https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/exxonmobil-ceo-blames-public-for-climate Despite being published on Common Dreams it’s not under a CC licence so it’s only an excerpt.
We simply “waited too long,” said ExxonMobil’s top executive last week. But never mind, the important thing is that we made “above-average returns.”
…
[L]ast week the CEO of Exxon gave an interview that amounts to an attempt to pawn off the climate crisis on everyone else, and also to map out the road he sees ahead—a road that involves wasting huge amounts of money subsidizing the fossil fuel industry. Darren Woods was talking to Fortune magazine reporter Michal Lev-Ram and editor Alan Murray, who began by explaining that Exxon was a group of charming “Texas tough boys” before teeing up one of the classic softball questions of all time. Some people, he said, were thinking that perhaps Exxon wasn’t entirely “serious about addressing climate change. Tell me why they’re wrong.”
Well, Woods explains, Exxon is a molecule company, by which he means it’s interested in transforming molecules—’and they happen to be hydrogen and carbon molecules’—to ‘address the needs of our society.’ What he’s saying, quite explicitly, is that Exxon is not an electron company, i.e. a company interested in building out wind or solar power. And when Fortune asks him why not, he lets slip the basic truth of our moment: “we don’t see the ability to generate above-average returns for our shareholders.”
For everyone who’s ever asked themselves, why isn’t Exxon (and Chevron and the rest) leading the charge to renewable energy, there’s the answer: you can make money doing it, but not as much as they’ve made traditionally. That’s because the sun and the wind deliver the energy for free, and all you need is some equipment to turn it into electrons. But Exxon controls the molecules—that’s what oil and gas reserves are. And that control means they can make outsize profits—as long as they can persuade the world to keep burning stuff.
And it’s the story of that persuasion where Woods’ words go from galling to really really gross. Because he explains to his nodding interlocutors that the world “waited too long” to start developing renewables. Or, in his particular brand of corporate speak: “we’ve waited too long to open the aperture on the solution sets terms of what we need as a society.”
…
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/exxonmobil-ceo-blames-public-for-climate
- ‘Bombshell’ Secret Footage Of ExxonMobil Lobbyists Sparks Calls For Action By Congress ›
- ‘This Is Robbery’: Chevron Profits Quadruple And Exxon’s Double Amid Ukraine Crisis ›
- ExxonMobil CEO Blames Climate Crisis On The Public, Stirring … ›
- Fury After Exxon Chief Says Public To Blame For Climate Failures … ›
- Exxon CEO Blames Public For Failure To Fix Climate Change | The Hill ›