What Me Worry?
Apparently, the ironically named Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson is an A$$hole. In fact after hearing him quoted on NPR recently, my reaction was that he's got to be one of the pre-eminent A$$holes on the scene today. While he deserves some credit for moving his company from a staunch supporter of climate science denial to admitting that human produced carbon emissions are changing the world's climate, he's still putting greed first and signaling full steam ahead on us all burning more and more of his company's products. Damn the torpedos! http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/27/exxon-climate-idUSL2E8HRA8K20120627
"Changes to weather patterns that move crop production areas around -- we'll adapt to that. It's an engineering problem and it has engineering solutions," Tillerson said in a presentation to the Council on Foreign Relations.
Adapt? Tell that to the the people of Bangladesh who live in a cyclone prone delta flood plain that is only a few inches to a few feet above a rising sea level. What's the "engineering solution" to that?They're not going to get a chance to adapt, they're going to die! Tell that to the people of the Maldives Island nation in the Indian Ocean. They're country will be permanently and completely under water. Is this the new face of social darwinism?
The man at the tiller said, "The fear factor that people want to throw out there to say 'We just have to stop this,' I do not accept."
Fear? Of course! Why would anyone in a low lying coastal plain fear a rising tide? Why would anyone surviving on barely arable land fear an expanding desert? Why would anyone dependent on glacial melt water for drinking and irrigating their crops fear the permanent and complete melting of the mountian glaciers they've depended on for time immemorial? They'll simply adapt.
No doubt Exxon Mobil is at the forefront of paying for the research and solutions that will allow this adaptation, right? Oh sure. I'm sure this A$$hole is sitting safe in mansion somewhere completely insulated from any possibility of having to "adapt" his elitist lifestyle. And I'm sure his children will be well set up too to weather the storm. Adaptation, that's for little people. As Daffy Duck once said, "Consequences shmonsequences, as long as I'm rich."
Well Rex baby, how about other species besides us? How are they going to adapt? Have you thought about them or are you out of touch with the fact that there are other species on this planet besides you and the grass on your fairway? Are you or your company going to pay to relocate plants and animals across barriers to climate zones more suitable to their evolutionary legacy? Or are they just SOL?
Tillerson said issues such as global poverty were more pressing than climate change, and billions of people without access to energy would benefit from oil and gas supplies. "They'd love to burn fossil fuels because their quality of life would rise immeasurably," How touching, Rexy is concerned about the poor and wants to benefit them by letting them burn his oil and gas. Really? Let's get billions of poor people in China, India and elsewhere burning even more of his ancient fossil product and putting it into today's atmosphere and that will make things better? Well for this A$$hole sitting high and dry in conditioned air behind his guarded gates, I guess the answer is, yes.
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