BIG OIL OWES US

According to the Wall Street Journal, CEOs of big oil companies averaged almost $14 million in 2010. That’s “total direct compensation” for each one. Not bad for a day job. In 2013 Marathon blessed its Executive Chair with $22.5 million. He probably felt no guilt.

For the rest of us, this is obscenely unjust. Big Oil is sucking up huge profits while Big Carbon is intensifying the Earth’s weather system to increasingly destructive levels. This is happening today. What will happen when Greenland and Antarctica ice caps break off, lifting ocean levels a meter or two?

How do we get carbon numbers down?
It's a little like lowering high blood pressure.

It makes sense for oil executives to deny the scientific reality of climate change. They are accumulating huge profits. How easy for them to subsidize dubious research to deny the problem and delay corrective actions. This explosive situation will all come to a head in Paris at the COP21 talks to be held by the UN in December.

Transport Numbers

Podcars are but one tool for governmental policies and programs to reverse course to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In the USA, transportation (all modes) accounts for 27 percent of GHG emissions. Industrial uses are a bit more at 28%. Residential and commercial consumption are 17% each.

Forty-three percent of the transportation carbon volumes come from cars, 22% trucks, 18% light trucks, 8% aircraft and 3% boats. Urban mobility is a big chuck of the whole. How much can be shifted to green modes -- walking, biking, rail, electric buses and podcars? Traditional rail won’t go away. In fact, it will be fortified by sound podcar interfacing.

These numbers can be questioned, but the ballpark that emerges is the same. In the long run, a 50% carbon reduction from transport is possible if strong climate protection measures are taken around the world.  Podcars can be key in a 13 percent reduction of the world’s carbon problem.  But that if is a BIG if.

The spacious control center at the
privately built pod system
 in Las Colinas outside Dallas.

Such as shift will hit Big Oil hard. No wonder oil CEOs and managers need huge salaries. They’re saving up for the difficult years ahead.

Exxon Exhortation

It recently came to light that ExxonMobil executives knew of causal links from carbon emissions to climate stability and public welfare back in the 1970s. Influential environmentalist Bill McKibben got himself arrested at an Exxon gas station in Vermont last week to call media attention to it.

The disclosure is being compared to corporate memos in the 1990s that forced Big Tobacco to pay out big - financially and politically. What can we expect from Exxon, Shell, BP and other carbon-pushers when McKibben and friends work it through our courts?

Elaborate are the ramps at this station of the Morgantown PRT.
Shouldn't Exxon be assessing this 1970 gem for a greener future?

Given Big Oil cash flows, assigning a faction of a percent to sustainable mobility infrastructure would do a lot to jumpstart the podcar industry. Come explore the possibilities at PCC9 in two weeks.