En October 2018, Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil, made a thunderous announcement: Exxon would spend $ 1 million lobbying for a US carbon tax. Much ink has flowed to explain this decision. Exxon would like to break with its climate-skeptic past and influence the lawsuits brought against it by various American cities; the carbon tax would postpone the ban on internal combustion engines; better still: set at 40 dollars per tonne, it would exclude coal from electricity production, correspondingly increasing the natural gas market in which Exxon is a major player …
The discussion was there when Keith McCoy, Exxon’s Washington lobbyist, recently gave a puzzling simplicity explanation. Recorded without his knowledge by Greenpeace during a video call made public on June 30, he explains that Exxon defends the carbon tax… because it will never exist! It is only a subject of controversy, interesting but futile. Too unpopular, it will never be accepted, neither by the Americans, nor by their representatives. Defending it makes it possible to pass for environmentalist and to occupy the ground: the proposal provides a hobby to economists, environmentalists, politicians. And during this time Exxon can pump quietly.
A fallacious story of energy
This admission must be taken seriously because Exxon has always been at the forefront of delaying tactics in the face of climate change. Take for example the idea of “energy transition”. In October 1982, Edward David, director of research and development at Exxon, gave a major speech to American climatologists. He is not yet a climate skeptic: the danger exists, it could even become serious in the 21st century.e century. But the interesting question is: which phenomenon will happen first? The climate catastrophe or the ” energetic transition ” ? This is its key theme: the energy mix changes as definitely as the climate.
” Everyone knows “, then affirmed the Exxon executive, “That we have entered into an energy transition”, slow but inexorable process. And he bases this assertion on history: the United States, in the XIXe and XXe centuries, would have known two energy transitions: one from wood to charcoal, the second from charcoal to petroleum. The third transition, the one underway, will rid the world of fossils and install “A mix of renewable resources that will not pose a CO problem2 “. Science, capitalism and innovation have produced transitions in the past: above all, let’s not hinder them.
You have 34.31% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.