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Rockefellers Seek Change at Exxon
Clifford Krauss, New York Times
The Rockefeller family built one of the great American fortunes by supplying the nation with oil. Now history has come full circle: some family members say it is time to start moving beyond the oil age.

The family members have thrown their support behind a shareholder rebellion that is ruffling feathers at Exxon Mobil, the giant oil company descended from John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust.

Three of the resolutions, to be voted on at the company’s shareholder meeting on Wednesday, are considered unlikely to pass, even with Rockefeller family support.

The resolutions ask Exxon to take the threat of global warming more seriously and look for alternatives to spewing greenhouse gases into the air.

One resolution would urge the company to study the impact of global warming on poor countries, another would encourage Exxon to reduce its emissions and a third would encourage it to do more research on renewable energy sources like solar panels and wind turbines.
(27 May 2008)
Related from the Guardian:
In praise of ... the Rockefellers (Leader, aka editorial)
Exxon investors propose ban on green activism

A rare peek inside our Fort Knox of black gold
Brett Clanton, Houston Chronicle
If security is tight here, at the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, there is good reason for it.

With crude prices rising, the value of the nation's vast emergency oil stockpile is increasing almost daily.

That makes Freeport's Bryan Mound - the biggest of the reserve's four underground storage sites - a Texas-size Fort Knox of black gold.

But while the facility remains in ready mode, things are about to slow down at Bryan Mound and other sites in Texas and Louisiana that comprise the reserve.

New legislation will soon halt shipments to the crude stockpile.
(27 May 2008)

Senators Question Top Oil Executives
U.S. Senate via Energy Policy TV
The Senate Judiciary Committee hears from the leaders of the major petroleum companies, focusing on the profits those firms are making at a time of record-high fuel prices.

Washington, DC - Robert Malone, Chairman and President, BP America Inc.; John Hofmeister, President, Shell Oil Company; Peter Robertson, Vice Chairman of the Board, Chevron Corporation; John Lowe, Executive Vice President, ConocoPhillips Company; J. Stephen Simon, Senior Vice President, Exxon Mobil Corporation; Chaired by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT)

Part 1 of 3.
(21 May 2008)

Climate report adds more gloom
Judy Fahys, Salt Lake Tribune
A landscape plagued with dust storms and drought, rangeland that won't support cattle, streams too hot for trout, forests felled by beetles and fire - it's all part of the scenario painted in a new report on climate change by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The projections are not exactly new.

Many of them have been reported by scientists and the media in the past five years.

But they do offer a clearer picture of how the impacts of global climate change are not limited to Arctic ice and tropical islands and that climate change will have profound impacts on the mountains, streams and range familiar to Utahns and others in the West.

"The trends are in place," said Fee Busby, a rangeland ecologist at Utah State University who has seen parts of the USDA's draft report. "The trends are going to continue."
(27 May 2008)

Midwest's message: Hands off our lakes
Tim Jones, Chicago Tribune
Multistate pact would put water off-limits to parched South, West
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Piece by piece, a 5,500-mile wall around the Great Lakes is going up. You can't see it, but construction is progressing nicely, along with an implied neon sign that flashes, "Hands off-it's our water."

The legal pilings for a 1,000-mile segment of the wall are scheduled to be sunk Tuesday when Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle finalizes his state's approval of the so-called Great Lakes Compact, a multistate agreement designed to protect and restrict access to nearly 20 percent of the world's supply of fresh water, contained in the five Great Lakes.
(27 May 2008)