The video of Greta’s speech is included in the article here.

From Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!, December 15, 2019

At the U.N. climate summit in Madrid, 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed world leaders Wednesday, hours after she was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year. Thunberg came to the talks after a trip to meet with climate leaders across North America in anticipation of the scheduled climate conference in Santiago, Chile, before the talks were abruptly moved to the Spanish capital. In her address, Thunberg warned that the planet’s carbon budget is down to just eight years, and urged bold action. “I still believe that the biggest danger is not inaction. The real danger is when politicians and CEOs are making it look like real action is happening when in fact almost nothing is being done apart from clever accounting and creative PR,” Thunberg said.

Transcript of Presentation by Greta Thunberg Follows

AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from inside the United Nations Climate Change Conference here in Madrid, Spain, where 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the plenary on Wednesday. She spoke just a few hours before being named Time magazine’s Person of the Year.

GRETA THUNBERG: A year and a half ago, I didn’t speak to anyone unless I really had to. But then I found a reason to speak. Since then, I have given many speeches and learned that when you talk in public, you should start with something personal or emotional to get everyone’s attention, say things like, “Our house is on fire,” “I want you to panic,” or “How dare you!” But today I will not do that, because then those phrases are all that people focus on. They don’t remember the facts, the very reason why I say those things in the first place. We no longer have time to leave out the science.

For about a year, I have been constantly talking about our rapidly declining carbon budgets, over and over again. But since that is still being ignored, I will just keep repeating it. In chapter two, on page 108 in the SR 1.5 IPCC report that came out last year, it says that if we are to have a 67% chance of limiting the global temperature rise to below 1.5 degrees Celsius, we had, on January 1st, 2018, 420 gigatons of CO2 left to emit in that budget. And, of course, that number is much lower today as we emit about 42 gigatons of CO2 every year, including land use. With today’s emissions levels, that remaining budget will be gone within about eight years. These numbers aren’t anyone’s opinions or political views. This is the current best available science. Though many scientists suggest these figures are too moderate, these are the ones that have been accepted through the IPCC.

And please note that these figures are global, and therefore do not say anything about the aspect of equity, which is absolutely essential to make the Paris Agreement work on a global scale. That means that richer countries need to do their fair share and get down to real zero emissions much faster and then help poorer countries do the same, so people in less fortunate parts of the world can raise their living standards.

These numbers also don’t include most feedback loops, nonlinear tipping points or additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution. Most models assume, however, that future generations will somehow be able to suck hundreds of billions of tons of CO2 out of the air with technologies that do not exist in the scale required and maybe never will. The approximate 67% chance budget is the one with the highest odds given by the IPCC. And now we have less than 340 gigatons of CO2 left to emit in that budget to share fairly.

And why is it so important to stay below 1.5 degrees? Because even at 1 degree, people are dying from the climate crisis. Because that is what the united science calls for to avoid destabilizing the climate, so that we have the best possible chance to avoid setting off irreversible chain reactions, such as melting glaciers, polar ice and thawing Arctic permafrost. Every fraction of a degree matters.

So there it is again. This is my message. This is what I want you to focus on. So please tell me: How do you react to these numbers without feeling at least some level of panic? How do you respond to the fact that basically nothing is being done about this, without feeling the slightest bit of anger? And how do you communicate this without sounding alarmist? I would really like to know.

Since the Paris Agreement, global banks have invested 1.9 trillion U.S. dollars in fossil fuels. One hundred companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions. The G20 countries account for almost 80% of total emissions. The richest 10% of the world’s population produce half of our CO2 emissions, while the poorest 50% account for just one-tenth. We indeed have some work to do, but some more than others.

Recently, a handful of rich countries pledged to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases by so-and-so many percent by this or that date, or to become climate-neutral or net zero in so-and-so many years. This may sound impressive at first glance, but even though the intentions may be good, this is not leadership. This is not leading. This is misleading, because most of these pledges do not include aviation, shipping, and imported and exported goods and consumption. They do, however, include the possibility of countries to offset their emissions elsewhere. These pledges don’t include the immediate yearly reduction rates needed for wealthy countries, which is necessary to stay within the remaining tiny budget. Zero in 2050 means nothing if high emission continues even for a few years; then the remaining budget will be gone.

