How can big oil continue to insist that global warming isn't happening? The usual answer is (a) they're so driven by greed as to ignore long term consequences of their actions, and, anyhow (b they're solely profit driven and have no mechanisms for adjusting their marketing policies according to other criteria. Neither of these assumptions stand up well to scrutiny based upon historical evidence. A third assumption does, however.
Beginning in the early 1900s,Corporations, not large laissez faire business cartels, became the real deal in the United States. The first great conservative think tank was the National Civic Federation. It provided T. Roosevelt and his followers with the strategies that shut down the scialist labor movement and the laissez faire cartels. One such strategy was The Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Pretending to control monopolistic business growth, it persecuted the cartels but aided and abetted corporations. Corporations treated workers better, and successfully convinced citizens to reject Eugene Debs' socialist labor movement in favor of Samuel Gomper's. The result was unions willing to negotiate directly with business rather than fight for the legislation needed to force business to take them seriously, whether it wanted to or not For decades the good news for U.S. citizens was that they didn't really need to organize (at least not as Debs and the socialists viewed organizing) in order to get what they wanted. The bad news was that citizens didn't have to organize to get what they wanted.
These examples are only the briefest indications that corporations are neither lacking in vision nor narrowly focused nor unable to temper short term greed in order to achieve long term control. It is possible, of course, that Exxon, and big oil in general, are anomalies -- or mavericks among corporations. Like rogue elephants, they've simply gone nuts. Before drawing this conclusion, however, it might be well to ask if perhaps their actions actually facilitate long term goals of corporate social control.
Several things seem clear: (1) a Paradigm Shift in energy policy must occur in order for even the wealthiest, most powerful citizens on earth to continue to thrive. (2) Current Exxon policy would seem to guarantee the demise of all parties, themselves included. (3) The necessary Paradigm Shift will generate a great deal of upheaval and discomfort worldwide and locally. (4) Eventually U.S. citizens will react strongly to rising gasoline prices, steady inflation, evaporating retirement accounts, increasing job shrinkages, etc. consequences of too many people and too little energy to maintain even the current falling standard of living for the majority. (5) The sooner citizens become alarmed, the sooner they will begin to organize to demand a larger share of the energy pie (the wealthiest twenty percent presently own more than eighty percent of U.S. wealth) the more difficult they will be to deal with.
Could encouraging people to ignore global warming, to remain confident that liberals, and not business, are the problem, therefore, facilitate long term goals of corporate social control? I think so. Especially given the brilliantly successful conservative campaign to weaken the Bill of Rights, to expand FEMA's capacity to operate very competently not as an emergency relief organization but as a police force ... etc. developments that kossites are well aware of; an unorganized citizenry confronted suddenly and catastrophically with the Paradigm Shift may be fairly easy to manage, even in the United States.
Ironically, the success of Democrats in the recent election could actually facilitate such hypothetical, visionary, corporate planning if it encourages people to sigh with relief and feel less alarmed about the steady march of events thus far hardly impacted by the election.