Exxon-Mobil CEO flips from "it's too soon to act on climate" to "it's too late" as a means of discouraging decarbonization
Exxon-Mobil CEO flips from "it's too soon to act on climate" to "it's too late" as a means of discouraging decarbonization
"The dirty secret nobody talks about is how much all this is going to cost and who's willing to pay for it," Darren Woods said on Fortune’s Leadership Next podcast.
“we’ve waited too long to open the aperture on the solution sets in terms of what we need, as a society, to start reducing emissions,” Woods told Fortune
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Far be it from me to tell a Lemmy mob not to eat an oil exec, but wow that's not even close to what the article says.
“So we’ve got to find a way to get the cost down to grow the utility of the solution, and make it more available and more affordable so that you can begin the [clean energy] transition.”
As per the article, this exec is saying the exact opposite of "it's too late to transition to clean energy so we might as well not bother." He's saying "it's taking too long because it's too expensive, so we need to focus on making it cheaper so we can get there faster."
Is he lying about wanting to hasten the transition to clean energy? Maybe.
Are there other reasons that he is a fiend that must be eaten by the working class? Likely. Article hints at some of them.
But wow this take is off base. These guys do a good enough job making themselves look bad, we don't have to also make stuff up.
I appreciate you doing the work to add more context for folks who didn't read the article (myself included 😅)
Lol, thanks. Sometimes I'm the one skimming the comments and skipping the article, so I'm glad I cold be helpful this time. I was expecting to get downvoted to hell based on the rest of the comments, but I'm happy to see that the response has been mostly positive.
I mean he also blames the people using electricity and says they need to pay more to cover the carbon offset costs which sounds a lot like he's looking for an excuse to raise prices and push governmental fees on consumers more directly in this same speech.
I read through the article and think him saying it's too late is like the barely visible take when he's flashing a neon sign of "I'm not cutting down production and you fuckers are gonna pay for it!" And blaming governments for not wanting to pay for company infrastructure changes is hilarious when they lobby to make it so there is no more government insight anywhere else but covering the costs they don't want to pay.
He's definitely on the list but yeah title and thing OP tried to pull from this is so not the worst part of it.
Yeah, exactly-- There's plenty of oil exec bullshit right there in the article, but I was surprised to learn that he was actually talking about clean energy as an important thing to hurry toward, and investing large sums in carbon capture and stuff. A far cry from cartoonish climate denialism and trying to stop decarbonization.
I saw another post on the same article that had a title like "oil exec tells the public that it's their responsibility to foot the bill for clean energy..." And while I think that's lacking a little nuance, it's at least one area (of several!) that represents an actual claim that deserves criticism.
He’s saying “it’s taking too long because it’s too expensive, so we need to focus on making it cheaper so we can get there faster.”
Which is a lie and a bogus statement. They want it to be cheaper so they can get more profits, as usual.
Is it? Solar, for example, is getting cheaper, and as it gets cheaper, more people adopt it, which broadens its impact. Electric cars were prohibitively expensive until companies put R&D money into building cars that people could afford, and now they're starting to gain traction.
Not to say that companies producing solar cells and EVs aren't also trying to profit... But both things can be true.
The fact electric cars exist to begin with is an abomination. Cars don't need to exist at all.
Electric bikes and busses then. Same story.
It's taking too long because the fossil fuel industry is heavily subsidized creating the appearance of a stronger cost advantage for fossil fuels than actually exists, which is the kind of bullshit Exxon-Mobil CEO is responsible for.
This kinda lines up with propaganda I've been seeing the past couple years (from the likes of Peter Theil and Alex Epstein). They argue that we should be extracting and using fossil fuels as fast as possible. The (stupid, fucked up, wishful thinking) idea is that cheap energy drives human development and technological solutions to climate change.
Yeah... And I mean, that's correct in a sense-- Cheap energy is good. It's just not the only factor.
Like cheap food is great too, but you might end up in a bad place if your nutrition strategy is just "spend as little as possible."
