Chevron (er, excuse me, ChevronTexaco) recently has launched a truly exquisite website called will you join us? It’s about the fact that at this moment in history we as a busy, busy species have burned through at least half of the available oil reserves on the planet…and are expected by many experts to burn through the remaining reserves in the next thirty years.
Red or blue or other in our politics, all of us who care about our world must face this fact, and ChevronTexaxo has every right to be the first to remind us, given that it is the second-largest energy and oil corporation in the country, and one of the largest in the world.
The remarkable thing, at least to yours truly, is that they have done such an exemplary job of laying out the basic facts. It’s startling. They begin with the same idea frequently brought up by Jared Diamond in his epochal and widely-praised book about how civilizations sometimes "Collapse" — the concept of "natural capital."
Go to the "Environment" tab in their issues section, and this is the first thing you read in Chevron’s introduction (which even has footnotes!):
Every person on the planet is dependent on the natural resources that make up our environment—our "natural capital."1 We sometimes take it for granted, but this capital is vital for sustainable economic and social progress.2
Obvious? Perhaps, but it’s not something you hear from their rivals, ExxonMobil. Where ExxonMobil has gone to extraordinary length of funding over forty ""public interest groups" to obfuscate the science showing the on-coming of global warming. Chevron is staring a conversation about the heritage all mortals on this planet share. Is it just me, or isn’t that kind of amazing?
In truth, when it comes to facing facts, Chevron sounds downright presidential at times. By contrast, here’s the current officeholder on the subject of climate change, as reported in CNN just before the recent G-8 summit. (For this summit Tony Blair pushed very hard on two issues–aid to Africa and climate change–and got some aid for Africa, but no change or commitment on climate change.)
Bush described climate change as "a significant, long-term issue that we’ve got to deal with" and acknowledged that human activity is "to some extent" to blame.
Here’s Chevron on the same subject on their website:
One of the most critical environmental challenges facing the world today is reducing long-term growth in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.15 The use of fossil fuels to meet the world’s energy needs has contributed to an increase in GHGs—mainly carbon dioxide and methane—in the earth’s atmosphere.16 Many think this increase is leading to climate change, with potentially adverse effects on people, economies, and the environment—from coastal flooding, to droughts, to changes in ecosystems and biodiversity.17, 18
Now I ask you–who’s the responsible parent? The oil company or the President? It’s astonishing, especially since Chevron’s last footnote on the subject (18) takes us directly to the supposedly controversial report from the UN-sanctioned IPCC of 2001 that the White House didn’t want to believe and asked the National Academy of Sciences to verify! (The NAS turned aside the objections, backing the report to the hilt, pointing out the threat of greenhouse gases and adding sharply the irrefutable fact: "Temperatures are, in fact, rising.")
Chevron’s record is not beyond criticism, as the interesting Knowmore compilation site points out (and rates Chevron negatively), but I sense the possibility of something new here. And let me add that Jared Diamond had a similar reaction, after encountering a Chevron oil production facility in one of the wildest parts of the world he’s ever seen…an on-the-scene report tomorrow.
Kit Stolz 