Is is good to see that the latter day Flat Earth Society has finally acknowledged the earth to be round!

If you can't beat em, join em.

While they are at it, they will make a buck too.

_3 things a company needs focus on, in order to operate most profitably, in the 21st Century:

1) Social contract/license is necessary in order to operate...or at least operate more profitably. Simply put, there is a relation between good works, clean operations, and good PR.
_Oversimplifying it, the better your image, the more easily you attract top talent, the better coverage the coverage by the media, and view of by influential and powerful people and groups, increasing likelihood of attracting business, and decreasing probability of litigation. Altogether, this helps to better the bottom line, thus stock price and credit rating. This is when everything else is equal, Vs a firm with a lower standings with society.
_The rise of NGOs the Internet, with opinionated and watchful bloggers, and a more conscious public consumer, also have much to do with this.

2) Lowering long-term risk to operations is another key point. Proactively going after problems w/in the reach of their own firms, or a group of firms through industry associations, or by any other means will bring about improved conditions, which lends to results that are more favorable. GHGs, with associated climate change, and environmental degradation are two specific targets

3) Identifying and exploiting inefficiencies, developing new strategies, tactics, and technologies to do it. All may help profit margins by tightening internal costs/expenditures, or externally through marketing and selling new products (business consulting to IT to optimization of warehouse logistics).

_All three have existed in one form, or another for years, centuries, if not always. This is also not all of the things they need to do, since virtually all normal rules of running a successful business, still apply.

Something I'd like to see happen:

Energy companies/Federal govt impose a tiered consumption tax on all energy produced by fossil fuels.
(Triple or quadruple rates above a certain kilowatt usage.)

It frustrates me that people waste so much energy on things they do not need such as leaving the AC on when nobody is home, leaving the lights/tv on, setting thermostats too high or too low & using a 50inch plasma tv that conumes 300watts/hr.

If people refuse to conserve on their own, maybe a hit to the pocket book will motivate them.

Paul M. Anderson, Duke Energy’s chairman and a member of the president’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, favors a tax on emissions of carbon dioxide.

Kind of self-serving, since they're leading the fight for more nukes (at taxpayer expense, of course).

Rather than hire lobbyists, I would like to see them invest some of their $100B per year profits in renewable energy industries in a really BIG way. Thousands of new companies, employing millions of people making wind turbines, solar panels, constructing cellulose biofuels plants and doing research would boost the economy and provide more energy security for all of us.

Energy companies exist to make money. They will adapt their tune to the shifting political winds only to the extent they have to to keep making money. Don't think badly of them for that - it's called capitalism, i.e. the worst way to run an economy except for all the others. The conclusion we should draw is that the sector is acknowledging the reality that the political climate did indeed shift massively on Nov 7 and, is looking to manage the change process.

Btw, Roger. Expect Exxon-Mobil to still drag its feet because of all the Western oil majors it is sitting on the largest proven reserves of crude oil. Shell and BP are producing faster than they are finding new resources, which threatens their share prices. For them, the gradual migration to biofuels is a matter of corporate survival, not environmental do-goodery. Their marketing departments just like to spin it that way.

From what I understand, all the oil companies pump more than they find to an average of 1 barrel found as proven reserves for ever 2 barrels pumped. Those are very round numbers, but they illustrate the problem.