Without seeing the full picture, we will not solve this crisis. Finding holistic solutions is what the COP should be all about. But instead, it seems to have turned into some kind of opportunity for countries to negotiate loopholes and to avoid raising their ambition. Countries are finding clever ways around having to take real action, like double counting emissions reductions and moving their emissions overseas and walking back on their promises to increase ambition or refusing to pay for solutions or loss and damage. This has to stop. What we need is real, drastic emission cuts at the source.

But, of course, just reducing emissions is not enough. Our greenhouse gas emissions has to stop. To stay below 1.5 degrees, we need to keep the carbon in the ground. Only setting up distant dates and saying things which give the impression of that action is underway will most likely do more harm than good, because the changes required are still nowhere in sight. The politics needed does not exist today, despite what you might hear from world leaders.

And I still believe that the biggest danger is not inaction. The real danger is when politicians and CEOs are making it look like real action is happening when in fact almost nothing is being done apart from clever accounting and creative PR.

I have been fortunate enough to be able to travel around the world. And my experience is that the lack of awareness is the same everywhere, not the least amongst those elected to lead us. There is no sense of urgency whatsoever. Our leaders are not behaving as if we were in an emergency. In an emergency, you change your behavior. If there is a child standing in the middle of the road and cars are coming at full speed, you don’t look away because it’s too uncomfortable. You immediately run out and rescue that child. And without that sense of urgency, how can we, the people, understand that we are facing a real crisis? And if the people are not fully aware of what is going on, then they will not put pressure on the people in power to act. And without pressure from the people, our leaders can get away with basically not doing anything — which is where we are now. And around and around it goes.

In just three weeks we will enter a new decade, a decade that will define our future. Right now we are desperate for any sign of hope. Well, I’m telling you there is hope. I have seen it. But it does not come from the governments or corporations. It comes from the people, the people who have been unaware but are now starting to wake up. And once we become aware, we change. People can change. People are ready for change. And that is the hope, because we have democracy. And democracy is happening all the time, not just on Election Day, but every second and every hour. It is public opinion that runs the free world. In fact, every great change throughout history has come from the people. We do not have to wait. We can start the change right now. We, the people. Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg. Right after her address, scores of youth activists rushed the stage as security tried to escort them off. They stood, immovable, fists raised in the air, chanting, “You can’t drink oil! Keep it in the soil!” Their final chant as they walked off the stage was “We are unstoppable! Another world is possible!”

YOUTH ACTIVISTS: We are unstoppable! Another world is possible! We are unstoppable! Another world is possible!

AMY GOODMAN: Outside the U.N. summit plenary on Thursday afternoon, we’ll hear voices from the protests that took place that afternoon, and speak with Uganda’s first Fridays for Future climate striker. She was there on the stage in the morning, and she was pushed outside as she protested with others in the afternoon. We’ll be speaking with [Fridays for] Future climate striker Vanessa Nakate.

The American Petroleum Institute has an "agenda"

The power of petroleum is supreme nationally and globally

Essay by S. Tom Bond, Lewis County, WV, July 3, 2017

Why does petroleum, oil and gas, have so much political power? Why are they able to buck the interests of the population as a whole, such as the advance of renewables? Why can they walk all over landowners to get what is good for the fossil fuel industries and threaten the future of the human race with global warming?

When steamships were invented, they revolutionized warfare. Being able to ignore the way the wind blows and its vagaries gave steamships a huge advantage over wind driven ships. Petroleum driven engines were smaller, lighter, more easily controlled and eliminated the horrible job of shoveling coal into the boiler. These engines were adaptable to moving war machines on land too; tanks, trucks, artillery, and so forth, too. Adequate petroleum became necessary to wage war.

Immediately, the European nations and the United Stares began to make claims overseas where there was oil. Some by staking colonies, some by adroit manipulation of favored parties in nations possessing oil, such as the Saudi Family in Arabia.

Originally, coal was labor intensive. Think how many miners there were in the days of pick and shovel mining. Labor efficiency improved fostered by the labor movement. Coal operators from the days of Matewan to Don Blankinship and Robert Murray, have been able to make remarkable concentrations of wealth with the help of their workers. Today, however, there are more florists in the U. S. than miners! We now have less than 70,000 miners, less than 16,000 of which were involved in extraction, 0.019 percent of the nations work force, according to the Washington Post.

