The Voices

americanprogress.org — General economic theory holds that companies will produce more of a good if its price is higher, or if it receives subsidies. Funny that these rules didn’t seem to apply to Big Oil in 2011, when the highest oil price since 1864 and $2 billion in subsidies to the five largest oil companies — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch Shell — yielded lower oil production than in 2010. But these five oil companies combined made a record-high $137 billion in profits in 2011 — up 75 percent from 2010 — and have made more than $1 trillion in profits from 2001 through 2011.[1] This exceeds the previous record of $136 billion in profits in 2008. Let’s dig a little deeper into this mystery to see why these companies are making more money while Americans see less oil and pay more at the pump.

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alternet.org — Last week, President Obama called the United States "the Saudi Arabia of natural gas" in a speech about boosting domestic energy production. That concerns Wyoming farmer John Fenton, who already has more than two dozen gas wells on his property.

The Environmental Protection Agency ruled in December that water contamination in Pavillion, Wyoming, was a result of natural gas extraction and the controversial technique known as fracking.

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tomdispatch.com — Our GOP presidential candidates are working hard to make sure no one thinks they’d appease chemistry and physics. At the last Republican debate in Florida, Rick Santorum insisted that he should be the nominee because he’d caught on earlier than Newt or Mitt to the global warming “hoax.” Most of the media pays remarkably little attention to what’s happening. Coverage of global warming has dipped 40% over the last two years. And when they do break their silence, some of our elite organs are happy to indulge in outright denial. It’s no secret where this denialism comes from: the fossil fuel industry pays for it. The open question is why the industry persists in denial in the face of an endless body of fact showing climate change is the greatest danger we’ve ever faced. As it happens, the answer is more interesting than you might think.

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politics.salon.com — And now, a word about a good American being demonized, despite being long dead. Saul Alinsky is not around to defend himself, but that hasn’t kept Newt Gingrich from using his name to whip up the froth and frenzy of his followers, whose ignorance of the man is no deterrence to their eagerness, at Gingrich’s behest, to tar and feather him posthumously. It’s all quite clever and insidious, a classic lesson in how to slander someone who cannot answer from the grave. In the case of Saul Alinsky, most of the crowd knows nothing about the target except that they’re supposed to hate him. And why not? There’s the strange foreign name – obviously an alien. One of them. And a socialist at that. What’s a socialist? Don’t know — but Obama’s one, isn’t he? Barack Hussein Obama, Saul Alinsky – bingo! Two peas in a pod, and a sinister, subversive pod at that. But just who was Alinsky, really?

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commondreams.org — I'm glad to hear that the Komen Foundation has bowed to pressure and is restoring funding to Planned Parenthood. But in general, the idea of putting the energy and effort of well-meaning citizens behind "the search for a cure for cancer" just irritates me, because let's face it, we know what causes cancer, and therefore we can do better than cure it, we can prevent it! Maybe not 100%, but we can take it back to the modest rates that previous generations of human beings enjoyed. Cancer rates are skyrocketing now thanks to the environmental toxins that humans have introduced into our air, soil and water, and thus our agricultural crops, drinking water and the very air we breathe. If you really want to make a difference in the war against cancer, use the power of your wallet and your ballot to insist that the government step up and do its job in regulating the industrial agriculture sector.

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grist.org — President Obama has made tax breaks for the oil industry an ongoing target. He recently reaffirmed his stance in his State of the Union address, saying that our nation has supported these companies for long enough. And as budget season begins next week, we’ll likely see the idea come up again in deliberations over where to cut. But exactly how much companies like Shell and ExxonMobil receive is something of a mystery. Tucked into tomes of tax code, subsidies for fossil-fuel industries are often obscured. The IRS does not make public the amounts that companies save, and estimates range widely. One analysis found that about $72 billion went to oil, gas, and coal producers from 2002 to 2008. But we really don’t have a clear or complete picture of the actual total; it could easily be much higher.

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thinkprogress.org — Another week, another misguided attack on green jobs. This week, Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) is going after the Department of Labor’s green jobs training program. The program, which was signed into law by fellow Republican George W. Bush, was funded for the first time under the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Issa says the program has produced “abysmal results” and failed to meet its goal of placing 52,762 American workers into green jobs. As of June 2011, the program had placed 8,035 workers into jobs, about 10 percent of the final goal. While this placement ratio is indeed disappointing, it reflects deeper issues within the larger economy, and is also based on some premature and misleading analysis. His attacks have been nicely debunked by both the Center for American Progress and Green for All, but it is worth revisiting the top reasons why Issa’s attacks miss both the point, and the facts, about green jobs.

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motherjones.com — In his State of the Union address on January 24, President Obama largely avoided the topic of climate change. He talked about it once, in passing, as a topic on which "the differences in this chamber may be too deep" to enact new legislation. Its less-controversial cousin, "energy," on the other hand, got a whopping 23 mentions as an area where Republicans and Democrats should be able to find agreement. It became clear well before that address that the president and his administration don't think that climate change is an issue that will carry them to a second term. In his public events following the speech, he's also focused on clean energy while avoiding the other "c" word.

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grist.org — Opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline are taking a well-deserved victory lap. The Obama administration’s decision to reject TransCanada’s pipeline proposal — at least for now — represents an historic win for the environmental movement, and reveals the potency of the emerging alignment between the environmental, anti-corporate, Occupy, and other movements. Real strides were also made to bridge the divide between environmental groups and unions. While Republicans relentlessly attacked environmentalists as “job killers,” groups like 350.org, Sierra Club, and NRDC reached out to unions early and often, and as a result, six labor unions came out in opposition to the pipeline permit. Not since the “Battle in Seattle” have we seen such diverse and robust coalitions. But the Keystone campaign also exposed the perennial Achilles’ heel of those who are fighting against climate change: We are often painted by our opponents and perceived by the public as caring more about the environment than about jobs.

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grist.org — It wasn’t surprising that the Wall Street Journal published an error-riddled op-ed about climate change last week, essentially saying it was bunk and we shouldn’t “panic” about it. We’ve gotten used to that. But what has really started to amaze me about that newspaper’s editorial page and the far right is that they now venture beyond delusion or misinformation. They lie, and they know they are lying. That’s a big claim, but how else do you account for the statement that “the earth hasn’t warmed for well over 10 years now” when it is well known by anyone working on climate that 2010 was the hottest year on record?

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