A gas firm boss faced a heated backlash yesterday after telling families struggling with soaring fuel bills to ‘wear two jumpers’. You can read the full detail of this at The Daily Mail Online. This happened in England, but you can see it happening just as easily here in the US. Just as most of our political leaders are completely out of touch, big corporate executives just don’t care.
And to make matters worse, corporate executives don’t have to go up for public election every four or six years. So, they get to make statements such as the one above or the ones they made in front of congress not too long ago about how they and their companies are just as much victims of high oil prices as the American consumer. What? The oil companies are experiencing years of their highest profits ever. They are victims how? Oh yes, they are victims of foreign oil and so their friends in Washington are pressuring for off-shore drilling to be allowed. Funny how this whole thing comes right back around to giving the big oil guys something they have wanted for years.
If we really wanted to solve the long term energy crisis then we should be looking to alternative sources of power, not alternative ways to keep the big oil machine churning. But that depends on who is leading the search and where your heart and loyalties lie. If they lie with the people and the needs of those people, then you look at alternatives. If your loyalties lie with big money, big oil, and the big machine, then you tell people to put on another sweater while you drop an oil rig in their backyard.
The peasants have no bread? Then let them eat cake. The gas prices are too high at Shell? Then let them use Exxon.