DALE ALLEN PFEIFFER: ExxonMobile: the Shame, the Ideal & the Practical

[Tace]

The Shame

ExxonMobile is boasting the highest yearly profits ever generated by a corporation. This in a year when oil prices reached a record high due to war, infrastructure problems, natural catastrophes, depletion, and -- most of all -- speculation. Meanwhile, consumers are beginning to feel the pinch of higher oil and natural gas prices. As a result, the economy is not looking all that well. So, while all of us are beginning to feel the pain, a greater share of our collective wealth is being transferred to the coffers of ExxonMobile --and other oil corporations as well, no doubt.

What does a corporation do with the greatest yearly profits ever recorded? In ExxonMobile's case, they are trying to worm their way out of paying fines and cleanup costs for the Exxon Valdez spill. And they are refusing to testify before Congress on how much of their record profits were generated by their unprecedented merger into the largest corporation in the history of the planet. So much for the social and environmental responsibility of major corporations.

Yet the irresponsibility here goes much further. It is inequities such as the grotesque profits of the oil companies in contrast to the pittance they pay for their mineral rights that leads to the sort of unrest we see in the Middle East, in Africa, and in South America. The injustice and the martial abuse that results from such inequalities is the breeder of terrorism. So, in the end, it is corporate greed backed by state terror that was responsible for 9-11 and other major acts of terrorism. The profits of the oil majors are also paid for in the blood of U.S. soldiers and Afghan and Iraqi civilians, Nigerian soldiers and rebels, and Latin American protestors and civil unrest. All totaled, ExxonMobile's profits are eclipsed ten times over by the subsidies of military expenditures and civilian losses.

Speculators drive up the prices of natural gas and oil, corporations post record profits, the United States bankrupts itself paying for invasions of foreign countries while allowing its own infrastructure to rot, and the public is encouraged to go even deeper into debt to maintain their frenzied consumption. This is the U.S. neoliberal model of how to prepare for the new era of energy depletion? It sounds more like a mad, fascist recipe for disaster.

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