RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, this next story indicates… It’s bad news to me. I’m serious. It’s surrender. You know me. I am one of the biggest fans of Big Oil. I admire what they do. I resent that they are a target to the American left. I resent that they are accused falsely of price fixing, gouging, and all of these things. It infuriates me. I’ve noticed the price of oil has come down, and so has the price of gasoline, and so therefore there’s no talk about any conspiracy now, is there? And we don’t hear the people who are being hurt by falling prices whining and moaning, do we? We only hear the whining and moaning when the price of oil and gasoline goes up, but the price of gasoline was at four bucks. It’s now a buck and a half, depending on where you live, or $1.60. And nobody’s complaining. There are people who are suffering because of this, like Hugo Chavez.
Oh, by the way, Hugo Chavez, somebody must have talked to him, because he’s reinitiated the free home heating oil plan for Joe Kennedy in Massachusetts. They pulled it outta there, and we sorta had some fun with this because I mean, how bad is it — how bad must your charity be — when Hugo Chavez pulls away supply, your charity is out of business? When a South American dictator pulls his oil outta your program, your charity goes to bed? Anyway, he’s reinitiated it. So I have a great appreciation for people in Big Oil. But now the chief executive of ExxonMobil, a man by the name of Rex Tillerson, ‘has called on Congress to enact a tax on carbon emissions, greenhouse gas emissions to fight global warming. In a speech in a speed from Washington, Rex Tillerson…’
And another reason I love these Big Oil CEOs is they have perfect names for Big Oil CEOs: REX Tillerson. It is a great name. I loved his predecessor. He was a big guy, jowly guy. I wish I could remember his name. This is the guy that got the $489 million golden parachute that everybody hated, but Drudge had a picture of this guy laughing over that headline about his $489 million parachute — while the price of gasoline was rising, by the way. It just infuriated everybody. I can’t remember the guy’s name, but he had a great CEO name, too, for Big Oil. So Rex Tillerson said that a carbon tax, a greenhouse gas emissions tax, was a, quote, ‘more direct, more transparent, more effective approach to curtailing greenhouse gases than other plans popular in Congress and with the incoming Obama administration.’
Now, I know what’s going on here, but this still represents surrender. With Rex Tillerson, the Exxon CEO, endorsing a carbon tax, the bus that I spoke about yesterday that is going to go over the cliff and I don’t want to be on? The bus may have already gone over the cliff, because this capitulation by Rex Tillerson, the CEO of ExxonMobil, would indicate — does indicate — to me that our public servants have the keys to the house and that we are living in the servants’ quarters. This should be interpreted by shareholders and Exxon’s board of directors as a resignation letter. Here’s why there are problems with Rex Tillerson’s endorsement of a carbon tax: manmade global warming is a hoax.
I got a note today from our official climatologist, Dr. Roy Spencer. He sent me something from his blog. The place in Siberia where it always gets coldest, has hit minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit twice last month. It had only done that one time in the last 25 years. Arctic sea ice, same amount, same thickness as in 1979. Snow in Chicago again. There is an Arctic air mass that caused temperatures of minus-50 in Alaska, that is going to descend over the Midwest and the East next week that will make the high temperature in New York perhaps minus five, and we are in the midst of global warming? Oh, oh, and there’s another thing. I forgot to mention this. How many of you saw the movie, the global warming movie The Day After Tomorrow. The Day After Tomorrow had, all of a sudden and out of the blue, temperatures went from 75 degrees to minus 150 degrees (snaps fingers) in an instant.
Everything was just killed in an instant. The theory behind that happening was that scientists have told us that the conveyor belt of the Gulf Stream had ceased. Now, what it is, is in Europe, London, England, their temperatures year round are pretty moderate because there is a conveyor belt of ocean current from the Gulf Stream down here in south Florida that goes all the way across the Atlantic in a southwest-to-northeast track, and what it does is, it causes very cold water to sink and be replaced with warm water from the Gulf Stream. This warm water creates certain atmospheric conditions with winds and so forth that keep Europe, Western Europe, Europe, England pretty moderate in temperature. Now, scientists had told us the conveyor belt stopped about two years ago, or maybe even longer, and that premise (that conveyor belt, if you will) is how you envision the flow, the circulation of water.
The currents, as a conveyor belt from south Florida all and even further than that, all the way up to England, had stopped, and that’s what caused this massive overnight sudden freeze. Well, guess what? Scientists have discovered that last month the conveyor belt started up. Now they’re thinking they have to reexamine 25 years of models and science, because the conveyor belt has started again, and the reason they’re surprised by this is because London has had unseasonalably cold weather because the conveyor belt had stopped but now it’s kicked up again, and nobody did anything to jump start it. So now think, ‘Well, maybe this conveyor belt is cyclical.’ Like every other scientist in this field of global warming (it’s a hoax!) they study it within the confines of their own lifetimes, and they try to draw, from the beginning of time, historical data within the context of an average human life, which is impossible.
But they have a political agenda behind global warming, and it is: more government, more spending, less freedom, higher taxes, so forth and so on. So global warming is a hoax, yet here comes Rex Tillerson endorsing a carbon tax. The earth, as I have just explained, is cooling. It has been cooling since 1997. It has not warmed. Carbon taxes will further drive the economy into the abyss, because where do you think they’ll put the carbon tax first? On gasoline! Remember, Obama was not unhappy with a four-dollar-a-gallon price; he was just unhappy with how quickly it got there. Imagine four dollars a gallon in this economy, on top of everything else, with a carbon tax. Now, here’s why. Rex Tillerson, I think, is throwing in the towel because he’s looking around the world and he sees that leftists have taken over institutions.
What he sees is that a carbon tax on you, is far less damaging to him than a cap-and-trade program (that Obama wants) is on him. A cap-and-trade program on businesses, meaning emissions will be governed and arbitrarily set by government, and if you exceed those emissions, you have to pay a fine or you have to trade with a company that’s not getting close to what it’s allowed to emit and so forth. All of this under the false premise of reducing emissions that cause manmade global warming, which is a hoax! Cap-and-trade programs are miserable failures wherever they have been tried. They are hoaxes that benefit the likes of the designers, Algore and others. So Rex Tillerson, as a CEO, is doing due diligence here, and for his shareholders is making the right call.
He has concluded that governments around the world are going to raise taxes on somebody, on something having to do with energy, and he’s absolutely right. And he says that the lesser of two evils is a carbon tax on carbon dioxide emissions rather than cap-and-trade. But it still, to me, represents a surrender. Why won’t somebody stand up — especially now, with abundant evidence — and point fingers at all these people and say, ‘You’re lying to us! It is a pure agenda-oriented hoax. We’re not going for it. We’re not going to raise taxes. We’re not going to participate!’ Well, Obama and Harry Reid this week both have said global warming is real and we must do something about it, and they couldn’t care less whether it’s real or not. All they care about is the opportunity it presents to raise taxes. (sigh) So, it’s a surrender out there, ladies and gentlemen. However, I want you to know that here at the EIB Network, there is and will not ever be surrender.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Oh, yeah, that previous Exxon CEO that I love is Lee Raymond. Drudge had the best picture of this guy. I think he was on Capitol Hill just laughing big time and his mouth was wide open, very jowly guy, the jowls over the knot in his tie, his big, long, narrow face, a huge guy, laughing over the headline of his $489 million golden parachute while the price of gas is going up. I just thought it was great.