The same story plan applies to oil and gas. Originally rigs were built by hand, engine blocks were hauled by horses and site preparation was done by pick and shovel. Also petroleum has two extra layers of workers compared to coal or gas, those who refine the raw material into salable products and the low paid filling station workers (which makes up half the industry claim as jobs it produces). The total direct oil and gas job figure is somewhat less than 2 million, according to the Center for American Progress.

Several companies are working on methods to drill wells with an operator and one or more robots, which will further reduce the need for workers. So petroleum creates great wealth, but mostly, and increasingly, for the wealthy. This translates into political power in our system, where candidates must raise money for publicity. To coin a phrase, they go where the deep pockets are. The accumulated wealth also creates goodwill with investors and banks, which increases petroleum’s power.

The United States has been described as ”an oil company with an army.” The country exported oil for many decades when oil use first began, and it quickly moved to control other nations oil, as demand increased and our reserves were exhausted. The “oil company with an army” bit refers to these manipulations and the size of our military, which is famously the largest in the world, larger than the next ten nations combined (or all the other nation’s military, depending on what your read).

Our military takes over half the disposable budget for the U. S. We can’t afford to maintain and improve the infrastructure (the locks and dams that are necessary for the export of our agriculture, one of our most reliable exports, the bridges on our highways, the water systems of our cities and towns, and such). We can’t afford top quality secondary schools (but tiny Finland can). Our Internet is not top level (South Korea’s is). We can’t afford inexpensive health care for our people. The money goes to the huge military with 10 or so aircraft carrier battle groups and 800 installations in 70 countries. For comparison, Britain, France and Russia have 30 overseas installations between them. Big military isn’t the only source of U. S. financial problems, of course. See here.

Petroleum people work very hard to make us think there is no viable alternative, that oil and gas will be the mainstay for the indefinite future. I read this morning that Tesla has a backlog of 400,000 orders for it’s Model 3 at $35,000 each, and production is just now starting this summer. People bought them on faith. Tesla is riding high on the future.

How are renewables doing? Here is a quote from Adam Vaughan, Environment Editor of the Guardian newspaper:

Last year, for the first time, renewable energy accounted for more than half of new power generation worldwide…. China is expected to build more than twice that global amount in the next five years, driven by its thirst for more electric power capacity, public anxiety over air pollution and the need to fulfil its climate change pledges.

The world is changing, and Europe is no longer the big driver of green energy growth that it once was. “In the next five years, the People’s Republic of China and India alone will account for almost half of global renewable capacity additions,” says the IEA in a new report.

…. renewables are forecast to provide just over a quarter of the world’s electricity by 2021….

The accumulated wealth of the petroleum industry is used in another way: advertising and public image. You can’t fail to be impressed by all the advertisements. Night after night on TV, in the newspapers, radio, everywhere. Ads can be slanted to what ever they want; including pipelines and the idea the petroleum is the only alternative (see illustration). This income for the media makes the individual newspapers, radio stations and TV stations avoid stories that might offend petroleum companies and thus cause them to withhold advertising revenue.

One use for petroleum is largely ignored, its use in making plastics. The world is polluted with diverse present day plastics. Eight million tons of plastics are dumped in the oceans every year. Plastic is cheap and versatile, even the world’s poor can use it. It clutters beaches. Tiny pieces in the oceans are ingested by water living creatures, poisoning both fish and the creatures that they feed on.

The petroleum produced plastics are not easily digested by microorganisms, like biological materials. It damages essential life services. There is a desperate need for plastics that decompose to prevent this problem. This will mean starting with plant based materials and some new chemistry, which the industry fears.

It is easy to conceive of renewables for electrical generation – in fact, that is a technology undergoing rapid improvement. Electrical cars are here and will grow by market forces. Even an electrical semi-truck has been announced. Nikola has announced $2.3 billion of preorders for a 2,000 HP semi-truck, 7,000 paid reservations for the $375,000, to be unveiled December 2.

However there seems to be a hard core of machines that will need petroleum. They include earthmovers, farm equipment, and significantly, war machines. They involve huge energy needs and the supporting infrastructure for electricity driven machines is not available everywhere, nor portable.

