The Fossil Fuel Industry - Predatory Capitalism at its Worst
by Thom Hartmann,posted Aug 2 2012 3:25PM
In one day, Big Oil earns $342 million in profit, pays their CEOs $60,000 in salaries, spends more than $160,000 lobbying, and dumps a billion pounds of carbon pollution into our skies. All that in a single day. And what do we get out of it? Rapid climate change that’s threatening to destabilize the entire planet.
According to the US Department of Agriculture – more than half of all the counties in the United States are now primary disaster areas – stricken by one of the worst droughts in our nation’s history. To give relief, the USDA has opened up 3.8 million acres of conservation land for ranchers to use for grazing. It’s the latest effort by the Department to prevent a rapid increase in food prices that could kill our fragile economic recovery, hurt working Americans, and push the developing world into starvation and chaos.
Meanwhile – Big Oil and Big Coal – which have been dumping unimaginable amounts of carbon pollution into the atmosphere for centuries – continues to rake in enormous profits without contributing one cent to fixing the destruction they’re causing around the planet. This is predatory capitalism at its worst, and if continues unchecked, then our future is uncertain.
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