Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:

I don’t often post more than once a day, but this needs comment:

I have posted before on the efforts by Exxon Mobil, using some of those mindboggling corporate profits ($39.5 billion in 2006, as we reported yesterday) to fund scientists to cast doubt on the science on global warming. So this should come as no surprise — these guys have offered $10,000 each to a list of scientists willing to issue reports that would weaken the case made by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Will you read about this in US newspapers? I hope so. Right now, my source is The Guardian in London. What they report is this:

Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Even at this late date. Even now, with our situation growing increasingly dire, they would do this.

Where is the outrage — because we need a good dose of it here.

For a great resource on the amount of money Exxon Mobil has put into debunking climate science and the institutions that have received this largess, check out this Mother Jones page.

For another good article on this from just last month, check out this article from the Environment News Service.

These people have to be stopped, and the best way to do that is through exposure. Following that comes the political pressure on Congress and on presidential candidates. Nothing much we can do about Bush and Cheney. They sold their souls to the oil industry long ago. Cheney in particular has a close relationship with the AEI, the group that sent the letters.

Nearly $40 billion in profits — some of which they spend on this, on trying to cast doubt on the very science we need in order to act in time to save this world from a terrible catastrophe, preceded by cascading disasters. This is an assault on future generations, a direct counter to efforts to change human behavior in time to salvage the atmosphere in which we live and breath and have our being.

It is actually just as dramatic as that.

By the way, I discovered the Guardian article by way of a visit to The Oil Drum. Lots of good info here on the coming oil crunch.