Large ships, or submarines for under sea travel, where there is no air, now can use nuclear power, perhaps more could be adapted to such power. But small ships, tanks, mobile artillery, armored personnel carriers, overland trucks and the like cannot be easily adapted to electrical power.

In 2016 the U. S. imported 10.1 million barrels of oil a day from about 70 countries. We export 5.19 million barrels, mostly refined products. The net for our use is 4.87 million barrels a day. Do you suppose if we did not need imports, and other nations did not need our exports, we could reduce the military and concentrate our nation’s wealth on infrastructure as well as treating our ill and aged citizens with greater decency? Do you suppose we could do our share to avoid the worst of global warming and have a more civil place for people to live?

>>> Tom Bond is a retired professor of chemistry and resident farmer near Jane Lew in central West Virginia.

The Dominion of Hydrocarbons, and No Equitable Resolution

Commentary by S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemistry Professor & Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV
 
A wise man once defined empire as a “political system that brings wealth from the periphery to the center.” The British Empire famously brought wealth from all over the world to London, and to a lesser extent other parts of England.  It was a kingdom.  The Roman Empire  brought wealth from all over the Mediterranean and brought it, mostly, to Rome.  It began as a republic and ended in a dictatorship.
 
The military aspect – simply stealing the good stuff – was about the only method of Rome, and in those days few were embarrassed about it.  After 1500 years there was, in the time of Great Britain, a higher moral consciousness, and the rapine took the form of forced business, and the loss of the conquered was justified by “the white man’s burden,” the need to transfer European cultural superiority.  This gift was the benefit the unfortunates received in exchange.
 
So today we don’t have empires, or do we?  Lets ask, “How would one go about bringing home wealth from other places?”  What does bring wealth from foreign and rural places to where it can be displayed and enjoyed in comparison to other accumulations of wealth, the big cities? –  You’ve got it!  Corporations.
 
Today, overt rapine is beyond moral sensibility in all but the most primitive places.   But it exists, and it is in the form of business.  Lopsided business.  Some is easy to spot, such as loan sharking or products built not to last or cheap, unhealthy food.  Some of this is so deeply imbedded in business, so thoroughly protected by law and long practiced, it is less than obvious.   It is like the British East India Company, adept at moving wealth from India to England for 250 years.  Other transports of wealth comes from abrupt changes which apply new techniques bearing familiar old names to old quests.  Similarly, we have fracking, sometimes called hydraulic fracturing,  which is new in scale with new drilling objectives, new chemicals, serious waste problems, health problems, environment degradation, and a whole new capital situation.  Vast capital is required, but a quick payoff can occur if it “works” as planned.
 
Corporations usually try to work within the law, because it can be enforced. (Which, if you think about it, actually defines what the state is, the only institution that can legitimately use physical force – police action, tax, war, etc.) This in turn, means there is a premium on fitting the law to the corporate needs.  Law is quite plastic, can be made to fit any bodies’ want, if you think about it. It requires lobbying to hold laws favorable to the corporation, and to get new laws against the interest of those whose advantage oppose what the corporation wants to do.  
 
So modern corporations have empires, and nations only have empires to the extent they serve the centers of wealth accumulation, corporations.  This point is easy to miss, because wars are always fought by nations, and justified in the media  in nationalistic terms.  In the end they are about money – some entity wants to own resources someone else has, and that person has to defend themselves.
 
Corporations influence legislation and law enforcement by supporting candidates.  And they manage public opinion by advertising in various media, by telling their story to the Chamber of Commerce, service clubs, and any other body that will listen.  Since rural people are not organized and generally not communicators, there is no one to speak for their interest in the volume and with the skill of corporate spokespeople.
 
So how to resist?   How to counter a very one-sided narrative generated in favor of Fracking?  Science, knowledge organized to be truth is powerful. As your author has said recently in these pages, science is a vast debating society with rules for eliminating error in the narrative it generates, it is explanation of observed facts.  A truth-finding machine.  It is slow and expensive, but “it grinds exceedingly fine.”
 
Also by organization. Get the story out.  Recruit the public.  Anyone and everyone can contribute to this.
 
