What Will Our Energy Future Look Like?
Here’s a presentation by Shell Oil that attempts to answer the question. While Shell is probably the most decent and honest of the large oil companies, there is no doubt that building such a story and paying for it to be disseminated means there is at least some level of self-interest here.
In the Q&A following the lecture on climate change by Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, someone asked her about oil companies. She didn’t hesitate a moment before responding, “There are three kinds: a) those who know that fossil fuels are destroying the planet and are trying to go in a different direction, b) those who understand the realities of climate change, but take an amoral approach and simply continue business as usual, and c) those who intend to sell oil forever regardless of the consequences, and actively sew doubt about climate change into the public at large and the law-makers who govern them.
Of course, I’m not privy to the Shell board room, but I suspect they’re somewhere between a and b.
Craig,
(Sigh) Shell is neither “moral” or “immoral”. Like any business, it exists to provide legal, useful productd to customers and a profit for shareholders.
Shell’s board are elected to fulfill these two functions while also providing employment, increasing economic activity and paying taxes.(the oil industry is the largest US tax payer, with Exxon being largest individual Taxpayer).
As a Corporate citizen, Shell is also entitled to advocate on economic, employment, resource and other relevant issues.
Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, like all the socialist-left lives in an intentional or unintentional delusion, while preaching an ideology she doesn’t actually practice.
Oil companies produce more than energy. Of the 350,000 products produced by the petro-chemical industry, gasoline and diesel or just two and among the least profitable.
Nearly the entire modern high standard of living, including medical advances, are the result of oil products.
Like you, Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, is a hypocrite. She rails against the organizations which produce the products she uses and enjoys every day. She is kept safe, healthy and securely prosperous by the fruits of those at whom she sanctimoniously wags her finger.
Right now, a tragedy is unfolding in once blessed and prosperous Venezuela. The tragedy of this oil rich nation is it caught a disease that once afflicted much of Europe (and still reoccurs) called socialism.
After two or three generations, the lesson learned about this pestilential ideology or forgotten, and the malaise returns, especially among middle class youth, to plague another two generations.
The pestilence always finds futile ground in varying disguises, among the idealistic and chattering classes, those whose incomes are not derived from employment in productive labour, but among the academic or administrative industries.
Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, is an excellent example of this sort of unrealistic idealist who wants to destroy the props of Western civilization and freedom, in favour of a long discredited ideology.
Like Bernie Saunders, Hugo Chavez etc, her only talent is spending other peoples money! The only problem with that philosophy is sooner or later, she will run out of other peoples money.