Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Guardian author Owen Jones, Extinction Rebellion aren’t being radical enough; demanding large scale nationalisation is the only way to stop an ongoing rise in oil production.
How to stop climate change? Nationalise the oil companies
Owen JonesFri 26 Apr 2019 03.35 AEST
If only the Daily Express was right. That is not a sentence I ever expected to type. “Extinction Rebellion protests have WORKED as MPs succumb to calls for change”, bellowed the rightwing rag. Alas, the government has not capitulated to demands to declare a climate emergency, let alone to decarbonise the British economy by 2025. But Extinction Rebellion has retaught a lesson every generation must learn: that civil disobedience works. Amid the spluttering of obnoxious news presenters, it has forced the existential threat of climate change on to the airwaves and into newsprint.
But as this phase of protest winds down, the demands must radicalise. With capitalism itself rightly being challenged, the focus must shift to the fossil fuel companies and the banks. As long as they remain under private ownership on a global scale, humanity’s future will be threatened.
Take ExxonMobil, which plans to pump an astonishing 25% more oil and gas in 2025 than it did in 2017.
…
So long as these sectors remain in private hands, they will continue to place short-term profit for elite investors ahead of the future of the planet and continued existence of humanity. They must be brought under public ownership, with a legal mandate to “green” the economy. One suggestion by the Next System Project is that the US government could create a community ownership of power administration, modelled on Roosevelt-era New Deal agencies. It would grant legal authority and funding mechanisms to buy back the energy grid and take over energy utilities.
But there are more radical solutions. Since the crash, quantitative easing (QE) has been used extensively, with central banks creating money to buy bonds from financial institutions. Why not use QE to buy a controlling stake in the fossil fuel companies? It has been estimated that the US has spent nearly $6tn on its post-9/11 wars. If it has the resources to engage in catastrophic wars, could it not afford to pay a small fraction of that sum to help save the planet from destruction? The same goes for the banks – except rather than nationalising the risks and privatising the profit, as the state did in 2008, they should this time be brought under democratic, accountable public control.…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/25/climate-change-oil-companies-extinction-rebellion
Owen Jones is right that nationalisation would cause oil production to plummet, though not for the reason he thinks.
Part of the reason the Venezuelan economy cratered is they nationalised their oil industry. They replaced competent private sector managers with incompetent political cronies.
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The Grauniad makes Pravda look like a newspaper.
Pravda is better-run and more profitable.
And 4 out of 5 budgies recommend Pravda over the Grauniad as cage liner.
Reality Check for The Guardian:
(1) Fewer people are reading newspapers every day; lost credibility;
(2) Most people are watching Netflix, not MSM “nooze;”
(3) Zero “workers” are going to be keen on freezing in the dark.
(4) Folks who enjoy attending riots are the 1 tenth of 1 percent being paid by NGO’s.
(5) No one’s going to remember this foaming rant by Sept. 27.
Yawn . . .
+2
This is as far as I read, and I stopped: “With capitalism itself rightly being challenged, the focus must shift to the fossil fuel companies and the banks. As long as they remain under private ownership on a global scale, humanity’s future will be threatened.”
The biggest threat to humanity’s future is the LOSS of capitalism, the LOSS of private ownership of anything at all, and the LOSS of individuality. If there were a better way to send a growing civilization right down the drain into oblivion, the Grauniad has written the perfect formula for it: destroy capitalism and embrace doom.
Sara for Preaident 2020
Sara for president 2024. I like a different guy for 2020 – one who’s proven he can succeed against against an entrenched enemy who were believed to be unstoppable – and have been stopped dead in their tracks. Even forced to retreat on several fronts.
MAGA!
“Since the crash, quantitative easing (QE) has been used extensively, with central banks creating money to buy bonds from financial institutions.” I think that QE was an invention of the US Federal Reserve, and it was used twice. Is that “extensively”? If the author can’t even report this without exaggeration, why should we trust anything else he says?
He is writing in the Guardian. That’s why you can’t trust anything he says…
I’m baffled. Isn’t The Guardian a satirical publication like MAD magazine or The Onion? Why does anyone care?
Because the mentally handicapped bureaucrats will read it and take it as gospel
“While the US concluded its QE operations in 2014, the BoJ, BoE and ECB are still expanding, pushing the collective balance sheets of G4 central banks to more than $13tn.” From: https://www.ft.com/content/060c691c-8a0f-11e6-8aa5-f79f5696c731
“Global (G4) QE topping $10 trillion shows policy stance is self-defeating.” From:
https://www.tuc.org.uk/blogs/global-g4-qe-topping-10-trillion-shows-policy-stance-self-defeating
The Bank of Japan was first (in recent times anyway) to use QE, in 2001.
If you want to destroy something just get a lefty govt to run it.
oil company nationalization = oil production cessation = human depopulation
I think it’s a pretty safe bet that if you nationalized the oil companies, carbon emissions would increase – not decrease.
Of course. The entire purpose of nationalizing oil companies, historically, was to ensure that all that oil money went to the governm… I mean, THE PEOPLE. Once the government is in charge of the oil companies, they will pump as much as possible to maximize revenue to the government. No government has ever taken over a profitable industry in order to shut it down, not even Venezuela.
That’s not the reason I was thinking. I agree they wouldn’t shut down; however it would emit more carbon because they would make it MUCH less efficient.
Amen, WX!
They don’t put much thought into what they say do they?
So if the other side of the argument decide that, “Civil disobedience works”….. What you have is civil war.
Does this fool really want that?
Exactly my thought but this idiot wouldn’t understand the logic. My dog has clearer thought processes than these ignorami at the Guardian.
Eric,
What’s your obsession with the Guardian?
In the 1980’s the USSR’s Pravda had similar kinds of propaganda. It spewed its lies out everyday.
Anyone with a lick of sense knew it was 97% bullshit mixed with 3% truth to try to give it some cred.
The Gruniad will collapse economically just like Pravda and the USSR did in 1991 because the Left is trying to sell bullshit. And in their deranged state, neither can they see it coming nor can they admit its imminent failure.
True. Pravda came west. When the Berlin wall came down, Me and my wife felt uneasy. We had the feeling that this was not all good news. We were right. They built it as the “ant-fascist” wall but when it came down all the nutters could come west, and they did so.
The Guardian cannot be surviving on normal revenue. One or more of the usual suspects must be funding it.
The Guardian is propped up by a trust but is burning through the cash and could be gone within a decade. Can’t come soon enough.
Indeed. There’s a reason that every time I click on a guardian article* I get a banner ad begging for money.
* usually only from a WUWT article about a guardian article – the Guardian should thank WUWT for the additional readership
To answer
I can’t answer for Eric, but The Guardian has been described as “the BBC at prayer”. While it is financially non-profitable and hemorrhaging, it still both reflects and instructs the mindset of much of the current ruling class in the UK.
This is exactly what this whole climate change scam is about .Take over the western world and put communists in charge ,Do away with capitalism and plunge the whole world into a deep depression ,BUT the Elite will go living as most of us have .
If people can’t see what is coming they must be blind .
All those climate zombies psychopaths should migrate to their beloved Venezuela and give us a break.
Since there is a toilet paper shortage in Venezuela, they should bring their fake news papers with them :
– it will be really useful there.
From an article I read in the really poor neighborhoods the street gangs issues their own currency made of cardboard, It’s may be worth more than Venezuela’s currency. Venezuela’s Progressive Socialism At Work.
The sad fact is that the Guardian, like so many leftist media companies, are committed to a globalist socialist agenda. They use the fraud of Human induced catastrophic climate change to advance that agenda. They can not explain the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period and the Minoan Warm Period all of which were warmer than today, and all of which occurred at CO2 levels far below the current levels. They ignore epochs when CO2 levels were far higher yet the global temperature was far lower than todays.
Take the opposite of what Owen Jones says and you won’t go far wrong.
This was always what the global warming scam was about.
To take over the world by a world wide Communist Cult.
Bingo! You just said the magic words. Your prize is at the door. Try the roast beef and please tip the waitress on your way out!
The Guardian seems to have a lot invested in climate change as a vehicle for political and social change…
Oh dear, I see trouble ahead for the ”Guardian”
These companies are international are they not? They’ll be long gone before the Grauniad stormtroopers arrive.
Oh dear. Its the young pretender at work again.
You have AOC. We have Owen Jones.
Fortunately no one listens to a word he says. He is always flouncing out of interviews ..
Diddums.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2016/jun/13/owen-jones-walks-out-sky-news-orlando-lgbt-video
The Guardian has zero influence outside the UK, in the places where most of the readership of this site are concentrated… arguably it doesn’t have much more influence in its home in the UK…
so why all the articles here complaining about it???
