Written by Dave Loos, Samantha Hulkower, Rob Howard
Monday, 30 June 2008
CNN's ancient venerable host Larry King will interview Chevron Chairman and CEO David O'Reilly during this evening's edition of Larry King Live. The topic is "How High Will Gas Prices Go?" This strikes us at a fairly heavy topic for a man who knows only one sport when it comes to interviews: softball.
Given that Larry isn't exactly famous for doing his homework on guests or asking anything resembling a probing question, we couldn't resist making some predictions about what "questions" are in store for tonight's guest.
"Gas prices ... they're really high .... [dead air, O'Reilly waits for a question] ... how high will they go?"
"Are we running out of oil?"
"Why is gas so expensive" [As Samantha Hulkower notes, Larry has a tendency to just repeat the last word of the person he's interviewing.]
"So it's not your fault."
"What about that ethanol? Good? Bad?"
"Hybrid cars .... [more dead air, Larry hopes O'Reilly jumps in to save him here.] ... Wouldn't it save us lots of gas if everyone drove them."
"Global warming ... is the jury still out on this thing?"
"Venezuela. Important. Hugo Chavez. Kind of crazy. How do you address a situation like that?"
"Offshore drilling ... tell us why it's a good thing."
What's this I hear about Chevron and oil sands up in Canada? Sounds crazy. Tell me about it."
[Follow up to last question] "Kind of like squeezing juice out of an orange. Amazing!"
"What do you think about that Windfall Tax?"
[Follow up question] "Okay."
"What's this I hear about Chevron workers in Nigeria going on strike over safety standards and unfair staffing?" [Note: We don't really expect King to ask this, but if he does, if you don't think Larry is accepting O'Reilly's spin with little more than a nod, then ... well, you just don't know Larry.]
We'll check back in tomorrow morning with a transcript to see how we did.
Yeah, OK, we can be the change that we want to see in the world. But unless powerful people in powerful positions want to be that change as well, nothing's going to change.
So now, finally, there's a place where you can go for news and analysis of politics from an environmental perspective.