Heresy Snowboarding

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Boy, is Obama making waves. This is a couple of months old, made when he was still PEBO (President Elect Barack Obama), but he is on the warpath.

As Joe Romm says over at ClimateProgress
:

It is judgment day, deniers and delayers. There is a new sheriff coming to town

“My presidency will mark a new chapter in America’s leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs in the process. That will start with a federal cap and trade system. We will establish strong annual targets that set us on a course to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them an additional 80% by 2050. Further, we will invest $15 billion each year to catalyze private sector efforts to build a clean energy future. We will invest in solar power, wind power, and next generation biofuels. We will tap nuclear power, while making sure it’s safe. And we will develop clean coal technologies.

Wow. Google and the new POTSA – my two favourite people right now. Both are going to help save the world. Google, you ask? Yep, those kids are doing some great work.

Meanwhile, those clowns at Exxon:

Nearby, at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Tillerson, a lanky Texan with a thick drawl and slicked-back silver hair, celebrated the earth’s “continued abundance” of oil, noting that humans have consumed barely a third of the planet’s available petroleum reserves. Oil and natural gas, he said, in a story line that Exxon Mobil has perfected over decades, will continue to supply nearly 60 percent of the world’s energy needs for the next 20 years. “Let’s be realistic,” Tillerson scoffed, when asked about Obama’s green-energy visions. “Let’s don’t fool ourselves!”

For years, critics have skewered Exxon Mobil for funding skeptics of global warming, claiming that its corporate denial campaign has endangered the planet. The world’s largest private energy corporation now must confront a different sort of climate change—the one in Washington. The question: Can Exxon Mobil survive Barack Obama?

The new president decries not just America’s dependence on “foreign” oil—the battle cry of politicians everywhere—but America’s dependence on oil, period. And he believes Exxon Mobil in particular, and Big Oil in general, is a key part of the problem. “I want to be clear,” Obama said shortly after taking office. “We have made our choice: America will not be held hostage to dwindling resources, hostile regimes, and a warming planet. We will not be put off from action because action is hard. Now is the time to make the tough choices.”

Yet if the energy landscape is transforming before our eyes, you wouldn’t know it from looking at Exxon Mobil or listening to Rex Tillerson. As the rest of the world stampedes to alternative energy and a popular new president rallies for it, the largest investor-owned oil company—the one with the biggest profit in history last year and $31 billion of cash in the bank—is standing stubbornly still. In 2008, Exxon Mobil spent about $26 billion on oil and gas development, plus another $32 billion buying back its own stock; spending on renewable-energy research amounted to a measly $4 million.

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