The World 2, Apocalypse 0
Wednesday was a good day for the health of the planet. Exxon Mobil shareholders revolted against the drill-baby-drill management of CEO Darren Woods and elected at least two (probably three) climate activists to the energy giant’s board of directors. It was a big victory for the planet — and for the Wall Street investment firms and pension funds that have figured out it is bad for business to destroy our environment. The regimes of Big Oil tycoons like Woods, who has staunchly resisted even the moderate steps toward a green future taken by European energy companies, are now clearly coming to an end. As I’ve long argued, these fossil fuel executives are guilty of crimes against nature and humanity and should end their careers behind bars.
In other news… President Joe Biden ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to determine the origins of the coronavirus epidemic within 90 days. Biden is responding not only to political pressure, but to a growing consensus within the scientific community that the deadly virus might have been engineered in the Wuhan Virology Laboratory, where three researchers reportedly fell seriously ill in the fall of 2019, on the eve of the pandemic which then raged around the globe. I’ve been suspicious of a viral leak from the Wuhan lab ever since reading Nicholson Baker’s lengthy investigative report in New York magazine in January. As Baker emphasized, this is not about China bashing. The Wuhan lab’s dangerous work was financially supported by the U.S. government and by leading virology scientists in this country. It’s about imposing tighter restrictions on dangerous “gain of function” research that turns viruses into hugely lethal threats. This strict oversight must be imposed on labs throughout the world, not just in China, for the good of humanity. And we must know the true origins of the Covid-19 inferno so we can prevent future pandemics.
Suspicions about the Wuhan lab have been dismissed for months as conspiracy thinking. But it’s the knee-jerk efforts by authorities to snuff out legitimate public concerns that have led to the erosion of popular belief in the “official stories.” President Biden’s directive to U.S. intelligence agencies is a big step forward.
