Fight Against Climate Change Blocked by Luddites at Big Oil [View all]

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/11/21-7


Oil companies currently have proven reserves of oil, gas and coal worth $27 trillion. (Bruce Chambers/AP)

n the interest of fighting climate change, most of us avoid buying SUVs — fortress-like vehicles that aren’t necessary unless one intends to take the whole family for a spin through downtown Baghdad.

Most of us also recycle and keep the thermostat low. However, these gestures are doing almost nothing to stop the warming of the planet.

Yet climate change has disappeared from the political agenda. While the media diligently scrutinize the security risk posed by a hot relationship between a general and his biographer, there’s little airtime to consider the security risk posed by something even hotter: the planet. (A Pentagon-commissioned study in 2003 concluded that global warming would lead to brutal storms, flooding, drought and widespread human strife. “Once again, warfare would define human life.” But back to the general . . .)

The news on the climate front is devastating.