Corporate Treason, a Modest Proposal

       Corporate Treason, a Modest Proposal

          plus comments

The climate’s changing, almost certainly due to CO2 emissions. 97% of the world’s climate scientists agree that we’ll have to leave most of the carbon fuels in the ground to avoid dangerous global warming; but of course the fossil fuel corporations don’t want to do that, and they are rich and powerful and (like all corporations) sociopathic.

But it occurs to me that if those corporations are sociopathic enough to betray all of civilization for short-term gain, then they are also sociopathic enough to betray each other for long-term gain. I therefore offer this Modest Proposal: that some one of those corporations do the following:

1. Sell all of their still-productive wells and mines to their competitors;

2. Invest heavily in renewable energy;

3. Switch sides in the climate-change debate. Specifically, bribe the legislatures to mandate leaving most of the coal, gas and oil in the ground.

In short, sell off their wasting assets to their rivals, then pay the State to forbid them from using those assets! What a sweet scam!

Comments:

1. I think ‘renewable energy’ should really be called ‘owned power’. If you own a geothermal well, or a solar farm, or a wind farm, then you have a license to print money; whereas any power source requiring fuel is at the mercy of outsiders. Really, fueled power should be called ‘rented’ power. Owned power is a source of endless power in both the physical and political senses.

2. Wind and solar are on the rise, but they’re intermittent, and so require either grid coordination (and hence are not really owned power) or storage batteries (an underdeveloped tech, needing R&D and investment). However, for the purpose of corporate treason, I think deep geothermal is poetically appropriate, for it uses the same deep-drilling tech they now are developing to chase after vanishing oil.

3. I see that the Rockefeller foundation is divesting from fossil fuels, and switching sides on the AGW debate. That is, they are following my corporate-treason advice! No-one should ever accuse the Rockefellers of lack of adaptability.