Senator Bernie Sanders graciously invited a few Big Oil CEOs to a hearing last week on the cost of climate change, but wouldn’t you know it, they just couldn’t quite bring themselves to show up. But in ExxonKnews, Emily Sanders reported how, despite being too scared to show up and testify on the record, Big Oil’s presence was near and their voice was certainly heard in the hearing — it was just coming from Republican Senators.
Senator Lindsey Graham, channeling his 2010 discovery that climate change is real, denounced his prior denial and stuck up for the beleaguered Big Oil, saying that he “talked to the fossil fuel industry,” and he finds “them very open to change.” Oh? Really? “They just want to be able to manage that change.”
Ahh, yes, okay, well that makes sense. The same people who profit off of pollution want to manage to continue profiting off of pollution, got it. As a reminder, ExxonKnews embedded a tweet pointing out that over the last decade ExxonMobil spent four times more money on self-promotion than it did on algae research, which is just a sliver of its massive budget for exploring for and drilling in new oil fields.
Senator Mike Braun was similarly sycophantic, as he too recently talked to the industry that had declined an invitation to talk to the full committee and not just their Republican cronies: “I was with Conoco Phillips this morning” he said, “talking to their CEOs, and you can't believe how interested they are in being part of the solution.”
And of course they are! When your paycheck is the problem, you’re going to be very worried about the fact that the solution puts you out of business, and will naturally be quite interested in sabotaging that process.
That’s not hyperbole, either. The CEOs of oil companies get millions of dollars every year, especially in compensation packages that include stocks and investments in the company which is probably why those same CEOs aren’t exactly eager to change the business that’s making them obscenely wealthy.
A new peer-reviewed study published last week puts a fine point on it, comparing the millions of dollars given to executives atop the four biggest oil companies (Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron and BP) with the extent of their company’s emissions, to calculate their own personal share of their company’s annual emissions, making it clear that the industry’s embrace of “net-zero” is purely performative.
For example, while Shell CEO Ben van Beurden can be seen pulling a Ted Cruz and blaming his daughters' fashion choices for climate change à la the “discourses of delay” comic we talked about recently, those girls would have to be buying enough clothes to put Marie Antionentte to shame if they’re going to rival their father’s 18,721-tonne share of Shell’s carbon footprint in just 2018. (That’s over a thousand times greater than a typical American’s footprint, which itself is quadruple the global average of about four tons.)
So please do excuse our skepticism when Shell makes an empty gesture to look climate-friendly, like their recent threat to leave API and the Chamber of Commerce over their climate denial.
As the paper’s co-author Dario Kenner told Jonathan Watts at the Guardian, “when BP, Shell and others talk of net zero, they are trying to stay part of the decision-making process. They want to be in charge of the transition as much as possible so they can slow it down – that is the whole point of trying to convince society to trust them.”
And while most of society is probably too smart to buy it, the people the industry pays will certainly try and tell you that “you can't believe how interested they are in being part of the solution.”
This is just part of a cycle the industry goes through, feigning just enough concern to retain its social license to operate,while continuing to sabotage climate action. And you don’t even have to go far for proof. Lindsay “they just want to manage that change” Graham grabbed headlines last week for admitting that he now thinks climate change is real ... just like he did back in 2010.
