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.
Apart from the old “know thy enemy” The Guardian has little interest.
A prat such as Owen Jones is of even less interest.
Thunberg’s mother is an opera singer of some repute. She’s sung around the world and has a massive carbon footprint. In fact, opera productions are hugely intensive in their use of energy, so is making films, putting on plays, etc.
So to test all Extinction’s proposals, and their new found acolytes zeal for carbon cuts, let’s just stop all music, theatre and film shows until they can demonstrate zero emissions and see how that tests public support for the cause.
It’s a zero consequential damage test and first step in the cause of saving the planet.
Perfect – a demonstration that the liberal elites can’t help but whine and cry about, but makes the point that their bullshit is always about controlling others, not really about “saving the planet.”
The Guardian board either has had either a frontal lobotomy or hit the bottle.
Reading it would produce either of these effects.
Anyone here remember Persia’s Mossadeq? He nationalized Persia’s oil reserves and offered today’s BP a settlement. It was refused and he was assassinated. This, identified by John Perkins, in his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, as the first U.S. coup against a foreign country, was a British-authored and -designed operation, carried out through the good graces of the notorious Dulles brothers, Allen and John Foster.
Oil is indeed a filthy business, nothing to do with “free market” and the cartel, with the global petrodollar system is well known. Nations are viewed as cartel subsidiaries – not allowed to develop industrially. This is driving Pompeo’s insane ravings against Iran today.
Trump clearly campaigned against regime change wars, wars being fought by US soldiers on behalf of the Cartel. Pence clearly does not agree. Time to remind everyone of Mossadeq.
Why am I not surprised that you managed to find a way to segue into your patented the US is always bad paranoia?
When exactly was the US supposed to invade Venezuela again?
I have to hand it to you, bonbon, you make an ex-co-worker of mine who use to go on and on about the Bilderbergers secret meetings that closed down whole city blocks (how the meetings could remained secret with such a public display and how he knew all about them if they were so secret were questions he never explained) and black helicopters look quite rational in comparison.
You do realize every time you go off on one of your conspiracy fueled ramblings, no one takes you seriously. The laughter you hear is those laughing at you not with you.
Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. Hence their efforts, even if they did result in a net decrease in CO2 emissions, would have no effect on climate.
You get the sense their doomsday plant food meme has failed so their true colours are showing now.
Quantitives easing is a fancy name for the government printing
money beyond the capacity of a countries economy. Its most famous case was the German Weimer republic in the 1920 tees when having run out of money the government just printed more.
The result was that a worker needed a wheelbarrow to bring home his salary, yet by the time he got home its value had fallen so much that it would not eeven buy a loaf of bread.
As too the suggestion that the “People” should nationalise the Banks and oil companies, perhaps that may be sufficient for such businesses with their deep pockets to pay for good propaganda to inform the general public as to the truth about the myth of Climate Change.
MJE VK5ELL
When are the fossil fuel companies going to call the bluff of these radicals and brainwashed politicians? They just have to stop production and distribution of these planet killing products without telling anyone. Any complaints can be referred to the loadmouths that have been advocating the move. Everyone would very rapidly realise that their lives are suddenly at stake.
Nationalizing the Oil Fields in Venezuela is a perfect example of how they want to stop Global Climate Change.
Because burning the furniture and trash to provide heat works so well for keeping pollution down.
nationalization hasn’t slowed norway from expanding their drilling higher into the arctic than anyone else .. maybe sharing profits with the public will make people more sanguine about oil profits . ?
Nationalise the oil companies. Right, that would definitely fix it. check Venezuela, the last Country to do just that. The Venezuelan Government are not quite as far left as little Owen.
“….they should this time be brought under democratic, accountable public control.”
The Democratic People’s Republic of The Guardian. Yawn…..
So now I am an “elite investor”? I had no idea.
I have a small holding in ‘Big Oil’ because they provide a nice steady dividend to add to my retirement income. I’m pretty sure I could kiss that small bit of sorely needed income goodbye if the oil companies were nationalized.
So yeah, go ahead. Screw all those evil “elite bastards” like me. After all, it’s to Save The Planet.
This was also in the Owen “Man-Child” Jones article.
“According to the IPCC, we must cut global emissions by 45% by 2030 – little over a decade away – compared to 2010 levels to meet the 1.5C target. If not, the droughts and floods will come, the crops will fail, the seas will rise, the ice will melt, the heatwaves and extreme weather will kill and millions will be forced to flee their homes. ”
Did the IPCC really say that?
New one on me. I thought the ice had to melt before the seas will rise but if that’s their scientific consensus best not to upset them and play dumb. You know leftists and their slaughtered millions.
No.
the seas will rise
But, wait, I Obama said his election was the moment “the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” is Owen “Man-Child” Jones saying Obama lied? say it isn’t so.
I did not know that pension, insurance and retirement funds were now considered “elite investors” and one of the profitable industries for over a century is considered “short-term profit”.
I should subscribe to his newsletter.
If nationalization is a good thing why not start with the guardian?
If gasoline is a bad thing the make it illegal. Announce a war on fossil fuels and stamp it out like drugs. That would make oil companies worthless and everyone would be happy we didn’t nationalize them and end up with nothing.
Picture box car laying on its side with no wheels or tracks in sight = Guardian. The stink of desperation must be hard to breath
There’s nothing a dose of government intervention can’t cure (SARC.)
The US Gov. Administration is convinced it can intervene in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Venezuela to cure the evils there.
Bush’s and Obama’s Govt. intervention on behalf of Wall Street to the tune of 2 x $700 billion bailouts with taxpayer money is a fine example of socialism for the banks, capitalism for the deplorables.
The UK Govt. intervention in the US presidential election and 2 years or massive harassment another example.
Iraq was improving until Obama pulled out US troops.
Libya is an example of how liberals like you run wars. A disaster from beginning to end.
The rest have more to do with your paranoid fantasies than the real world.
No one has time to worry about the weather being 1 degree warmer than “average” when they’re starving to death.
Jim Jones had nothing on the socialist media. The guardian and like-thinking propagandists aim for nothing less than the complete destruction through economic suicide of all western economies. They live in a self-induced bubble of paranoia about anything looking like success for human society. If it makes life better it must be evil. If it looks like free choice, it must be stopped. No matter how much reality shows a different path, these folks are set on socialism-laced Kool-Aid for all.
Socialism is to civil society what creationism is to biology:
A popular myth with no relevance to good science.
Worrying that The Guardian persists in these crazed excursions. Consider that its going to be the only remaining Daily that middle class folk of the centre, or left of centre could be reading ? Thats going to be a fairly big reach towards people who have a tendency to accept what ‘Experts’ say or predict.
Much like the meme of a cat at the controls of a car, this cannot end well 🙂
Who knew that in the the 21st century checkout stand tabloids would turn aggressively viral and become a threat to all.
Strange that the given solutions to the global warming narrative so neatly conform to the goals of socialism.
Hey, nationalization worked in Venezuela to kneecap oil production, so it should work elsewhere. Lefties make poor managers it seems as they are only looking out for their own self interests.
What appears to be forgotten in all this is that the energy companies will only pump more oil if there is a demand.
Nationalizing oil companies will not change that demand.
From what I could see most of the Rebels were wearing polyester/nylon containing clothing, there is a start for them.