Criminal Methods

The foremost principle of action for the lobby for raw material supplies and fossil energy sources is the maximization of their own profits. If the people responsible lack ethical integrity, then inevitably they will also use criminal methods in order to secure the supposedly economically advantageous position of their lobby.

The scientific facts regarding the causes of climate change and the limits of growth cannot be silently eliminated. However, through the targeted use of mass media (the publication of half-truths) across broad population classes, massive doubts can be sowed as a counterweight to the known facts. The cigarette industry acted in a similar fashion as the causal connection between smoking and the danger to health became known.

Lobbyists are deliberately promoted to leading key positions. Philip Cooney has held a leading position at the American Petroleum Institute. At the beginning of 2001 he was appointed to the Council on Environmental Quality. It became known in the middle of 2005 that he had falsified a newspaper article in the New York Times on climate change. After public protests, he resigned on June 14 and immediately received a leading position at Exxon^[64].

Critical scientists who could become dangerous to the lobby are deliberately intimidated. The German physicist pair Inge and Nikolaus Laing introduced a practical solar energy concept at the Solar Energy Conference in Hamburg^[65]. Thereafter, they were massively threatened by the energy lobby. They had to flee Germany and have realized pilot plants in California in the meantime.

A collector area in the Sahara of 9000 km² would be enough to durably secure the energy requirements of all of Europe. The dependencies associated with this, however, would speak against such a form of energy supply.