Hear, hear. Again no letters to display? The shame of it.

You're quite right, though. Plainly we're presently entering a state of affairs that will in the not distant future require not just a single scapegoat, but many, and deep of pocket too. Exxon is the leading corporate candidate for the honor, and it will have company; and surely, in Exxon and others' cases, their scorn will be well-earned, and their liability manifest. We live in gentler times still, and the clamor against them is yet but muted. It will louden. The future, as so rarely, is crystal clear on this point.

As someone who has voted for both Angelides and Westly, and liked the former a lot last I checked, the news of them you bear is perplexing. What are they doing still holding Exxon stock at this late point in the game, damn them? That is, of course, the first thought.

The second thought, of course, is: Nice that they were in a position to write this particular letter, with all the clout of big-state government investors. Better, of course, that they send this message to Exxon leaders while they occupy a prominent position among the investors in this eminent company, send it loud and several ways, before they divest themselves and their trustors, the people of California, of any ownership in so nefarious (we use the term rarely, we assure you) an entity.

Third thought, of course: They will, of course, divest their investors' portfolios of it sooner or later, won't they? When it's most pragmatic? I mean, I'm waiting for what the explanation's going to be.

Fourth and perhaps last: I share your pipe dream, the real idea here, though it is surely a bittersweet smoke. A price will have to be paid for the damage already and yet to be done by the willful folly, the selfish deceit, of certain actors. This debt will surely come due; that is the sweet part. But only when the cost has become viscerally clear to all in terms of blood and treasure. That is the bitter part.

A final point. One of these days, I'm certain, I'm going to find something you write with which I firmly, even violently, disagree (if, finally, on rather a minor point). I shall be ready for it when it comes; oh, how I limber my fingers awaiting that day.

As I do, though, I'll content myself with singing your praises once again. Get you head back in Borges space for a moment to hear the following: Your post, too, its eloquent ringing of the bell, and even the humble ones that comment upon it, and perhaps even those therupon commenting, and so on, shall all one day be read into the record -- if not the legal, then at least the journalistic-academic historical record -- of the difficult times to come. Yours and the others seem likely to be recognized as having been sane voices, prophetic even in a sense, in a time of deep and fascinating folly.

Perhaps we will live to say we told them so. Cold comfort, indeed.

Your predictions remind me of the situation of the tobacco industry, which for years was widely seen in the US as being benign and respected. How things have changed! While much of the change was due to mounting medical evidence of the harm of smoking and the public health cost, I would hazard to guess that it was the massive lawsuits against them in the 90s that truly established a changed landscape in America. You predict that Exxon will suffer a similar fate, but this will only happen if Exxon is shown to be similarly lying to the American people about the negative impact of their product. While this is probably the case (Exxon is a massive corporation and surely has many very smart people that understand anthropogenic climate change), surely they have learned from the tobacco industry and do not have any incrimination records lying about.

Global oil resources are adequate to meet demand.

Well, yes. And they always will be.

At least, as long as you define demand as being equal to the quantity of the product for which people are willing and able to pay.

Because, as we all know: as supply decreases, price increases, and demand drops.

So, to put it another way, there will always be enough oil to meet demand, because prices will always be high enough to keep excess demand out of the market.

Yes, it's true. Taxpayers will foot the bill for Exxon's profits--we'll pay for the damage those profits cause. This is how corporations work: they privatize profits, and socialize risk. It's a total scam, and the people who run corporations would not get away with it if they had not carefully bought and paid for our government first.

It's always been this way, in America in particular, but everywhere in general, too. The story of America's railroad development is a textbook case of privatizing profit and socializing risk.

At some point, though, the overall "good to public weal" is insufficient to justify corporate rapacity, and there's blowback, as there was when Teddy R. busted the trusts. Not that it made any difference. Most of those "busted" trusts eventually reformed into something like the monopolies they were; the men involved just did it very quietly and carefully, and with the cooperation of the government that they bought so methodically.

Exxon is essentially John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil reconstituted. GOP rule in the last 40 years has allowed the monopolists to gain ascendency once again. These guys, their philosophy of business, are like the gorgon's head, you just can't kill them/it.

Chas

Exactly the same line of dissimulation and deceit used by Big Tobacco in refuting a CAUSAL link from smoking or chewing to lung (and many other) cancers...

Something like... "there has never been direct cause scientifically established between the use of tobacco, tobacco products or formulations and the occurence of cancers of any kind"

Truth-ish, as far as it went, but at base, a lie.

The debater/afficianado-of-argument will have a name for this kind of mendacious obfuscation.

That term, as an established feature and evil of The Tobacco Industry -by extension to Exxon/CEI et al- should be gotten out and repeated and repeated and repeated.