My grandfather helped drill the initial oil wells near Oil City, Pennsylvania. They were drawing up oil and grease for wagons and watermills. A waste byproduct, gasoline, was burned off in the ditches. When internal combustion engines took over from the nascent electromobiles, off we went to fuel our transport and housing with oil and coal, oblivious of the harm excess carbon dioxide was doing to our climate. Now we know, yet fossil fuel old money helped elect a doofus president who does their unethical bidding.
In the 1970s, the fossil fuel companies helped measure that growing harm. But in the 1980s, in the Reagan "greed is good" era, they switched to investing in delaying and denying the damage being done and the ways we could address it.
I don't blame the fossil fuel corporations for supplying the fuel we needed. I admire the multiple skills of creating gasoline and regular cars, etc. I do blame them for financing the PRopaganda to deny what they knew it was doing to us. To the extent that that expensive propaganda succeeded in avoiding the problem, thereby adding to the world's even more expensive global overheating woes, is the extent to which they should be held financially liable.
I'm ashamed of what laggards we are, and I admire China for being more innovative and responsible. However, even with misleading obstruction at the federal level (almost entirely due to Republican foot-dragging), the U.S. is number two behind China in developing and implementing clean energy alternatives and electric vehicles. Soon we can say we were a petro state.
I look forward to Scott Cooney's book. It'll speak to the many Americans who care about this issue, Republicans too.
My grandfather helped drill the initial oil wells near Oil City, Pennsylvania. They were drawing up oil and grease for wagons and watermills. A waste byproduct, gasoline, was burned off in the ditches. When internal combustion engines took over from the nascent electromobiles, off we went to fuel our transport and housing with oil and coal, oblivious of the harm excess carbon dioxide was doing to our climate. Now we know, yet fossil fuel old money helped elect a doofus president who does their unethical bidding.
In the 1970s, the fossil fuel companies helped measure that growing harm. But in the 1980s, in the Reagan "greed is good" era, they switched to investing in delaying and denying the damage being done and the ways we could address it.
I don't blame the fossil fuel corporations for supplying the fuel we needed. I admire the multiple skills of creating gasoline and regular cars, etc. I do blame them for financing the PRopaganda to deny what they knew it was doing to us. To the extent that that expensive propaganda succeeded in avoiding the problem, thereby adding to the world's even more expensive global overheating woes, is the extent to which they should be held financially liable.
I'm ashamed of what laggards we are, and I admire China for being more innovative and responsible. However, even with misleading obstruction at the federal level (almost entirely due to Republican foot-dragging), the U.S. is number two behind China in developing and implementing clean energy alternatives and electric vehicles. Soon we can say we were a petro state.
I look forward to Scott Cooney's book. It'll speak to the many Americans who care about this issue, Republicans too.