Today science concerning fracking shows most of the complaints dismissed as “anecdotal” by companies (and often in court) have a basis in chemistry, environmental science and accounting.  It is slow getting started, but is coming along nicely.  For example, well water at Dimock, Pennsylvania, once considered a settled matter is under review, this time by the EPA, with results unfavorable to the driller, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.   Duke University scientists have shown that methane in water wells near fracking operations frequently has an isotopic signature of deep gas, rather than gas generated by microbes near the surface.
 
By this time it is clear that fracking and waste disposal cause earthquakes. Articles with titles like “Why the Scientific Case Against Fracking Gets Stronger” and “The Truth about Fracking” appear in general interest magazines.
 
As for organizations needed to fight fracking, that has reached a mature state.  There were hundreds of organizations with web sites several years ago, and now organizations to fight the pipelines are rapidly growing too.  The purposes and methods are quite diverse.  Some are set up because of fears of global warming, some are based on health issues, water and air contamination (one is a list of the people who have their health harmed by fracking (currently over 650 ). There is a list of workers killed in the industry in the West between 2000 and 2007.  It is a sidebar to an article titled “Disposable Workers of the Oil and Gas Fields,” in a general purpose publication.
  
Some of these support alternate energy, some oppose fracking, one lists political contributions supporting fracking, one supports trout fishing, many are for or involve lawyers.  Some have a religious basis, one rates landmen,  some carry pictures of pollution, environmental damage, broken roads, gas escaping from equipment using infrared light, etc.
 
There are conferences being held, such as Health & Shale Gas Development: State of the Science Conference!  Books are being written, such as “Frackopoly: The Battle for the Future of Energy and the Environment” described thusly: “exposes the handful of corporations, financial institutions and individuals that have shaped the policies that keep us reliant on dirty energy sources. With the same forces in play, learning this history is critical to finally moving beyond fracking and fossil fuels.”  And there is to be an anti-fracking play, Driftless, which will appear in Pittsburgh.
 
“Slower generation growth, rock-bottom coal prices and robust deployment of renewables constrain gas’s ability to grow faster in today’s low-price environment.” Global consumption will expand by 1.5% annually between 2015-2021, down from last year’s forecast of 2% growth between 2014-2020.  IEA quoted in the June 8 Seeking Alpha.

One presidential candidate is openly opposed to fracking.  Districts and counties are passing regulations against fracking (mostly to have them overturned by courts, citing state regulations, as yet).  Over half the population is opposed, up considerably from last year. On April 10, 2016  it was written, “At this time last year Americans were split on fracking — fracturing rock deep underground to release natural gas — with 40 percent supporting it and 40 percent opposing it. Now, Gallup reports that just 36 percent support fracking and 51 percent oppose it.  The biggest erosion came among Republicans, as GOP support plunged from 66 percent to 55 percent. Meanwhile, Democrats and independents overwhelmingly oppose fracking, with approval at only 25 percent of Democrats and 34 percent of independents.”  

So what is the hold up?  State legislatures.  Legislators, like all other politicians above the local level are forced to go around with their hand out for donations.  They have to use advertising, one of the most gross dependencies of our system. The result is they are not responsive to needs of citizens, as we assume, but of donors.  If they don’t accept the money, their competitor will be right there to take it.

This leads to such excesses as the bill in North Carolina which makes it a felony for disclosing the contents of fracking fluid.  Suppose physician discusses a case with a fellow doctor and reveals what is causing the symptoms of similar cases – something in fracking fluid – jail time!  Or the bill introduced to the West Virginia legislature which effectively does away with nuisance suits?  Fortunately these failed, but fracking ambition apparently has no bounds.

“The 40 largest insurance companies in the United States have $237 billion invested in electric and gas utilities, $221 billion tied to oil and gas companies and nearly $2 billion locked into coal, a new report reveals.”  And “there are currently $5.7 billion worth of pipeline projects on the drawing board for W. Va. ” a statement attributed to Paul Kress, a VP at EQT (Equitable).

Big money = big influence.  Local impacts and global disturbances are likely if reason does not prevail. Environmentalists along with most farmers and many people living in rural areas know that alternative energy sources are the real future.

In our system, it will be slugged out in these terms.

Halliburton Loopholes Galore

Analysis by S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemistry Professor & Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV

One of the principal arguments for extreme energy extraction is “the nation needs the energy,” but the extraction is not done by the nation it is done by a private corporation. According to current legal practice, a corporation is a “person.” It certainly belongs to a person or persons, with these individuals allowed to make the decisions and achieve significant personal benefits there from.

