This column
started out as an attack on corporate CEOs for failing to defend their
own corporate interests against the encroaching power of climate policy
makers. The average CEO and his board of directors have been
prostrating themselves before climate greenies, donating cash to
activist groups and generally snookering themselves into public
relations dead ends. By doing so, CEOs are failing their basic duty to
shareholders.
A typical example is the airline industry. Scores
of airlines, including Air Canada, rushed, over the last year, to offer
carbon offsets. For another $30, you can buy an offset that will create
a carbon reduction (such as a tree planting) to somehow neutralize the
carbon burned in the jet fuel used to power your flight.
How
naive can corporate managers get? Head office is not reading the
program. The objective of the climate theorists at the United Nations
and within governments around the world is not to nibble at the edges
of fossil fuel consumption and carbon emissions with little offsets and
tree plantings. The plan is for massive cutbacks of 20%, 30% and 40%,
bites so big that business models crash and jobs disappear and people
move to some other line of work.
Air Canada last week announced
high oil prices would cost the airline $1-billion this year, forcing
layoffs and flight reductions. The International Air Transport
Association (IATA) last week said "the situation is desperate and
potentially more destructive for the industry that our recent crises --
SARS, terrorism and war --combined." All very alarming, to be sure. But
it misses the point: That's the plan! As The Guardian's environment
writer, George Monbiot, wrote in his alarmist book, Heat, "If you fly,
you destroy other people's lives."
When General Motors announces
huge falloffs in sales, plant closings and layoffs as a result of
rising gas prices, that's the kind of impact climate policy activists
hope to see from carbon taxes throughout the economy. If you drive, it
might be said, you destroy other people's lives.
So the original
purpose of this column was to alert CEOs to their failure to live up to
their responsibilities to protect shareholders and their corporations
against climate policy assault. Instead, they have been feeding the
beast with Boy Scout responses --carbon offsets, green programs and
public relations gambits -- that actually do nothing more than
reinforce the idea that their products and services are part of the
climate problem.
That was the column plan until along came James
Hansen, revered climate scientist and head of the NASA Goddard
Institute for Space Studies in New York. He has another message for
CEOs, especially energy industry CEOs: "In my opinion, these CEOs
should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature."
Appearing
before a Congressional committee in Washington on Monday, Mr. Hansen
said the CEOs of major energy companies are among special interests
that have blocked renewable energy developments and spread "doubt"
about climate science. "CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they
are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business
as usual." Read rest...
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