The
latest evidence that subsidies propping up the beleaguered oil industry must continue:
Chevron Corp. said Friday its first-quarter net income rose 36 percent, the latest strong earnings report from a major oil company. ... In all, Chevron's net income rose to $6.21 billion, or $3.09 per share, from $4.55 billion, or $2.27 per share a year ago. The results topped Wall Street expectations and marked Chevron's best three months since it earned $7.9 billion in the third quarter of 2008.
Yesterday, we learned that Shell and ExxonMobil were also struggling to make ends meet, generating a scant $19 billion in profits between them last quarter.
With oil companies under such intense economic pressure, it's a good thing we have solid conservative Republicans like Paul Ryan who are willing to lie to the public about whether or not they support repealing oil company tax subsidies. (Yesterday, he told a town hall audience that he wanted to repeal the subsidies even though he and every other Republican voted to extend them just two months earlier.)
There's another thing that we should all be thankful for: that the debate about our economic future is entirely focused on debt projections generated from Excel spreadsheets that don't take into account the possibility—indeed, the certainty—that over the next twenty to thirty years, the cost of fossil fuels will continue to skyrocket even as we confront the need to make massive investments in alternative sources of energy, not to mention the enormous costs that mitigating the effects of climate change will impose. And that's the optimistic scenario.