rjzimmerman:

The most epic (and literal) gaslighting of all time. (Bill McKibben, Substack)

I’m listening to John Coltrane through my headphones as I type, in an effort to stay calm enough that I don’t just start sputtering. You might want to do likewise as you read. 

Because last 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.”

To keep those returns coming, Exxon—working mostly through Senator Joe Manchin (D-Pollution)—larded the Inflation Reduction Act, which was supposed to be about electrons, with as many gifts as possible for molecules.  That’s what the taxpayer money for carbon capture and other such schemes is all about: a way to keep burning stuff, at a moment when it would be cheaper to just let the sun burn. Remember: Exxon has trillions of dollars in oil and gas reserves. We no longer need it, but they need it—and they can game our political system to keep us using it.

The thing that “brought me to this company is integrity,” Woods said. “Not just being honest and ethical, but being intellectually honest and saying the hard things.” 

Thank God for John Coltrane. Our job is to stay calm enough to keep taking on these gentlemen with all we’ve got, till their political power is broken and we have a fighting chance.