Griff, I would have thought you would be celebrating that your fellow travellers in the UK no longer feel the need for incrementalism.
Why do you care Griff, besides until you pay us our reparations you CO2 criminal you are in exile
The BBC loves the Grauniad – it is compulsory reading for all BBC employees. It is the source of BBC fake news.
Griff,
The Guardian is the BBC’s own in house rag. The constant nonsense it now projects echoes what the BBC say, they want it out there in every form they can muster. The Guardian will always be remembered as the most effective fire lighting paper you can buy, which is how it was described by a noteworthy individual at my schools end of term address. It was also good for wrapping fish and chips back then, but that role is now performed more effectively by a blank sheet of paper, I struggle to notice the change…
For those not familiar with Owen Jones, he is politically left of Lenin.
“The Guardian has zero influence outside the UK”
So why are many of the articles written by Australian journalists and why are many of the blog posters also Australian?
Oh Griffy, there you go again, misconstruing things. “Complaining about” is not the same as mocking. Learn the difference knuckle-head.
so why all the articles here complaining about it???
Name me one complaint Eric made in his article. Just one will do. You can’t because he didn’t make any complaints. Highlighting something so that it can get the ridicule it rightly deserves is not the same thing as complaining.
It pays to know what your enemy is planning. That’s why the articles about the Granuidad.
Because it reflects how far too many people think.
Here’s similar musing in NYT magazine
NYTimes
The Next Reckoning:Capitalism and Climate Change
Fixing the planet is going to be expensive. Can we stomach the bill for human survival?
By NATHANIEL RICH APRIL 9, 2019
The most fundamental question is whether a capitalistic society is capable of sharply reducing carbon emissions. Will a radical realignment of our economy require a radical realignment of our political system — within the next few years? Even if the answer is no, we have some decisions to make
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/09/magazine/climate-change-capitalism.html
When you see the author’s name is Owen Jones, just move on, there’s nothing worth spending any time on.
So why is he getting free publicity here?
He’s getting mocked here.
Owen Jones. Aka Shoutycrackers.
Basically the Greens blackmail companies and say this: “unless you give us a lot of money/give into our demands we will create a lot of bad PR for you”. So in the past rich companies like Oil companies fearing bad press gave the greens money and went along with their daft ideas to keep away the bad PR. (Except – by the way the Greens hate it – I think Exxon did not).
But the result was to make a lot of Green groups so incredibly wealthy that a few token gestures by oil companies and their ilk is now not enough to keep the Green blackmailers from their door.
To be blunt: those who gave into the greenmail – are the ones who are responsible for making it grow and grow and demanding ever greater sacrifices be made to it.
So called climate change has always been a ruse designed to justify a socialist takeover of the economy. This is just one more example.
Owen Jones, like AOC, gets capitalism the wrong way round. Companies produce what we want – we are not forced to buy only what they choose to produfe. Bizarrely it is the latter they then advocate via state control.
If we all choose not to buy what Exxon makes, Exxon will be gone in a few months. And that is the heart of the tyranny Jones and AOC and every socialist espouses – we have to accept what they want, not what we want. They dress it up in all sorts of different ways, but it all comes back to them wanting to tell us what we should want.
Muppet
UK wise and from an article I didn’t bookmark (doesn’t take much searching) the QE he talks about has entirely backfired
The figure I saw was£450 billion printed since 2008 her in the UK and what happened was that The Rich got richer and The Poor lost out and especially apparent in the housing market.
Interest rates hit the floor and are still there.
To try prevent another crash, mortgage lenders demanded big deposits, high margins over base-rate and high earnings. Borrowers could no longer get offers of 6-times their gross salaries.
First-time buyers were shut out of the market and saving for a deposit was pointless, your money effectively lost value in almost all savings accounts they could access
Rich folks (existing house owners with small or paid-off mortgages) saw cheap houses they could buy because the first timers were unable to buy. Their existing house became the deposit/guarantee and cheap money was fantastic for them.
The thing *completely* backfired.
So what happened..
A new tax on ‘second homes’ – some of us would like to know where that money went and still is going.
Wait, we *do* know where *some* is going – to help first-time buyers get onto the property market, by bunging them up to £100,000 help to buy a house.
But only a small number and surprise surprise, all *that* did was to ramp up house prices even more.
