Innovation

Exxon Mobile is throwing out brilliant little ads about their concern for the climate and the way to a greener future. As they explain it ( soft voice over, warm music, lots of smiling children)this happens through "innovation"; that is, the new technologies that will appear if we just give these corporations lots of money and then get out of the way of the free market. Their first-rate scientists will come up with ways to not only avert the crisis, but provide security and prosperity for all. Why wouldn't we take them at their word? And thanks to the brilliance of capitalist "democracy", Exxon Mobile looks to be recieving about 30 billion of our hard-earned tax money to pursue their "carbon capture" scheme. Yes, that would be the wonderful, Sanders endorsed Infrastructure Bill and Sanders inspired Reconciliation Bill providing this largess ("Most progressive legislation we've seen in decades" blah blah. And what could be wrong with carbon capture and sequestration, you ask? Well the captured carbon is sold back to Exxon Mobile so they can inject it into their wells and squeeze out the last bits of oil. To burn to make more CO2!I said they were brilliant, right? It is not only capitalist corporations looking to innovation to save the system; well-meaning Green types are getting in on the act as well. Respected economist Robert Pollin has been developing plans for various states that allow them to phase out fossil fuels but "still enable cars, trains, buses and airplanes to keep running; and for industrial machinery of all types to keep operating".But is that really the goal? The highly regarded Mark Jacobson, a Stanford researcher, has developed similar plans for "100% Clean Electricity" and Uber optimists like Chris Nelder and Carbon Trackers Kingsmill Bond scoff at the idea that there should be any limits to how much energy humans can produce. As to damaging impacts, they simply assert that these can be "managed". But that's always been the dilemma hasn't it, the crux of the bisquit (as Frank Zappa called it). Managed damage is still damage, just as regulated pollution is still pollution.