BREAKING NEWS: Exxon/Mobil Ordered Out of Torrance, Guilty of Greenhouse Gas Pollution

“Pack Up Your Toxic, Fossil Fuel Factory With Its Climate-Changing Products & Get Out of Town By 2020!” Greenius Rules

It’s true, I have declared it thus this very day, marking this date as the beginning of the end of the Exxon/Mobil era.

Consider this fair and legal warning, world’s largest and most polluting oil company – I’m giving you 10 years to pack up and hit the road.  Otherwise I will have you evicted and we will seize your assets. Mark your calendar and let’s start collecting empty moving boxes for our poison pals in petroleum.

Don’t worry about what the Mayor and City Council here in Torrance think about this, because I have it on very good authority from my friends on city staff that these elected officials DON’T think about this at all.   They’d just as soon have someone else take responsibility.  They’ve been out of the loop environmentally for a long time now and they like it that way.  They’ve got other priorities.

Hell, the Mayor owns a tow truck company.  He makes his living off cars that run out of gas or break down because of the inadequacies of the internal combustion gasoline powered engine.  Fires, explosions, crashes – they’re all just money in the bank for him.

You think HE’s anxious to see electric cars replace fossil fueled vehicles?  You think HE’s working very hard to end our nation’s sick addiction to carbon based fuels that kill people and destroy our civilization?  I’m thinking not so much.

I’m thinking he likes our carbon-based economy just the way it is.  I won’t be waiting on him to do the right thing.

And it’s no surprise that he – and every one of the city council members, their appointed commissioners and the whole of city staff – are intimidated by the big, multinational oil company and not courageous enough to stand up to the very worst of the carbon collaborators in the business.

After all, the same corporate culture that had both the Tiger that used to be in our tanks AND the flying horse, Pegasus, put to sleep and processed into dog food (are you listening PETA?) is also the very same company that has paid tens of millions of dollars, year after year to spread FUD about their role in climate change.

Scientists’ Report Documents ExxonMobil’s Tobacco-like Disinformation Campaign on Global Warming Science

Fear. Uncertainty.  Doubt.  FUD.  It’s the 2nd biggest product Exxon/Mobil and their pals in the oil, coal and gas industries pump out.  It works.  And it’s what Exxon/Mobil used – along with tankers full of money – to create the Global Warming Deniers movement.

Formerly known as the “I Don’t Believe We Really Landed On The Moon But I Do Believe Man & Dinosaurs Coexisted Just Like In The Flintstones” Club, before Exxon/Mobil began paying them to lie about climate change.  The Global Warming Deniers Movement was created to use FUD to stop people from doing things that would cause them to burn less oil, coal and gas.  And yes every single person in that movement is a hapless dupe.  Sorry George Will, but your milkshake ran dry decades ago.

No one has tried to stop us from learning the truth or trying to save ourselves while we still have the time, more than the employees of the Exxon/Mobil company.  Their top executives make those cigarette company execs who lied to Congress and the American people a few years ago look like Frodo and the Hobbits from Lord of the Rings.

So it’s no wonder that not a single person in power here in Torrance has the guts to tell Exxon/Mobil that they’ve worn out their welcome here and it’s time for them to go.

But your Creative Greenius ain’t IN power here in Torrance – and I have a post-carbon economy vision for my city.  That vision has no image of an ugly, stinking, toxic refinery on that 750 acres of prime real estate.  So that refinery must go.

I’m seeing a solar thermal energy plant on those 750 acres that will supply us with clean, renewable energy and will help us meet both our renewable energy and GHG reduction laws.  I think the hefty carbon tax we’ll be levying on Exxon/Mobil can pay for the whole thing.

And no, I’m not worried one bit about losing the 800 jobs that come with this planet-killing facility, because I don’t believe in full employment for liars, polluters and people who don’t care about my health, the health of your children or the future of your family tree.

These oily people are no doubt going to bitch, and moan and threaten.  They’ll also try to push the fairy tale that they’re the good guys who pay big taxes and donate all kinds of hours and money to charity.  But that money is dirty.  It’s blood money from mercenaries and we’re a better city without it.  Maybe they should take their jobs and shove them as the famous song suggests.  Maybe they should just go take their lies and pollution somewhere else.

What those people really deserve is to be the folks who get the job of cleaning up their mess before they they pack up Freddie the Flare and the rest of the crude characters who appear in the phony backstory on their website that begins:

“The year was 1929. The city of Torrance had only been incorporated for nine years when an oil refinery sprouted from acres of bean fields.”

Yep, like a friggin’ handful of magic beans that oil refinery just sprouted.  Damn!  It’s almost organic it’s so earthy.  Except that it really wasn’t, since that’s just the usual Exxon/Mobil bullshit shoveled out at record levels since they first came to town.  Maybe it was really just mushrooms that sprouted and the folks in City Hall are still trippin on them.

So it’s time to quote our old pal, Ray Charles, as I invite you all to sing-along with me, Rayettes style, in a musical message to the morally bankrupt but criminally profitable Exxon/Mobil gang:

“Hit the road, Jack, and don’t you come back no more, no more, no more, no more.  Hit the road, Jack, and don’t you come back no more.  Listen what I say!”

Frankly this was an easy, no-brainer ruling for me to make based on the law.  You are either on the right side or the wrong side of the law.

California’s AB 32 mandates that by 2020 we cut our Greenhouse Gas emissions to 1990 levels.

We’re currently WAY past 1990 levels and will need to make life-changing steps to get back to what were were spewing into the air 20 years ago.

We’re also mandated by that same law to generate 33% of California’s energy from nonpolluting, renewable sources.

We will not be meeting either of those mandates with Exxon/Mobil still in town in 2020.

And Torrance cannot in good faith call itself a “Cool City” as it pledged to be in April of 2007 when the carbon fuel processing plant in their town is heating the planet’s temp and guilty of pushing GHG emissions into the danger zone.  The Greenius says that’s just as mockable as George W Bush’s declaring “Mission Accomplished!” six years ago on “Dress Up Like A Real Flyboy Day.”

Saying it don’t make it so… except when the Greenius says Exxon/Mobil must go.

You know what would really make Torrance a Cool City?  Environmental vision, leadership and courage.  Let’s try any of those for a change.  How about a new, green direction for our economy and city affairs?  More expertise and working knowledge on environmental issues at every level of staff, elected and appointed officials would be cool.  So would an enlightened awareness and sense of urgency for the very real climate crisis we are all facing right here, right now.  How would that be for a change?

It would be so cool if the city of Torrance could smell the coffee over the fumes from that refinery stank, and if they were the ones telling Exxon/Mobil to vacate the premises for he health, welfare and well being of its citizens.

I may be the Creative Greenius, but I’m n0t into delusional fantasy, so I won’t be waiting for that to happen.

I am however a firm believer that one voice can not only make a difference.  One voice can change the world.

And this one voice is saying Exxon/Mobil’s refinery will be gone in 2020 and we’ll all be much cooler as a result.

But don’t just take my word for it, check out this video from my pal Solar Dave at www.solardave.com:

2020, Exxon/Mobil.

The clock is ticking.  Start packing.