The capitalist press was thrilled last week to report the approach of a magical threshold. The Dow Jones Industrial Average soared past 15,000 and newspapers across the country saw it as a sign of resiliency and recovery. “It’s a giddy time to be an investor,” sangThe New York Times. Meanwhile, at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, researchers were charting the approach of a far different, though linked, milestone. According to recent data, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will peak this month above 400 parts per million (ppm). Scientists see it as an alarming trend. “At this pace,” said climate scientist Ralph Keeling “we’ll hit 450 ppm within a few decades.” If Keeling is right, in the decades to come we’ll be as far above livable levels of atmospheric CO2 than we were once below it.
Spiking levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are, of course, a consequence of the burning of fossil fuels. So it’s no surprise that as globalCO2 emissions storm past frightening thresholds, so too do the profits of the world’s largest oil companies. The combined windfall of BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch Shell reached a new record of nearly $140 billion in profits in 2011. In the first half of 2012, they earned an average of nearly $350 million each day. Are these profits bankrolling investments in clean energy alternatives? Not a chance. The Big 5 plowed nearly a third of 2012 profits into stock buy-back plans that further enriched shareholders. Much of the rest was spent on new fossil-fuel infrastructure, ballooning executive salaries and lobbying efforts that continue to pay off in weakened environmental regulations.
And so as their Dow Jones value heats up, so does the atmosphere. Global emissions of CO2 exceeded 35 billion tons in 2012, a record increase over 2011’s record increase.
Despite the frightening prospects of a warming climate to human and non-human life on the planet, the Obama administration, like every U.S. administration before it, favors economic growth at all cost.
Despite the fact that the U.S. federal government, or any other national government in the world today for that matter, refuses to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in any significant way, there appears still the possibility that government may yet do something meaningful. But it just might be the government you least expect.
Enter tiny Mora County, in northern New Mexico, which last week made it a crime to be an oil company.
The language of the “Mora County Community Water Rights and Local Self-Government Ordinance” begins by recognizing Mora County as “a multi-cultural community with indigenous roots.” It then acknowledges its obligation to protect “the Earth, water, and air as a source of life for all living.” For this reason, the County Commission refused to sacrifice “the present and the future” to oil company profits and the “at-risk exploitation and pollution of the Earth, water and air” that follows from those profits.
“It shall be unlawful,” continues the ordinance, the only one of its kind in the U.S. “for any corporation to engage in the extraction of oil, natural gas, or other hydrocarbons within Mora County.”
Amid the necessary legalese and technical terminology of the ordinance, there can also be found an arresting section (Section 3.6) titled “La Querencia de la Tierra,” a phrase the ordinance defines as “the loving respect which Mora County residents have towards the land and Earth, which is rooted in our indigenous worldview—the Earth is living and holy, is the habitat that sustains us, and is composed of all natural & living systems, flora and fauna – interrelated, interdependent and complementary – which share our common destiny: The right to live free from contamination.”
counterpunch
