Listening to these arrogant oil aholes, it's time to nationalize the oil industry.

[OregonBlue]

These guys don't give a damn about the country, they are in it for the profits and only the profits. They won't be satisfied until we are all on our knees and bowing down to their power!!

[skooooo]

1. Good luck with that idea!

:hi:

[RB TexLa]

2. I wonder who Bush would have chosen to run AmOil?

[KG]

3. long past time.

[sergeiAK]

4. Um, duh?

they are in it for the profits and only the profits

Show me a publicly traded company that isn't, and I'll show you a malfeasance case waiting to happen. Businesses exist to make a profit for their owners (shareholders if public). That is their sole purpose in existing, the purpose of the government is to regulate businesses so that they do not harm the rest of us unfairly in their quest to make a profit.

Good luck finding the funding to nationalize XOM and similar companies. Last I checked, XOM had a market cap of just under $500B.

[OregonBlue]

6. These companies are feeding at the public trough. They therefore have a fiduciary responsibility to

the entire nation, not just their shareholders. Cut off all of their tax breaks, etc. and then your argument is valid.

[sergeiAK]

9. They have no duties to the nation aside from contractual duties

They have contracts allowing their use of public lands (contracts agreed to by the government, at that), which outline their duties and rights. If they don't fulfill such duties, we have legal recourse against them.

Obviously, they have to pay taxes and comply with the law as well.

If you're angry about the tax breaks for the oil companies (details of which I'd appreciate, as I've had trouble finding unbiased sources of info on such), contact your congress-critter.

[OregonBlue]

12. If you really want info, go read the anchorage daily news. they're crooks one and all.

they don't give a damn about the united states, only about profits and now they're telling the congress that if we don't continue to give them huge tax breaks, they won't be able to pursue renewables. Wonder what they've spent on ADVERTISING their supposed great works in the last year. I see many commericals every single day from oil companies touting how wonderful they are and what they're doing for us and the environment.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

11. I think that's the way to go

A carrot and stick approach is what's needed. Give them incentives to develop new refinery capacity and explore for new domestic sources of oil (might be hard to protect the environment at home - but foreign oil exploitation destroys the environment somewhere else anyway). Force them to dedicate a certain amount of their profits to the development of alternative energy through taxation. We need to eventually get them out of business and force them to get themselves out of the oil business. That may take a long time, but we need to be very forward looking and not wait until an extreme crisis occurs to do something.

[The2ndWheel]

5. Better idea

Stop using the oil, somewhere around today.

Can't do that though. Can't not do it though. Mmmmm, going to be a fun century.

[Winterblues]

7. Take the twelve billion a month we are throwing away on Iraq and

invest in Alternative Energy...

[The2ndWheel]

10. That won't reduce our impact though

Carbon problems might be eased, but if we have more cheap energy than we know what to do with, we'll find a way to figure out a way to do something with it. We'll just create different environmental problems. That's the case with no matter what we do though. It's mostly a question of scale, and we don't reduce that. We couldn't invest billions and come to any different conclusion. Since we'll call the energy clean, we'll give ourselves a blank check in terms of carving this planet up.

It's still going to be a fun century. We will never run out of problems(more abundant than the sun). We'll nationalize this, privatize that, stop wars, start wars...we can't escape it.

[leftofthedial]

8. 60 years too late

[devilgrrl]

13. They're DISGUSTING!!!!!!

Excuses excuses excuses....