Favorable laws are constructed by government for the business, including (1) pooling, a form of eminent domain, (2) reduced taxes (subsidies), in the amount of $7 billion annually, see chart here; and (3) exemption from environmental laws applied to other businesses (as typified by the 2005 Energy Act). For this, Google exemptions from safety laws of the oil and gas industry. Notice the industry response, such as this one from Energy in Depth, one of the industry constructed apologists. Studying this debate would be a good exercise for a college Logic or Rhetoric class.

(4) Further, partly as the result of safety exemptions, is the death of 138 oil and gas workers in 2012, with a fatality rate eight times as many as the all-industry rate of 3.8 per 1000,000 workers, according the Public Radio, December 27, 2013.

(5) State regulations may be so weak they hardly amount to control at all.

(6) Compounds used are frequently unknown and have toxic properties ignored in spite of massive anecdotal evidence (this site has well over 5000 sick or injured listed). (7) Science is ignored. At a recent meeting at the University of Pennsylvania described as “a summary of the current science, ” Aubrey Miller, the senior medical adviser with the National Institute of Environmental Health and Safety, was the wrap-up speaker. He noted that the nation has some 52,000 unconventional gas wells, yet when he searched the literature for research, he found little. “How do we have no data on an enterprise of this magnitude?”

And there is (8) little personal contact between regulators and operators. West Virginia has only 27 enforcement officers. Only a few token citations are given. A summary of wells drilled, enforcement actions, and staff for WV from 2003 to 2011 is here, and data for other oil and gas states may be accessed at this site also. (9) Property value decrease, representing reduced usefulness of the surface, are generally ignored. In light of the original understanding of the “right to remove” entertained by a lessor one hundred or more years ago, the contract is invariably broken by the lessee today. The inertia of law, not keeping up with the technology changes as time passes, and legislative bias, ignore this fact.

Justification for this mess is “We need the oil and gas” or “We need the energy.” Which phrase used is mostly determined by whether the speaker is the employee of a company extracting the hydrocarbon, or whether an “expert” from government or academia. The energy need and hydrocarbon use is never distinguished. No alternative.

Nor is the mixing of corporate and government prerogatives clarified. The use of force, that is taxation, fines, imprisonment, capital punishment, for the public benefit, is the exclusive prerogative of the state in modern times. It is blended, commixed, entwined and conflated with the corporations ability to place members of society in order according to its own uses, some at the top receiving vast rewards, some receiving crumbs according to the corporations uses, and some left entirely out.

Both corporate and government-academic expert speakers seem not to recognize diminishing the organic resources of the surface of planet is a problem resulting from extreme extraction, as is reducing social cohesiveness by alienating those who dwell near extraction. Using governmental violence on behalf of the corporations in places like Nigeria and Ecuador to control those who live in the lands affected by extraction has not much effected corporate operations. Those natives used violence against superior forces.

Here the “homeland” the problem is different. The natives are the same color as corporate leaders, speak the same language, wear the same clothes, read the same media. They are harder to dismiss. Worst of all, they have the same government. That government’s loyalty is fleeting. Every four years those who govern have to be reelected. Also the legal structure corporations have built into law during the last 150 years and in legislation over a shorter time requires increased maintenance as time goes on: the technology changes and people become better informed.

Opposition to extreme energy extraction is greatest where people are the most educated, the most able to communicate, the most dependent on making their own decisions, and close to the damage. Support occurs where there is trickle down from the corporations: subcontractors, remote royalty owners, investors, workers at various levels, politicians on the take and who lack the ability to understand what is going on, and people who really don’t care about facts on the ground, habitually accepting what they are told.

Our hope, those of us that are being harmed and who care about the future, is to make others see what is going on. To try violence is to face something that looks like like Darth Vader’s troops – body armor and all. To convince others is work, but we have time for that, and motivation, and there are a lot of us and we don’t need paid – our pay is to stop the damage against us, our health, our children’s future.

Tune in ten years from now. The political climate will be different when damage to the earth, sick people, and wealth concentration by taking the hydrocarbons out of the earth have increased. Will the Darth Vader-like forces control or will enlightenment prevail?