But to climate advocates, the whole episode confirmed what they had long asserted: Oil companies are the culprit behind the climate crisis, preventing climate action through nefarious intervention in the policymaking process. An Exxon spokesperson has refuted the lobbyist’s claims. In that episode, Greenpeace operatives secretly recorded conversations with a lobbyist for ExxonMobil, in which he described the corporation’s strategies for opposing climate mitigation policies. Consider the sting operation conducted by Greenpeace in 2021. A single person’s gasoline consumption is trivial compared to the volumes of petroleum processed by a single large oil company (hence headlines like “ Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions”).Īnd there is plenty of “evidence” against this story’s villain for those who want to look for it. Further, “Big Oil” is a way to sidestep the question of responsibility among the coalition’s own constituents. For one, corporations are already the default suspect for a left-wing coalition that elsewhere indicts Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Tobacco, and on and on-conglomerates that, in anti-capitalist theory, are definitionally corrupt concentrations of wealth and power. “Big Oil” is a convenient villain, especially for climate progressives. It misidentifies the cause of one of the central problems facing humanity and misdirects those seeking solutions towards a tempting, but ultimately counterproductive, target. The narrative at the heart of these projects is so ubiquitous as to seem compelling. Beyond Exxon Knew and extensive reporting by Inside Climate News, there is Bill McKibben’s column at The New Yorker, the DeSmogBlog, Emily Atkin’s weekly newsletter HEATED, Benjamin Franta’s fossil industry historiographies, the extended works of historians Naomi Oreskes and Geoffrey Supran, and much, much more. The anti-corporate framing device is everywhere, including in coordinated public awareness campaigns, philanthropically supported lawsuits, and a veritable explosion of muckraking climate journalism and scholarship in recent years. Confronting, punishing, and shutting corporations down is the essential work of climate action. Perhaps more than any other slogan or program, it captures the core political and tactical view of Western progressive environmentalists: Climate change is a problem caused by a particular villain-rapacious and conspiratorial corporations. So reads the opening salvo of the “ Exxon Knew” campaign-a project coordinated by a coalition of major environmental groups including 350.org, Greenpeace, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. They deceived the public, misled shareholders, and robbed humanity of a generation’s worth of time to reverse climate change.”įrom the " Ten Words You Can't Say About Climate Change" Issue “Exxon knew about climate change half a century ago.
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