This time, it’s Exxon, spilling oil for the umpteenth time in yet another refuge, the Yellowstone River!
One wonders when the wholly owned Seven Sisters subsidiary known as the US Congress will decide that it’s time to stop subsidizing these wildly profitable polluters.
Meanwhile, climate change legislation and a real energy policy based on raising the cost for using fossil fuels remains moribund.
Gorilla says: “Destroying our country is so much easier for our leaders than pretending to care!”
Why else would they invade Bahrain?
If democracy does eventually take hold in Bahrain, the Saudis may not be able to bribe their way out of it in Jeddah.
For Americans, this is only about oil. We don’t care who’s in charge so long as the oil keeps flowing.
Gorilla says: “If suicide bombers head for the Saudi oil fields, we might just pay attention!”
Why are Americans getting all heated up about Libya using brutal force to keep a dictator in power, while our ally Saudi Arabia has just invaded Bahrain to do exactly the same thing?
Let’s see: a foreign invasion by a neighboring country to prop up a repressive minority government, sound familiar?
It was called Yugoslavia, and for NATO it was bombs away. Have to stop the genocide, after all!!!
Nowadays, as then, we don’t do much to stop genocide when there’s oil at stake.
Gaddafi may be a lunatic, but invading Libya and the Japanese earthquake together might take the price of oil up to $300/barrel or more.
It’s just not something a US President wants to do in the year before his reelection campaign, particularly when he’s already losing two pointless wars.
Similarly, Bahrain’s a minor oil kingdom, but pissing off the Saudis is something we simply cannot afford to do.
So, our President is playing this right. He’s doing as little as he possibly can about Bahrain and Libya.
It’s not the moral high ground, but we no longer occupy that space, what with the torture, the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the secret prisons, and the overseas detention camps.
And there’s no more appetite in DC for doing something about energy policy than there is for doing something about unemployment.
Gorilla says: “Staying safe and cozy in a parallel universe of denial is pretty much all America does these days!”
Shock, shock! There’s no agreement on climate change at the G-8 summit!
So, it’s back on the jets and into the limos for global leaders everywhere.
The Europeans want us to do more, we want the Chinese and Indians to do more, and so everyone does nothing more.
What’s curious to Gorilla is why our green President is now directing his regulators to pursue “speculators” who have allegedly jacked up the price of oil.
Heck, even Paul Krugman smells a rat!
Shouldn’t we be encouraging the highest possible prices for fossil fuels, rather than passing toothless frauds like Waxman-Markey?
Wouldn’t that do more to help reduce global warming and carbon consumption than any number of canapes served by the likes of Berlusconi?
