express your true feelings.  But please don’t try to tell me that behavior like this is what America stands for in the world; this garbage most positively does not represent the country for which our forefathers fought and died. 

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A few readers have objected to my post suggesting that Chevron’s sponsoring the PBS NewsHour could warp the objectivity of the coverage of the energy industry. Most of these responses point out that I have no proof that Chevron’s presence actually has created a slant, which is true. Others say that energy does not have to be an “us versus them” story.

I’m not a combative or suspicious person by nature, but there is no way that anyone can analyze the energy industry and not conclude that it is essentially “us vs. them.” The oil companies employ 7000 lobbyists whose job it is to influence our government in its favor. If they didn’t see the need to purchase that favor, they wouldn’t employ the biggest lobby on Earth. And they’ve been fantastically successful;they’ve succeeded in creating a world in which oil receives $12 in subsidies for every $1 given to renewables.

It was only a couple of years ago that ExxonMobil admitted to and agreed to stop funding sham “research” organizations whose only job was to discredit the theory of global warming. Here’s an article that outlines how absurdly contentious this global warming issue has become.

As an industry observer, I don’t feel a lot of love between the fossil fuel and clean energy people. It’s regrettable, but it’s true. One might hope for — or even expect — a kind of kinship here, since we all breathe the same air and drink the same water. But as far as I can see, we’re a million miles from any cooperation that may result in a better, cleaner, and safer planet that we call home.

Lastly, I don’t object to Chevron’s sponsoring commercial drivel like Wheel of Fortune – or even excellent entertainment like Masterpiece Theater – shows that have no bearing on news coverage. But to think that news editors are immune from the pressure of sponsors’ money is naive.

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I don’t think of myself as overly suspicious of the motives of others. But I have to say that I recoil at the end of every PBS NewsHour when Jim Lehrer signs off and we’re told that the broadcast was sponsored by Chevron. The idea that the information I just received met the approval of an oil company, with its obvious interests vis-à-vis clean energy, is deeply offensive. It certainly makes me call into question the validity of everthing I just heard.

Why does Chevron target PBS? I think the answer it pretty obvious: covering their bases. The established energy industry already owns the flow of information coming through the for-profit corporate-owned media.  PBS offers access to the “well read” demographic, many of whom have taken the smart tack with respect to commercial television, i.e., they’ve turned it off.  Thus PBS is the perfect tool to reach them.

For Chevron, it’s a no-brainer. But for me, it cuts like a knife.

I’ve written to PBS and to Lehrer personally, explaining that the increase in their credibility would more than justify telling these people to take a hike.  I hope you will too.

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While clean energy may be the way of the future, if you’re an oil company, it’s certainly the enemy of the present. Even the most aggressive repositioning of the oil companies as “energy companies” (BP as “beyond petroleum,” Chevron as “part of the solution” etc.) is such obvious PR fluff that it leaves most people with a very bad taste in their mouths about these entities’ sincerity and their status as corporate citizens.

On another line, from the standpoint of internal capital allocation, the return on asset stats associated with oil exploration beats the pants off the development of renewables. Thus prudent and responsible managers, who themselves are managed according to the short-term profits they drive, have only disincentive to push investments in renewables.

At the end of the day, we see a great ebb and flow, as internal arguments play themselves out.

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