Not Stevie-friendly . . .

BILL McKIBBEN & 350.ORG urge you to do the math, because they believe it shows we're running out of time. Bill also believes that it is time to organize to take on the fossil fuel industry. I believe he's right: HuffPost has a fine explanation of the urgency.

Anyway, Bill took his message on the road, in his "Do the Math" tour of the US. In printed form, it can be found at Rolling Stone. Heard it on PBS, but it seems elusive; below, is a version of same shot by an audience member at Duke, with reasonably good sound.

Americans are getting the message. Earlier today, a bunch held a "die-in" at TransCanada's Houston offices to protest construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. At least two arrests have been confirmed, according to 350's FB page.

There's nothing "ethical" about it

Since when did oil companies give a red rat's ass about the "ethical" behaviour of the governments of lands from which they sucked oil out of the ground?

The truth is, oil companies are some of the least ethical corporations on the planet. Being harboured in Canada doesn't increase their ethical behaviour. It simply masks what they are and have been all along.

Now go read Norm, then go read Ian.

Update: Go Alison!! And check out Holly Stick's links in the comments.

Interesting ... Some people, depending on where they are, cannot access Ian Reid's blog. No one knows why. So ... Norm has reprinted it.

A question for Gary Lunn ...

Just exactly to what type of professionals would you suggest we entrust vast expanses of an unspoiled British Columbia central coast?

Decisions on the safety of supertankers transporting oil through B.C.'s northern waterways should be left to professionals instead of politicians muddying the waters, Gary Lunn, Saanich-Gulf Islands Conservative MP, said Tuesday.

"The people to do this correctly are the professionals, not a bunch of people trying to make political hay," said Lunn, a former natural resources minister. He has pointed out that a moratorium on northern tanker traffic, brought in by the previous Liberal government, is voluntary, not legislated.

Maybe oil professionals like, oh, I don't know, BP?
That worked well, didn't it?

And Enbridge has such a lovely track record. Just in case you haven't heard of their little incident last July at Talmadge Creek and the Kalamazoo River....

I have an idea. Let's have the Minister of State for Sports practice what he preaches. Lunn could start by shutting his cake hole and staying out of the discussion altogether. He clearly doesn't have the interests of the people of that region as a priority.

Kim has more.

Canadian Company contributing to US anti-progressive campaign

Take a look at this from ThinkProgress.(Emphasis mine)

The United States Chamber of Commerce is running an unprecedented $75 million campaign to unseat progressives from Congress, in defense of a big-oil agenda. As a ThinkProgress investigation has learned Chamber’s donors — who send their checks to the same account from which the political campaign is run — include multinational oil corporations, and even oil companies owned by the Kingdom of Bahrain. The oil-fueled Chamber has hammered candidates who voted to limit our dependence on oil, falsely claiming they supported a “job-killing energy tax”

Which puts a Canadian company amongst those actively funding a US political campaign intentionally attempting to unseat Democrats.
Interesting. SNC Lavalin is contributing to a U.S. election on a scale they are prevented from doing in Canada.

And, if you think the above isn't linked to this, well then go read Dowd and keep your eyes open for this part:

The 5-to-4 Citizens United decision last January gave corporations, foreign contributors, unions, Big Energy, Big Oil and superrich conservatives a green light to surreptitiously funnel in as much money as they want, whenever they want to elect or unelect candidates. As if that weren’t enough to breed corruption, Thomas was the only justice — in a rare case of detaching his hip from Antonin Scalia’s — to write a separate opinion calling for an end to donor disclosures.

Which should lead you to look up at the ceiling and ask, "What other Canadian corporations are contributing to US political campaigns?"
Yeah. I'd be looking for a massive scar on the earth's surface. And I wouldn't look further than northern Alberta.

British advertising regulator find Shell Oil ads misleading

Bouphonia picks up the best stuff. Like this bit which finds Shell Oil having to answer for misleading advertising.

A Shell suggestion in advertising that oil sands were a sustainable energy source has been ruled out of order by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority, upholding a complaint lodged by WWF-UK. [...]

The ASA said that the use of the word "sustainable" throughout the advertisement was defined as "primarily in environmental terms". Because Shell had not provided evidence that it was "effectively" managing carbon emissions from its oil sands projects "in order to limit climate change", the ASA deemed that the advertisement was misleading.

The ASA came to the same conclusion about Shell's claims about the redevelopment of the Port Arthur oil refinery and said the advertisement should not be shown again in its current form.

In short, oil companies won't be allowed to "greenwash" their product in the UK. Too bad we let them do it here.

Operation Enduring Pipeline

If asked, Canada would help the Afghan army defend a proposed $7.6-billion U.S.-backed natural gas pipeline running from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan, to Pakistan and India.

We've heard about this pipeline before. U.S. Unocal and Bridas of Argentina were both bidding on it with the Taliban when the Taliban pulled out of the negotiations just one month before the U.S. invaded Afghanistan. Afghan President Karzai, who either was or wasn't previously a Unocal employee, signed an agreement with the Turkman president this April to begin construction of the pipeline in 2010. Named TAPI after the four nations involved, it will run straight through Kandahar where Canadian troops are slated to stay till at least 2011.

Energy economist John Foster has written a report for the Canadian Council of Policy Alternatives, questioning the motives of the countries involved and outlining three reasons why the US wants it :
1) To limit Russia's influence in the region. Turkmanistan currently exports nearly all its gas to Russia.
2) To isolate Iran and their proposed rival pipeline which would run from Iran to India and Pakistan.
3) To forge links with India that would isolate India from China, who have already begun their gas pipeline from Turkmenistan east through Kazakhstan to China.

Is this why Canada is in Afghanistan?

From a Council of Foreign Relations panel discussion in 2007, journalist Steve LeVine :
"US policy is pipeline-driven within a strategy… to make this area a pro-western swath of territory between Russia and Iran, driven by the establishment of an independent economic channel. Everything else is really – I hate to call it window-dressing – but it’s secondary to that."

G&M : "Liberal Senator Colin Kenny - chairman of the Senate's national security and defence committee - said Canada has similar interests in the global energy market as the United States, and should not shy away from supporting U.S. geopolitical objectives. "I don't think we would be serving Canadian interests if we were ignoring American interests," he said."

What ever happened to little girls going to school, bringing democracy to Afghanistan, standing up for NATO ...

John Foster says he wrote his report to foster debate about pipeline politics in the absence of any official statement from the Canadian government or discussion in the national media :

A PIPELINE THROUGH A TROUBLED LAND: AFGHANISTAN, CANADA, AND THE NEW GREAT ENERGY GAME

A very interesting read.

Cross-posted at Creekside

They sold it and we bought it

More money than they've ever made... ever.

ExxonMobil, the largest publicly traded oil company in the world, is set to announce their largest annual earnings ever. Which also means ExxonMobil will break their own record set last year as the most money ever made by a company in US history.

CNN Money is reporting that ExxonMobil will announce next week $10.37 billion in earnings for the fourth quarter - a paltry $111 million a day.

Expected annual earnings for ExxonMobil in 2007 are a whopping $39 billion - or about $106 million a day, $4.4 million an hour and $73,000 a second.

Oy.