Bill McKibben: US Chamber of Commerce is burning America’s future
Creative Commons: Rachel Kao, 2011
At the turn of the last century, Time magazine published a list of what it considered to be the 100 worst ideas of the 20th century. It included Prohibition, leisure suits, the Titanic, cold fusion. You get the idea.
I know it’s early, but assuming such a list is composed again at the end of this century, I have a nomination. It was an idea proposed in a speech last week.
Thomas Donohue was speaking. Not just speaking; the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was giving his annual “state of American business” address, in the 100th year of the chamber’s operation, from the chamber’s Hall of Flags in its office just across Lafayette Park from the White House. He began with the usual boilerplate, attacking “regulations, mandates and higher taxes.” But then he turned to energy and what he called a “game-changer” for the nation and “the next big thing.”
Not solar power, not wind power. He was talking about coal, and gas, and oil.
In fact, he was very specific. “We have 1.4 trillion barrels of oil, enough to last at least 200 years. We have 2.7 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough to last 120 years. We have 486 billion tons of coal, enough to last more than 450 years — and we need to use more of this strategic resource cleanly and wisely here at home while selling it around the world.”
OK, he’s detailed down to the last drop his plan for the future, which is basically: Burn ’em if you got ’em. So let’s figure out what that would mean.
Read more: The Chippewa Herald >>
Category: Tck Action, Voices
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TckTckTck is the public campaign of the Global Campaign for Climate Action. The GCCA is an unprecedented alliance of more than 300 non-profit organisations from around the world. Our shared mission is to mobilize civil society and galvanize public support to ensure a safe climate future for people and nature, to promote the low-carbon transition of our economies, and to accelerate the adaptation efforts in communities already affected by climate change.View Author Profile
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