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Ichingcarpenter

(36,988 posts)
Mon Mar 2, 2015, 02:48 PM Mar 2015

Buffett Profiled in Rolling Stone Magazine

Buffett Profiled in Rolling Stone Magazine

In the January 2010 edition of Rolling Stone Magazine, journalist Tim Dickinson profiled the top 17 United States "polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming". Below is an excerpt from the article titled "Climate Killers" about Warren Buffett.[13]

Despite being a key adviser to Obama during the financial crisis, America's best-known investor has been blasting the president's push to curb global warming — using the same lying points promoted by far-right Republicans. The climate bill passed by the House, Buffett insists, is a "huge tax — and there's no sense calling it anything else." What's more, he says, the measure would mean "very poor people are going to pay a lot more money for their electricity." Never mind that the climate bill, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, would actually save Americans with the lowest incomes about $40 a year.


But Buffett, whose investments have the power to move entire markets, is doing far more than bad-mouthing climate legislation — he's literally banking on its failure. In recent months, the Oracle of Omaha has invested billions in carbon-polluting industries, seeking to cash in as the world burns. His conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, has added 1.28 million shares of America's biggest climate polluter, ExxonMobil, to its balance sheet. And in November, Berkshire placed a huge wager on the future of coal pollution, purchasing the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad for $26 billion — the largest acquisition of Buffett's storied career. BNSF is the nation's top hauler of coal, shipping some 300 million tons a year. That's enough to light up 10 percent of the nation's homes — many of which are powered by another Berkshire subsidiary, MidAmerican Energy. Although Berkshire is the largest U.S. firm not to disclose its carbon pollution — and second globally only to the Bank of China — its utilities have the worst emissions intensity in America, belching more than 65 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in 2008 alone.


As a savvy investor, Buffett would only buy a coal-shipping railroad if he felt certain that Congress will fail to crack down on climate pollution. "Whatever hurts coal also hurts the railroad business," observes Peter Gray, a corporate climate attorney at the international law firm of McKenna Long & Aldridge. "Mr. Buffett must believe that efforts to adopt cap-and-trade legislation will fail."


That's a strange position for the billionaire to take, given that he's promised to donate more than 80 percent of his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "As someone who is giving so much money to international development, Buffett ought to know better," says Joe Romm, who served as an assistant energy secretary under Bill Clinton. "He ought to have spent a great deal of time considering the greatest threats to developing countries — which would have quickly educated him about climate change."[13]


Death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution from MidAmerican Energy coal plants

In 2010, Abt Associates issued a study commissioned by the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization, quantifying the deaths and other health effects attributable to fine particle pollution from coal-fired power plants.[14] Fine particle pollution consists of a complex mixture of soot, heavy metals, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides. Among these particles, the most dangerous are those less than 2.5 microns in diameter, which are so tiny that they can evade the lung's natural defenses, enter the bloodstream, and be transported to vital organs. Impacts are especially severe among the elderly, children, and those with respiratory disease. The study found that over 13,000 deaths and tens of thousands of cases of chronic bronchitis, acute bronchitis, asthma, congestive heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, dysrhythmia, ischemic heart disease, chronic lung disease, and pneumonia each year are attributable to fine particle pollution from U.S. coal plant emissions. These deaths and illnesses are major examples of coal's external costs, i.e. uncompensated harms inflicted upon the public at large. Low-income and minority populations are disproportionately impacted as well, due to the tendency of companies to avoid locating power plants upwind of affluent communities. To monetize the health impact of fine particle pollution from each coal plant, Abt assigned a value of $7,300,000 to each 2010 mortality, based on a range of government and private studies. Valuations of illnesses ranged from $52 for an asthma episode to $440,000 for a case of chronic bronchitis.[15]

Table 1: Death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution from MidAmerican Energy coal plants
Type of Impact Annual Incidence Valuation
Deaths 234 $1.7 billion
Heart attacks 362 $39.6 million
Asthma attacks 4,305 $0.22 million
Chronic bronchitis 152 $67.5 million
Asthma ER visits 229 $.08 million
Hospital admissions 167 $3.9 million
Source: "Health Impacts - annual - of Existing Plants," Clean Air Task Force Excel worksheet, available under "Data Annex" at "Death and Disease from Power Plants," Clean Air Task Force.


Note: This data includes the following plants owned by MidAmerican Energy and subsidiary PacifiCorp: Council Bluffs Energy Center, Laramie River Station, Louisa Generating Station, Riverside Generating Station (Iowa), Ottumwa Generating Station, Dave Johnston, Jim Bridger, Carbon, Hunter, Huntington, Naughton, and Wyodak.


http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Warren_Buffett

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics

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Buffett Profiled in Rolling Stone Magazine (Original Post) Ichingcarpenter Mar 2015 OP
Recognize sociopathic greed as the mental disease it truly is Dems to Win Mar 2015 #1
 

Dems to Win

(2,161 posts)
1. Recognize sociopathic greed as the mental disease it truly is
Mon Mar 2, 2015, 04:48 PM
Mar 2015

Buffet should be in a mental hospital alongside the Kochs. No mentally healthy person would be greedily scouring the earth for more money when they already have more than they could spend in 1000 lifetimes. Just like the rest of us, they only get one lifetime -- so their behavior is clearly a psychosis. Time to start treating it as such.

And save the planet and the human race in the bargain.

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