What have you done today to lower your impact?

We are washing away the foundations of our existence on every front. It is high time we move from crashing about on the planet like a bull in china shop and find a way to go forward with intent. We must find systems of living based on sustainability. The systems and tools exist, it is up to each of us to adopt them.

Blog Archive

Tuesday 22 September 2009

Big Media continues to shill for Big Oil

Anyone with half a brain is aware that Fox is the propaganda arm of the republican party with "news" not fit to be called such. CNN seems to be mostly guilty of distraction, more entertainment funded by drug pushers selling their wares than serious news on serious topics. But what about print media? Long the bastion of independent journalism, it is clear that it has slipped into irrelevancy. Take this latest from Newsweek; "Big Oil Goes Green for Real".

Perhaps Newsweek has joined the ranks of psuedo news for comedic purposes, ala the Colbert Report. Perhaps it was meant to be a joke, but April fools day is many months off. Only a fool would believe such dribble. Read more at Climate Progress;
"
Here is the basis of Newsweek’s nonsensical spin:

In July, ExxonMobil announced big plans to grow green algae to fuel cars. In July, ExxonMobil announced big plans to grow green algae to fuel cars; last week, Chevron unveiled the world’s largest carbon-sequestration project in Australia; and in recent months, Valero, Marathon, and Sunoco carried out a series of acquisitions that resulted in Big Oil controlling 7 percent of the U.S. ethanol business.

The list goes on. And this time it’s the real deal.

[Pause for laughter to die down. Pause longer for subsequent crying jag to end.]

Since when was corn ethanol green?

And ExxonMobil is green … for real? Seriously, Newsweek?

Yes, forget the country’s biggest oil company has funneled millions of dollars to fund the disinformation campaigns of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Heritage Foundation, all of which continue to advance unfactual anti-scientific attacks as I have detailed recently (see posts on Heritage and CEI and AEI). Chris Mooney wrote an excellent piece on ExxonMobil’s two-decade anti-scientific campaign. A 2007 Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) report looked at ExxonMobil’s tobacco industry-like tactics in pushing global warming denial (see “Today We Have a Planet That’s Smoking!”).

The oil giant said it would stop, but that was just another lie (see “Another ExxonMobil deceit: They are still funding climate science deniers despite public pledge“). Newsweek should read this excellent commentary by award-winning journalist, Eric Pooley, “Exxon Works Up New Recipe for Frying the Planet."

No comments: