I stepped on to the Esperanza, Greenpeace’s ice class A ship, this past weekend for the first time. It will be my home for the next two months, a home that will travel with me as I do this work I feel is so necessary, important enough to leave my beloved family for such a long time. I am heading up to the Arctic to draw a line in the ice, and to say No to Shell as they prepare to drill for greater profits in the Arctic. I know drilling in the Arctic won’t affect the prices that you and I pay at the pump because they are set at a global level. This is about one of the richest companies in the world getting a few billion dollars richer. Continue reading →
We’ll get to the encounter with Mr. Gerard below, but first, some context:
Gas prices! Everyone’s talking about them, including our government at a Congressional hearing today held by the House of Representatives Energy & Power Subcommittee featuring, among others, Mr. Jack Gerard of the American Petroleum Institute. As API’s president, Jack Gerard is Big Oil’s top lobbyist, and today he was doing what companies like Exxon and Shell pay him the big bucks to do – justify government subsidies and giveaways to Big Oil.
Also attending the hearing: referees raising the red flags on misleading statements and calling attention to the $5.97 million that oil companies have given to current members of the Energy & Power subcommittee since 1999 (data provided by the Center for Responsive politics through DirtyEnergyMoney).
activist refs call foul on Jack Gerard at a hearing on gas prices
This particular meeting of the subcommittee exposed some of the more blatant absurdities that API and their oil funded buddies in Congress like to propagate. Take gas prices – Jack Gerard likes to say “we need more American energy,” by which he means we need to open up every square inch of soil and water to oil and gas extraction. His argument is that gas prices would be lower if we sacrificed our land and investment capital to Big Oil’s drill. Continue reading →
a home that will travel with me as I do this work I feel is so necessary, important enough to leave my beloved family for such a long time. I am heading up to the Arctic to draw a line in the ice, and to say No to Shell as they prepare to drill for greater profits in the Arctic. I know drilling in the Arctic won’t affect the prices that you and I pay at the pump because they are set at a global level. This is about one of the richest companies in the world getting a few billion dollars richer. Continue reading 