I ran into a guy from Chevron a few minutes ago whose job is evaluating the characteristics of biofuels, with an eye towards blending them with his company’s petrochemical products.  I asked him about synthetic fuels.  He looked blank, so I tried to help. “I have to think that somewhere between here and (Chevron headquarters) San Ramon (CA), there must be someone at Chevron looking at synthetic fuel.”

“Are you looking for support?” he asked.  “Well,” I replied, ”I believe that somewhere along the line, a strategic partnership with a large process manufacturing company, perhaps an oil company, would absolutely be indicated.”

“That’s a very long, hard road,” he smiled, extending his hand to say goodbye.

Every once in a while I hear something from Washington D.C. that provides a ray of hope that perhaps a bit of sanity may eventually prevail in the U.S. energy policy. Obama sure has disappointed a bunch of people in the last couple of years – especially the people who voted for him — but here’s something he said the other day:

Does anyone really think that Congress should give them another $4 billion dollars this year? Of course not. It’s outrageous. It’s inexcusable. And I’m asking Congress: Eliminate this oil industry giveaway right away. I want them to vote on this in the next few weeks. Let’s put every single member of Congress on record. You can stand with the oil companies or you can stand up for the American people. You can keep subsidizing a fossil fuel that’s been getting taxpayer dollars for a century or you can place your bets on a clean energy future.

Btw, it’s FAR more than $4 billion when you add them all up.

In any case, as they say, hope springs eternal.

Every few months, I try to remind myself to write something on Chevron and its overtly criminal behavior in Ecuador.  Those who are keeping track here will recall that, for a period of 26 years, Chevron (then Texaco) deliberately dumped tens of billions of gallons of toxic byproducts of their oil extraction processes directly into Ecuadorian rivers and streams, simply because they thought they would never get caught.  Well, they did — and recently an appellate court upheld an $18 judgement against Chevron, making it appear that perhaps the good guys have won here, and that some level of justice may be done, where the victims (the local people suffering skyrocketing rates of cancer, birth defects, etc.) will be compensated for their losses.  

No such luck.  Instead of remediating his company’s contamination, Chevron CEO John Watson has invested hundreds of millions of dollars on 39 different U.S. law firms in an increasingly futile attempt to evade responsibility for the consequences of this quite deliberate man-made catastrophe.

Linked above is a 15-minute long video that summarizes exactly what happened here — perhaps the single most despicable act in the history of corporate criminality.  

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.