For some months now Marathon Oil Company has been leading a secret campaign aligned with powerful oil industry groups and a conservative Policy group financed by Charles G. Koch to roll back automobile emissions standards, going far beyond what the Trump administration had initially proposed. Marathon’s standards have been now adopted by the Trump Administration. The argument is that, with the US now awash in oil, there is no reason to limit the use of oil. “With oil scarcity no longer a concern” Americans should have the kind of cars they want says a Marathon letter circulating in Congress.
A Koch Industry spokesman said that the Company had “a long, consistent track record of opposing all forms of corporate welfare, including all subsidies, mandates and handouts that rig the system.” This statement should be translated from the conservative code language in which it is written to say what it means: Koch Industry opposes all government and other attempts to limit its profits and corruption. The Trump plan if adopted would increase US carbon emissions by more than the amount many mid-size countries put out in a year. Meanwhile, as this deeply un-American, unpatriotic, and threatening effort goes forward in the US, the US delegation at the current climate negotiations in Poland actively has been trying to subvert the climate discussions to be sure that they lead to nothing. Two days before the end of the COP24 Conference the US appeared to be near achieving that goal with the Conference scheduled to end on December 14, 2018 and the representatives of around 200 countries would then go home with nothing. When the Conference did close on December 14, this objective seemed to have been largely achieved, given the limited results.
The US delegation even made a presentation at the Conference on the benefits of fossil fuel, the direct and identified cause of global warming. The UN Secretary General had this to say as reported by the Washington Post on December 12, 2018, page 4: “I understand that none of this is easy. I understand that some of you will need to make tough political decisions. …To waste this opportunity … would compromise our last best chance to stop runaway climate change. It would not only be immoral, it would be suicidal.” In other words the point of no return is in sight. Many world leaders and their followers these days-particularly in the US -seem interested only in their own profits and care little for civilization or the people they serve.
By the point of no return is meant that time when because of the buildup of carbon in the atmosphere no matter what we do the world will continue to warm to catastrophic and extinction levels and beyond. Dr. Stephen Hawking, the great astrophysicist, said a year before he died, in 100 years the Earth will no longer be able to support human life. “It is collective madness.”
Our Founders had doubts whether our Republic would survive but it never occurred to them that we would ever become sufficiently technologically advanced and at the same time sufficiently greedy and foolish so as to destroy ourselves. What might they have said about this miserable state of affairs?
“Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt.”
Samuel Adams—1749
“Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
John Adams—1798
“Let me add, that only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
Benjamin Franklin—1787
“A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the highest duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation.”
Thomas Jefferson—1810
“Rebellion to Tyrants is obedience to God.”
Benjamin Franklin—proposed as the motto on the Great Seal of the United States.
“Some boast of being friends to government; I am friend to righteous government, to a government founded upon the principles of reason and justice; but I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny.”
John Hancock—1774
John Jay