Radical Noesis - Thinking outside the box

According to the Independent article by Andrew Gumbel, ExxonMobil is charging full steam ahead with refuting the science of global warming, and pressing to open ANWR to drilling. Of course, they still have dealt with the ongoing environmental fallout of the Exxon Valdez disaster. Gumbel notes:"the company has financed about 40 organisations dedicated to debunking global warming, starting in the late 1980s. Mr Raymond himself has twice served as chairman of the climate change-denying Global Climate Coalition" Certainly the record profits ExxonMobil is pulling in gives every motivation for trying to counter the devastating environmental effects of using their product.

However, nations are not doing much better. Bush (and the administration) have backed off conservation as a solution to the oil problem, and in fact have overridden environmental protection controls to "lower prices." However, Bush doesn't "believe" that burning fossil fuels has anything to do with climate change. If the U.S., as the largest consumer of energy in the world won't conserve, then why should anyone else - including the fastest growing economies. " China, India and Brazil could cut their rapidly rising energy use and greenhouse gas emissions by more than 25 percent using existing energy efficient technologies."

And China should certainly be looking at the issue if any nation is. The struggle between growth, energy, and automobiles is in full swing in China. As is noted in the Asia Times article by Wu Zhong (Auto boom worsens China's energy crunch), there are currently 30 million cars in China, and that is expected to increase to 140 million by 2020. Of course, the U.S. auto industry hopes that they will get many more Chinese into cars than that, and I am sure that the oil companies of the world are hoping for the same thing. By 2020, we may see oil prices at well over $300 a barrel - dollar signs in everyone's eyes if you can see them through the smoke.