Thanks to QE, an entire generation has been shut out of the UK housing market (the so-called Millennials – my kids and yours probably)
It also hit the old folks too, retirees coming to be dependant on their pensions saw their future incomes plummet because of the low interest rates – hence why the retirement age here in UK keeps creeping up.
Of course Rich Property Owning Folks get old and die BUT, massive taxation upon death means they cannot give very much to their kids – the exchequer, solicitors, probate offices and legions of Govt. cronies in the finance industry get it all.
If things REALLY were/are Better Than Ever – wouldn’t that ‘system’ I’ve just described be working the opposite way round to what it is?
But what do we get, Flocks of Turkeys writing in Grauniad demanding Christmas comes early, if not every day.
What went wrong, wouldn’t be because of something we ate/popped/drank/smoked/snorted by any chance?
One link you might find to support my assertions above….
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/economy/2017/10/how-world-s-greatest-financial-experiment-enriched-rich
I note that you omit to mention that from 1997 (Labour, T. Blair) until 2010, ie 13 years, the UK built a whopping 7,870 houses.
The official data shows that the Blair and Brown governments built 7,870 council houses (local authority tenure) over the course of 13 years. (If we don’t include 2010 – the year when David Cameron became PM – this number drops to 6,510.) Mr Copley has contrasted this figure with the record of Mrs Thatcher’s government, which never built fewer than 17,710 homes in a year. – fullfact.org
During that time more than 3 million immigrants arrived… looking for some where to live.
Simple supply and demand.
‘…property market, by bunging them up to £100,000 help to buy a house.’ Here in the States you only need 5% down to buy a house. Looks like we are headed for another housing bubble
‘…massive taxation upon death means they cannot give very much to their kids..’ Give it to the children before you die.
Quite right. Inheritance tax is the only voluntary tax.
Everywhere the stalinists, troskyists, maoists and madoroists are crawling out of the woodwork. When the hoax collapses and the great reaping starts by a serioously angry populace it wil not be pretty.
And only then will earth achieve homeostasis?
The title should read ‘because of climate change’ , not ‘because climate change’.
It is a characteristic mode of expression, an idiom if you will, that mocks a certain logic. Apparently you are not familiar with it. It works a bit better in speech than in print.
Carbon500, it’s a popular form of mocking expression. A notable example is the “because aliens” meme which mocks the “ancient aliens expert” Giorgio A. Tsoukalos who tends to explain “inexplicable” phenomena as the direct result of aliens.
It’s an Americanism; none the worse for that either.
The Guardian isn’t famous for it’s financial acumen. 2017-18….
Guardian on track to break even as company halves its losses
Publisher reports smaller than expected loss of £19m as benefits of tabloid switch filter through – The Groaniad.
They had to sell Autotrader magazine to keep themselves afloat and they dodged taxes by doing it offshore.
Only Champagne socialists imagine that when a country is up to the gills in debt, it can go on a spending spree of nationalisations. Our loony Labour party wants to nationalise everything but the oil companies.
You can see where AOC’s friends get their ideas.
Funny how the Graun rails against tax evasion, yet used the Cayman Islands to shield the cash from the sale of Autotrader from the Exchequer.
Owen Jones is an extreme ‘independent’ journalist. He doesn’t really reflect the general views of the Guardian – but they like to have him for the entertainment and ‘challenge everyone’ approach – a political Monbiot?
He used to be a big supporter / appologist for Venezuela.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/owen-jones-socialism-s-critics-look-at-venezuela-and-say-we-told-you-so-but-they-are-wrong-9155295.html
But he’s gone quiet on it more recently. So how did he think Venezuela’s great socialist revolution was funded? By nasty capitalists buying its nasty oil, of course.
We only have to look to his Venezuela to see what nationalisation of the oil industry would mean.
Quiet?
He was busy taking down Sir Roger Scruton following the smears put out by The New Statesman’s deputy editor, George Eaton..
Owen Jones 🌹
Verified account
@OwenJones84
Follow @OwenJones84
More Owen Jones 🌹 Retweeted George Eaton
After his rampant Islamophobia, antisemitic tropes and gratuitous anti-Chinese racism, Tory advisor Roger Scruton has finally been sacked by the Tory Party.
The Spectator’s Douglas Murray got hold of the original interview tape – boom!
Something to celebrate for a change.
I meant quiet on Venezuela due to its ‘no longer deniable’ failures. But of course, its all the USA’s fault!
I did see a recent clip where he was challenged on Venezuela. His reponse was simply divert to ‘what about Yemen!’.