Showing posts with label poverty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poverty. Show all posts

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Maybe Exxon Mobil's Profits Can Buy Us a New Planet

East Africa drought and food crisis emergency, Modogashe (Mado_Gashi)Exxon Mobil made more than $3 billion in profit per month in the first quarter of 2013 and its CEO says now is no time to go using less oil just because it's destroying our planet's climate:
The CEO of Exxon Mobil Corp. says there’s no quick replacement for oil, and sharply cutting oil’s use to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would make it harder to lift 2 billion people out of poverty.

What good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers?” CEO Rex Tillerson said at the oil giant’s annual meeting Wednesday.
Think about how much oil the world's poor consume. Are they buying cars and driving to work, or are they walking or biking? Would they be helped more by lower gas prices for cars they can't afford anyway, or by making small-scale clean energy more affordable - solar-powered local water filtration systems, home solar stoves, and better battery storage?

Now think about who suffers most from global warming-fueled extreme weather disasters. Is it wealthy jet-setters like Rex Tillerson? Or is it that subsistence farmer in Africa who Tillerson's holding up as a human shield to protect his company's mind-bogglingly huge profits?

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Video: Obama's Labor Secretary Pick Talks Green Jobs

Via SpotlightOnPoverty.org, here's a clip from back in the presidential campaign of Rep. Hilda Solis (D-CA), Barack Obama's choice for Secretary of Labor, talking about how green jobs have the power to help fight poverty: