Sunday’s New York Times ran a solid look at Exxon, the world’s largest corporation. Business writer Jad Mouad reports that company is dedicated to squeezing every drop of profit out of every barrel of oil it can find over the next half century.
Mouad says:
During the tenure of Lee R. Raymond, who ran the company from 1993 to 2005, Exxon became the lightning rod in the debate about climate change. Throughout the 1990s, the company was vilified by environmental groups and scientists for questioning the impact of human activities — especially the use of fossil fuels — on global warming.
In fact, according the Union of Concerned Scientists, Exxon spent about $16 million on a misinformation campaign meant to delay carbon-mitigation measures (NREL’s Chuck Kutscher discusses the UCS report in the upcoming January/February issue of SOLAR TODAY). Now, Mouad says,
Gingerly, over the last three years, Exxon has moved away from its extreme position. It stopped financing climate skeptics this year, and has sought to soften its image with a $100 million advertising campaign featuring real company executives, scientists and managers. One of the ads said the company aimed to provide energy “with dramatically lower CO2 emissions.”
That’s a smokescreen. The current chairman, Rex Tillerson, is even more rigidly devoted to fossil fuel strategies. Unlike some of its competitors, Exxon has made no moves to diversify into non-fossil energy sources. Last summer, Tillerson beat back an attempt by rebellious shareholders — including members of the founding Rockefeller family — to take a broader view of the company’s future.
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I agree that Exxon-Mobil lies and produces smoke screens. I thought it was interesting that recently the original Rockefeller shareholders and others at the last Exxon shareholder meeting tried to turn away from oily oil towards being an energy company, but were voted down.
Do you still wonder, if anyone, no less the new administration, will address “why did the US invade and occupy Iraq?” We knew 6 years ago it was all about controlling oil. With a President Bush & VP Cheney from the oil industry, what would one expect? They criminally used our brave U.S. soldiers and borrowed $3 trillion according to some estimates of our children’s future security for oil corporation security. Now Iraq gives ‘no bid contracts’ on their huge oil reserves, I understand. Perhaps did Oliver Stone get it correct in his Bush/Cheney movie “W.”? I certainly hope they will receive some justice.
Every night Americans, who watch the 3 major evening broadcast TV news, are nightly bombarded by oil industry commercials. They are intended to sooth us to ignore the fossil part of fossil fuels and the possibility of our current status at ‘peak oil’. The oil industry pays millions now in advertisements that suggest we have 60 more years of this fossil left. The calculation probably draws on oil shale and sands, which are too terrible to imagine exploiting, then paying the catastrophic price of additional global warming consequences for using. At what further cost to America and our climate? The age of oil, as postcarbon.org describes it, is on the downturn and with it an economy and food manufacturing system based upon it. We see climate disruption even on our small farm.
Thanks for giving hope Solar Today!
Sincerely,
Hal the small farmer
Comment by Hal Bauer November 18, 2008 @ 11:08 pmEffective Dec. 9, 2008, the SOLAR TODAY blog has moved to http://solartoday.org/blog
Comment by Seth Masia December 9, 2008 @ 9:36 pm