Time to Turn Up the Heat on Climate Criminals

President Joe Biden’s vow to slash global-warming pollution by at least half by the end of the decade is very encouraging – especially after four years of Trumpian climate denial. But watching the Greta Thunberg special on PBS last night was a grim reminder of how daunting a task the world now faces, as glaciers melt, sea levels rise to flood levels, the oceans grow more acidic, forests and entire towns are torched by wildfires, freak storms devastate major cities, and on and on. Even the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – two defiant bulwarks of climate denial – had to duly applaud Biden’s climate battle cry yesterday at a global Zoom summit.

But there are still major obstacles to Biden’s transformative plan to save the planet. And, as usual with anything good and essential, the opposition begins with Mitch McConnell and his Republican Senate cabal. McConnell has already denounced Biden’s sweeping climate plan, charging that it amounts to surrender to China, which “shamelessly” keeps spewing greenhouse gas emissions. Put aside the fact that China’s leaders have also vowed to phase out coal burning and other major sources of global warming. McConnell denouncing China is rich. His wife, Trump Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, is practically a Politburo member of the Chinese Communist Party, along with other members of her family, whose wealth comes from a shipping giant with close ties to the Chinese dictatorship. McConnell and Chao are among those who should be investigated for collusion with Beijing as well as climate obstructionism.

And speaking of climate criminals, it’s also time to prosecute Michael Wirth, the CEO of Chevron Corp., the second largest oil corporation in the U.S. and a former Trump supporter and major climate denier. Wirth’s Chevron is compounding its global crimes by leading a major lobbying effort in Washington to block sanctions against the military thugs who took over Myanmar in a bloody coup. The vicious Myanmar junta is propped up by millions of dollars in taxes and fees paid by Chevron, which pumps oil out of a large field in that benighted country. In the first three months of this year, Chevron has paid over $2 million for a lobby campaign on behalf of Myanmar’s bloody dictators, who have killed more than 700 men, women and children so far as they try to consolidate their power. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has urged U.S. corporations to stop colluding with Myanmar’s corrupt military, but Chevron has rebuffed all human rights appeals.

Wirth is the same California-based CEO who last year bemoaned the state’s utility blackouts and yearned for the economic stability of Texas. In his speech before a Houston business group, Wirth failed to mention Chevron’s own responsibility for the climate-driven wildfires that have devastated California. And, of course, not long after Wirth sang the praises of Texas, Houston itself was reduced to Third World status by a freak winter storm.

It’s time to criminalize men like Mitch McConnell and Michael Wirth. Either they go, or the planet does.