why Il Buce says "the science is still out" on global warming

[realthog]

US power company linked to Bush is named in database as a top polluter

says the headline over an article by Leonard Doyle in today's edition of the fine UK newspaper The Independent. Here are some pertinent extracts:

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An American power company with close financial links to President George Bush has been named as one of the world's top producers of global warming pollution.

. . . it is the enormous carbon footprint of Southern Company – among the largest financiers of Republican Party politicians – which has raised eyebrows. Southern's employees handed George Bush $217,047 to help him get elected, and they and the company have contributed an extraordinary $6.2m to Republican campaigns since 1990.

A single Southern Company plant in Juliette, Georgia already emits more carbon dioxide annually than Brazil's entire power sector. The company is in the top two of America's dirtiest utility polluters and sixth worst in the world. 

Apart from vague promises by the Democratic presidential hopefuls, there is no pressure on this or any other power company to clean up their act and cut back on CO2 emissions. 

Politicians from both parties fear the influence of Southern, which spends huge sums both on lobbying and on political campaigns and is among the biggest power players in Washington. It has seen off numerous attempts to impose controls on the amounts of pollution it pumps out. 

The link between massive cash contributions by America's power companies and political arm-twisting in Washington has rarely been put into such sharp relief. Environmentalists have long suspected that President Bush's dogged refusal to sign up to international agreements to control global warming was linked to campaign contributions. 

Yesterday's report has finally identified the impact these power companies are having on global warming. Southern, which earned $14.4bn in revenues in 2006, is using its influence to block the introduction of wind, solar, biomass and other renewable energy sources on the grounds that it would eat into its profits. 

Haley Barbour, one of the main lobbyists for Southern Co when President Bush took office, played a crucial role in persuading him to back away from his original campaign promise to reduce CO2 emissions when he first ran for president in 2000. Mr Barbour is a former chairman of the Republican Party, and was reelected governor of Mississippi last week. 

According to Frank O'Donnell of Clean Air Watch, after Mr Bush became president, "he was got at by Haley Barbour, who said, 'Hey, Mr President we didn't elect you to have high energy costs'". 

Mr O'Donnell said: "Southern Company Lobbyists treated the president as if he was someone to give orders to and he took them. The upshot is that America's biggest polluters used their chequebooks effectively to block actions to stop global warming." . . . 

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3166414.ece 

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Since these bozoes are aggressively putting their own fat profits before the welfare of future generations of the human species, they are in effect prepared, solely in order to line their own pockets, to commit mass murder on a scale beyond the wildest imaginings of mere amateurs like Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot. How many people, all over the world, have already died so these turds can add a few extra holiday homes? Sahel, anyone? These criminals should be treated as the murderous scum they are and thrown into prison for a very long time before they have the opportunity to extinguish any more human lives.

Just my sense of it, you understand.

Comments

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I read that, and I don't want to sound jaded or anything, but it's hardly a surprise, is it? Money buys influence and influence buys political leverage. These people don't care about the future of the human race. They'll be long dead before it matters, and they know that. By the time it matters, it'll be someone else's problem. I didn't even bother shaking my head, just turned the page.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"These people don't care about the future of the human race. They'll be long dead before it matters"

Don't they have kids?

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

Maybe they do, maybe they don't. They just don't care. It's somebody else's problem. Seriously, these people are not like you and me. They hew to an entirely different set of values.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"It's somebody else's problem."

But it would become their problem -- and the problem of others who might think to emulate them -- if my perfectly reasonable suggestion were adopted and they got stuck with hefty jail sentences.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"these people"

I think "fuckwits" is the term you're groping for.

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

Yep, that was the word. And yep, the threat of jail time might serve to concentrate their minds. But we know it isn't going to happen. And yep, that sucks.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"But we know it isn't going to happen."

Not in the shorter term, it isn't, but my guess is that -- if we survive as a viable society long enough -- there'll come the time, probably better countable in years than in decades, when endangering large chunks of humanity through environmental (or similar) recklessness will indeed be legally recognized as the major crime it most obviously is.

I feel a story comin' on . . .