"So we’ve got to find a way to get the cost down to grow the utility of the solution"
As if they don't have a significant sum of all the worlds money. If its too expensive they should be eating all the cost, since they are the ones that put us in this mess, knowingly. They shouldn't be complaining that it costs too much. Maybe instead of wasting all that money lobbying against climate science, they could have put all that money into decarb and renewables. We are lightyears behind where we could be and why? Because they lied about what they knew and had to keep lying about it and maintaining the narrative that there is no problem. Can't get anybody to believe that anymore so now they say they need more time and money and its just too hard guys. No excuses for these vampires.
You really don't need to play devil's advocate for billionaire oil ceos.
Is it playing devil's advocate to say that criticism should at least be true?
Lick that corporate boot, I'm sure it'll save you from the coming food riots.
How many statements out of the mouths of oil execs have been 'true' in the last 50 years, hm?
If they can weaponize dishonesty and factor in the asymmetrical nature of bullshit vs truth (it takes little effort to say bullshit, it takes massive effort to correct bullshit), then every time we take the high road, all we are doing is making our fight harder on ourselves.
And we don't have the people or resources that billionaire CEOs do.
You really don't need to defend billionaires, unless you enjoy being a class traitor.
Awh I've never been called a class traitor or a corporate boot licker before 😂 good to know that we're willing to throw the truth under the bus, I always thought that being better than our enemies was the way but I see now that petty things like the truth are the real enemy. Thank you for opening my eyes.
Pay no attention to that troll, friend. I'm all for makeing CEOs/billionaires accountable. But what you did was good, and you don't need to explain yourself to a troll.
Being better than our enemies is what got us into this world economic catastrophe to begin with.
Look up the asymmetry of bullshit, it is literally a losing tactic to waste energy.
The rancid opposition makes a single soundbite sentence that riles the base, we spend 2 days carefully detailing why that single soundbite is wrong and harmful to the discourse, and by that time they've made seven new soundbites to debunk.
THEY know this, THEY WEAPONIZE THIS. So its time we stop pretending humans are rational, thoughtful beings and accept the fact that unless we want the same decades of failure for the future, we need to radically change our tactics.
Fuck CEOs, billionaires shouldn't exist and I don't care what needs to be said or done to make this happen.
Just shut the fuck up. That's not even the point. OP was simply clarifying what the article said, without outside editorializing.
I am in favor of making CEOs accountable, but all you're doing is staining the cause with an irrelevant conversation. Wait... is that your goal? Are you a fucking Russian disinformation agent or something?
Go back to reddit.
You shut the fuck up and while you're at it shut your whore mother the fuck up too because I am tired of her booty calling me at 2am.
BILLIONAIRES SHOULD NOT EXIST.
Well you're doing a fantastic job of making yourself look stupid, I don't know if it will help whichever side you actually favor but top marks anyway.
Hahahaha, go back to reddit, troll.
Go back to Truth social redhat
What the fuck, what kind of bullshit is this? This is not how a sane discourse works. This is the worst case of ad-hominem/strawman I've seen in a while.
"Yes, OP, you're right that the CEO didn't say that. But do we need the truth prevailing here? He's a CEO!!!! Why are you defending him?!"
What a load of bullshit.
Fuck CEOs, Fuck Billionaires, I wouldn't piss on one to put out a fire.
I'm done playing fair, I'm done spending 3 hours making well-cited thoughtful responses just to have it make no difference other than inviting 20 other bored internet randos to show off their wikipedia degree for attention.
I definitely just ignore or block "durr prove it" types.
Nah I'm not going to waste my time and energy compiling sources and whatnot just for some asshole to go "nuh uh fake news LuLuLuLuLuLz"
You don't do that for the poster. You do that for other readers.
When someone makes a completely stupid comment, like "Drink bleach to kill viruses," I won't go and reply "no you wrong!" I'll reply "For anyone reading, that's a dangerous advice and here's why [citations]." I don't care if the poster then replies with "nuh uh, fake nooz."
(I didn't downvote you, by the way.)