Guess who made $1,252 a second, every second last year?

If you have any questions about why it will be very, very difficult for biofuel start-ups and solar car enthusiasts to compete in the oil-friendly auto industry, don't look only at the technological troubles with lithium-ion batteries or getting biodiesel from algae. Look at the cash register over at Exxon Mobil. The company has just posted 2006 profits (not revenue, which was an obscene $377.64 billion last year) of $39.5 billion. Aside from being the largest annual profit by a U.S. company, how much is that, exactly?

$39.5 billion profit in one year = $39,500,000,000.00 = $759,615,384.62/week = $108,219,178.08/day = $4,509,132.42/hour = $75,152.21/minute = $1,252.54/second.

I could do a lot with $1,200 a second. What does Exxon Mobil do with it? Paying off scientists in an effort to mislead the public on global warming and pressuring teachers not to show An Inconvenient Truth in schools. In the mean time, Exxon only spends 0.1 percent of its total annual capital investment on sustainable technologies such as renewable energy.

Other oil companies, like ConocoPhillips and Shell, also made billions last year. Phillips made $15.55 billion and Shell earned $4.37 billion (just in the last three months of the year). Again, these are profit numbers, not revenue.

And, while I know this line from the story is very likely a typo, but I kind of wonder: