27 Feb Digest 2/26: Social Psych, Oil Prices, Oil Profits, New Jobs, Obama Making History

Since starting my own blog in October, I've been writing as often as possible on economy, environment, climate, and culture. So rather than post a blog every couple of days to the AEN, Brandi & I decided it makes more sense to post a digest each week. I'll throw in a tweet of the week too and tie these posts into Austin wherever possible. Here's the first installment. Hope you enjoy!

Social Psych
"Liberals misunderstand Conservatives more than the other way around." Jonathan Haidt's 18 minute TED talk, "The Moral Roots of Liberals and Conservatives" has over 1,000,000 views. His upcoming book will almost certainly be one of the most influential of 2012. Haidt got my attention in a recent Bill Moyers segment, "Explaining Our Contentious Culture" with a plethora of insight. Read my brief here.

Rising Oil Prices
Last week Bloomberg's BusinessWeek said, "Rising Gas Prices: Not Demand Driven." Two weeks ago, the Council on Foreign Relations said the USA is exporting more oil than its importing for the first time in recent memory. Stanford, Rice, The University of Massachusetts, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission each blame 2008's oil price spike on market speculators. What if today's gasoline pricing isn't directly related to supply and demand? Read my brief here.

Rising Oil Profits
Houston's ConocoPhillips spent over $16 Million lobbying Congress in 2011 and earned a total of $12.4 Billion in profit. According to the Financial Times, Conoco was the 45th wealthiest private company in the world at the beginning of 2011 and the 3rd largest US Oil & Gas Producer. Read more via my brief. Meanwhile, Irving TX's ExxonMobil cleared about $5 Million an hour in profit during 2011, raking in a total of $41.1 Billion for the year. The Financial Times listed Exxon as the world's wealthiest company at the beginning of 2011. Read more in this brief.

Obama's New Budget Would Add 2.8M Jobs
But what kind of jobs are they? There is no rebuilding of our American economic infrastructure without solving environmental problems, too. Read my short blog here.

Obama's Historic Call to "End Oil Subsidies"
Obama made history when he announced it is time to "end oil subsidies" at this year's State of the Union address. See an anotation of Obama's comments, in the "enhanced" YouTube format via my brief.

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Tweet of the week:

30,000 Year Old Flower Brought Back to Life by Scientists http://t.co/UyJZjMwV

(Follow my Twitter here: https://twitter.com/#!/chrissearles)