Of Blackouts, Payoffs, and Conspiracies

First, the good news. Lookie here. Not only did the lights go out across Paris, but in several other European cities as well:

Authorities in Rome switched off the lights at two of the Italian capital's most popular monuments, the Colosseum and the Capitol.

In Spain, Madrid's city hall turned off one of the capital's most emblematic monuments, the Puerta de Alcala arch. In the southern city of Seville, local authorities did the same with the famous Giralda Tower, and in the Mediterranean city of Valencia, the Ciudad de las Ciencias complex went dark.

In the Greek capital, Athens, lights illuminating several public buildings, including the parliament, city hall, and Foreign Ministry, were temporarily turned out.

Austria's Green party urged citizens to unplug and switch off for five minutes, though organizer Robert Grueneis conceded the symbolic lights-out had an almost imperceptible effect.

"But it's still the right thing to do," he said. "Cutting back on power usage is always in the interests of the environment."

But the growing attention to the issue of global warming, and the scientific consensus represented by the report, is making someone more than obviously nervous.

The Guardian, an hour ago, posted a story by Ian Semple, science correspondent, saying that the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the neocon temple of war profiteers, funded by ExxonMobile, sent letters to scientists offering a $10,000 bribe to dispute the findings of the report presented today in Paris by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:

The AEI has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees.

The letters, sent to scientists in Britain, the US and elsewhere, attack the UN's panel as "resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work" and ask for essays that "thoughtfully explore the limitations of climate model outputs".

Climate scientists described the move yesterday as an attempt to cast doubt over the "overwhelming scientific evidence" on global warming. "It's a desperate attempt by an organisation who wants to distort science for their own political aims," said David Viner of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

So let me back up and connect some dots you may have missed.

1. ExxonMobile, a direct descendent of the infamous Rockefeller empire of the Standard Oil trust, gives mega bucks to and works directly with members of the American Enterprise Institute.

2. Michael Ledeen, a resident scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, is a strong candidate for having been involved in the Niger forgeries that made up the sole evidence of WMD that was used (as a fig leaf) to justify our war in Iraq.

3. Qui bono? Who benefits from the war? Consider this:

Iraq possesses the world’s second largest proven oil reserves, currently estimated at 112.5 billion barrels, about 11% of the world total and its gas fields are immense as well. Many experts believe that Iraq has additional undiscovered oil reserves, which might raise the total well beyond 250 billion barrels when serious prospecting resumes, putting Iraq closer to Saudi Arabia and far above all other oil producing countries. Iraq’s oil is of high quality and it is very inexpensive to produce, making it one of the world’s most profitable oil sources. Oil companies hope to gain production rights over these rich fields of Iraqi oil, worth hundreds of billions of dollars. In the view of an industry source it is “a boom waiting to happen.”(1) As rising world demand depletes reserves in most world regions over the next 10-15 years, Iraq’s oil will gain increasing importance in global energy supplies. According to the industry expert: “There is not an oil company in the world that doesn’t have its eye on Iraq.”(2) Geopolitical rivalry among major nations throughout the past century has often turned on control of such key oil resources.(3)

Five companies dominate the world oil industry, two US-based, two primarily UK-based, and one primarily based in France.(4) US-based Exxon Mobil looms largest among the world’s oil companies and by some yardsticks measures as the world’s biggest company.(5) The United States consequently ranks first in the corporate oil sector, with the UK second and France trailing as a distant third. Considering that the US and the UK act almost alone as sanctions enforcers (and as advocates of war against Iraq), and that they are the headquarters of the world’s four largest oil companies, we cannot ignore the possible relationship of their policy with this powerful corporate interest.

4. What is the biggest threat to oil profits? A reduction in consumption, the very thing called for by those who argue that global warming is caused in large part by the release of carbon from the burning of fuel.

5. So who does ExxonMobile return to? The very people who brought them the war in Iraq: the AEI.

Everything is connected.