Fed Largess Minister John Baird tells Miller to f off, Miller capitalises and streetcars worth $1.2 billion are bought and it happens. I love it when rules aren’t followed at all.

Thankfully Toronto didn’t need any work done on parks, roads, bridges and sewers or anything else that could get unemployed folks off the EI rolls and working and build needed infrastructure immediately.

[JR: Emissions do not equal concentrations. This analysis is wrong. We're rising about 2 ppm a year. Probably hit 2.5 by 2030. Still very bad.]

Approximately 600 ppm equivalent by 2030!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And that is an UNDER estimate because the rate of increase is accelerating even faster due to natural feedbacks that have already kicked in. 2030-2009 = 21 years. 21 more years = 2051. 600X 1.39= 834 21 more years = 2072 834X 1.39 = 1159 which is higher than our extinction point of 1000 ppm equivalent when H2S bubbles out of the ocean. H2S kills everybody and almost every thing. We do not have to wait a whole century to go extinct, even if we have to wait for H2S to do it to us. We have about half a century to live, max, NOT half a century to work on lowering our CO2. Action must be much more extreme than anything proposed in Washington.

And yet he can rely on models and assumptions and limitations of data which tell him fossil fuels will be the fuels of choice for the next hundred years ….

Tillerson has been pouring the majority of the profits into the short-term stock price while production declines.

In 2008 Exxon set all-time global profit record of $45b. They spent $40b on stock buyback and dividends. Capital expenses were flat. Production declined 3%. In the last four years Exxon has spent $100b just on share buyback while capital expenses were flat and production declined.

Each year Exxon has fewer shares and less oil to sell. By design.

It is a “peak profits from peak oil” strategy.

One article I read said at the current rate, Exxon will sell it’s last share and last barrel of oil and cease to exist in less than twenty years.

The diamond cartel figured it out first. Pull it out of the ground slowly. Keep demand high. Sell at “excess demand” price…not the much lower “cost of supply” price.

As a NYT biz article pointed out “Exxon kept its head when everyone else was going crazy going to alternatives and drilling more”. Finding new supply requires an ever-increasing and unbelievably huge long term investment with an uncertain return. Buybacks yield safe and instant results.

While the red meat crowd might be urging “drill baby drill” the consummate insiders are quietly raking in the profits from “buyback baby buyback”.

If even Exxon is reducing its exposure to fossil fuels by several percentage points per year…maybe the rest of us should too!

Some of us believe that ExxonMobil is a part of a vast, mostly hidden Rockefeller financial empire. Sociologist Thomas R. Dye said that the Rockefeller financial empire included control of over one hundred major U.S. corporations, during its peak a couple of decades ago.

I’m not sure that there was a peak, myself. I think that the Rockefeller family may have just gotten better at hiding its control. I think personally that the heirs of what Wikipedia lists as the richest man the planet has ever seen, John D. Rockefeller, may have built upon JDR’s methods of hiding wealth and industrial control.

Some authors of books on the Rockefellers have noted that much of their wealth is contained in tax free trusts, and so hidden by law from public view. Many have pointed out that such trusts can also contain other trusts, so that one trust could potentially hide a whole network of financial control of industrial wealth. Some authors have questioned the charity of charitable foundations, and noted that if the trustees of such foundations are controlled, then the voting rights of the stock which capitalizes such foundations are retained. Some authors, Dye among them, point out a huge network of interlocking corporate directorships, in which one individual sits on the board of directors of several different corporations. Some authors have pointed out that many of the traditionally Rockefeller dominated corporations seem to be immune from hostile takeovers.

So, it’s a nice fantasy to think about nationalizing ExxonMobil. But the truth is that Exxon and JPMorgan/Chase, and in fact many of the corporations traditionally dominated by the Rockefellers, have made out like bandits from both the Bush years and from our recent “financial crisis”. JPMorganChase gobbled up Bear Sterns and WaMu, ending up as maybe the strongest bank in the country, with close to 2.5 trillion in assets, during our recent “crash”.

ExxonMobil made maybe an extra hundred billion dollars, and maybe as much as two hundred billion dollars, in extra profits resulting from the Iraq invasion.

The CIA has often seemed to operate like a Rockefeller security force, overthrowing governments that threatened to nationalize oil fields or engage in land reform abroad. Nelson Rockefeller has had immense influence on Latin America, and may have been at least partially responsible for policies of torture and death squads there.

It’s a nice fantasy, but these traditionally Rockefelller dominated corporations are more and more becoming the government and the economy, along with organizations like the CFR.

If you go to TheyRule, and load the map “The Magnificent Seven” you can see that 7 interlocked directors of JPMorganChase sat on the boards of directors of maybe fifty other corporations. It’s an interesting map to look at, and may actually say something about the structure of this supposed financial empire.

http://www.theyrule.net/2004/tr2.php

The domestic wiretapping of the Bush administration may have also given this empire a complete social network map of the U.S. In other words, this industrial empire may know in extreme detail who literally sleeps with whom.

This may in fact be what caused the downfall of both Elliot Spitzer and John Edwards, both of whom were brought down by sexual scandal, after causing this “corporatocracy” trouble.

So, we’ll fight back, I guess, since the future of the biosphere itself appears to be at stake.

But, it’s not going to be easy, to accomplish any significant reforms.

http://www.latimes.com/ business/ la-fi-chinacars27-2009may27,0,7594127.story

The article did not make mention of the impact of increased ownership in China, and the government does appear to be offering strong incentives to promote new car purchases, apparently to stimulate consumption.

It is gratifying to see that China is enhancing fuel efficiency requirements, but both there and in India, there are potentially BILLIONS of latent personal vehicles. Even at 42 MPG, this is not a good thing.

Seems Exxon Mobil (and Oil industry in general) wants to do whatever it can to delay the transition from Oil (no matter the consequences to its home country’s or the Globe’s overall interests) for as long as possible (too bad treason doesn’t fall into the realm for these “citizens”, corporations) – the profits it’ll see as we go through peak oil here shortly will make 2008’s look like chump change and they want that for as long as possible. They’ll do whatever they can to push that path, expect continued over the table and under the table duplicity (including outright sabotage of the EV vehicle movement if they can) from this industry as its long term profits are backed into a corner. The most powerful, richest industry in the world will do what it wants no matter the consequences to humankind.

“Perhaps it would speed things up if we nationalized all carbon fuel companies.”

Great quote and made me laugh just thinking about it, boy would that fix them. Although it won’t happen in the United States we live in today (and the government would end up wanting the money from the oil anyways, pumping it out of the ground and selling it).

Also, if we own some of the “transportation industry,” why not put auto workers back to work with a transformed industry manufacturing autonomous streetcar systems (self propelled) and revitalizing a complete national rail system, again providing millions of good jobs.

It is time to reinvent America.