Day: January 21, 2011

Exxon forecast: 25% more CO2 emissions

It’s good news for green plants but bad news for green people: carbon dioxide emissions will increase by 25 percent in the next 20 years, according to ExxonMobil.

The UK newspaper, The Guardian, expressed the lament of the green people, observing that the forecast:

in effect [dismissed] hopes that runaway climate change can be arrested and massive loss of life prevented.

Speaking on behalf of green plants, we observe that greater CO2 emissions represents more life for plants and, subsequently, better lives for people (even the green ones, though they’ll never admit it!)

Obama picks loser CEO to head economic council

President Obama has picked General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt to head a new White House economic group called the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

Here’s what Immelt has accomplished since taking the helm of GE in September 2001:

  • GE’s stock price was about $40 per share when Immelt took the reins at GE. Today it is about $18/share. The stock price went below $7/share in March 2009.
  • GE needed a $139 billion taxpayer bailout during the financial crisis (the FDIC backed GE Capital debt).
  • GE gave 18,000 employees the ax during 2008-2009.
  • GE’s dividend is 63.5% lower than it was two years ago.

Any way you measure GE’s performance under Immelt, he’s been a disaster. What will he do for our economy? We shudder to think.

GE was one of the founding members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership — a coalition of rent-seeking big businesses and radical environmental groups lobbying for cap-and-trade. I suppose we should be glad Immelt participated in that — it failed, too.