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10mo ago

Exxon-Mobil CEO flips from "it's too soon to act on climate" to "it's too late" as a means of discouraging decarbonization

fortune.com Exxon Mobil CEO on the 'dirty secret' of Net Zero: 'People who are generating the emissions need to be aware ... and pay the price'

"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

Archived copies of the article: ghostarchive.org web.archive.org archive.today

News @lemmy.world

Exxon Mobil CEO on the 'dirty secret' of Net Zero: 'People who are generating the emissions need to be aware ... and pay the price'

fortune.com /2024/02/27/exxon-ceo-darren-woods-interview-pay-the-price-for-net-zero/

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News @lemmy.world

Exxon Mobil CEO on the 'dirty secret' of Net Zero: 'People who are generating the emissions need to be aware ... and pay the price'

fortune.com /2024/02/27/exxon-ceo-darren-woods-interview-pay-the-price-for-net-zero/

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The Climate Crisis @lemmy.ml

Exxon Mobil CEO on the 'dirty secret' of Net Zero: 'People who are generating the emissions need to be aware ... and pay the price'

fortune.com /2024/02/27/exxon-ceo-darren-woods-interview-pay-the-price-for-net-zero/

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90 comments

If its too late then it's time for retaliation against those who put us in this mess in the first place.
This guy belongs in jail.
- My first thought was this Onion article.
  https://www.theonion.com/last-ditch-climate-change-report-provides-locations-of-1835244382
- The guy belongs drawn and quartered
  
  Nah, I think he'll have lots of fun in a 2x2 jail cell with unhealthy doses of CO2 and CO for the rest of his life.

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.
- 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.

We've already blown a tire, so we might as well slash the other four, right? 🙄
- Getting the spare as well just to be certain?
  
  Lol you caught that. I no count so good.
- We've...
  ...said the Exon exec after they slashed your tire.
- even the spare one?

Guess it's never too late to put these fuckers up against a wall
- ... with his opinion which is of no consequence at all.
  Edit: no Radiohead fans here?
  
  It makes it clear that a lot of the doomerism we've been seeing encouraged by oil industry PR firms is in fact coming from the top.
  
  ambition makes him look pretty ugly

What a cunt. Is it too early to waterboard him with frack juice?
- it's too late, guillotine instead
  
  Hey hey, slow down. There's a healthy middle ground. We could waterboard him whilst he's in the guillotine, then when he's begging for air we release him head first
- It's to early to waterboard him, but it's not too late to hang him

So the implication here is that we should just continue to die? Lmao these fucks.

Man if there's one person who's opinion I respect on climate change, it's definitely the CEO of Exxon-Mobil.

Seize the assets of the shareholders and stop the oil pumps.
- Not the shareholders! 😱
  /s
  
  We're all shareholders by a certain age. Do you contribute to a 401k? If so, you're a shareholder. The CEOs and corporate board members use shareholder *demands" as a convenient excuse to justify their own sociopathic insatiable need for more money they'll never spend.
- Reminds me of that saying choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it. Their incentive is to do the job just good enough and with the least amount of effort. The shareholders incentive here is make money. So we need to make Fossil fuel business illegal. The shareholders still want to make money. They'll find an alternative way to do so. OH HEY LOOK! No longer reliant on fossil fuels?
  
  shock the industry so hard the stonks guys just go elsewhere.

I know the first mother fucker I'm eating.
Seriously, this guy is looking awfully tasty.
- I'm just gonna use him to fuel the fire to cook real food tbh
- I'll polish up the guillotine!

"too early, too late, whatever as long as now is not the right time that's all I care about"

Wasn't there recently an article from TheOnion or such that said this exact thing? Wild how little fucks these monsters give about anyone but themselves.
- You might be thinking of the classic Toles cartoon
  
  Wasn't that one, but also applies. Bit sad to know there are multiple of these...
- 'Sounds like TheOnion, but the best I could find...
  Oil And Gas Lobbyists Happy To Fill In Rest Of Nation On Who Mike Johnson Is

This has been "Climate Change Denial 2.0" for years now. Realistically, it's nothing more than a neoliberal dogwhistle to signal "I'm on board for killing everyone if it's profitable".

Ha! I just saw a post from someone here on Lemmy last week saying this is what they'll do.
- There are actually books already written about how the PR folks the executives hire have been doing this for several years.

Denied, Delayed, Disinformed successfully!
CEO, "Now, board of directors, how much bonus are you paying me."

If anyone wanted a proof that environmental pessimism is only helping the oligarchs, there you fucking go

"Does anyone want to step up to pay?" No, I was thinking we could just tax the shit out of rich assholes like this empty suit and use that money.

It is never too late, don't give up. The earth without humans is generally slightly carbon negative, and there are cheap things to do that can encourage that - it will take 1000 years to undo things, but we can do it. Step 1 is becoming carbon neutral, and with wind/solar power that is easy for the majority of emitters.
- Step 1 to carbon neutrality is killing off all of these fuckers.

“Yeah, just shut the fuck up and give more money, you whining little shits. I’ve got a survival bunker to build. They aren’t cheap you know. “

To the people talking of guillotines and woodchippers, I think what you're really looking for is the Brazen Bull of Phalaris. So appropriate on so many levels.
- Or that thing with the honey and the flies

THERE WAS A MEME ABOUT THIS RECENTLY!!! THERE WAS A MEME!!
It was a few panels, but nearly said exactly the same thing as title.
it was different than the 1 image already posted here.

"ohhh, sorry, the correct answer was last Wednesday."

Ah, so we've finally hit the end point of The Slow Breakup

It certainly isn't too late for that "human" to feel the warmth of a rope around its neck.

Translation: we were not fast enough to find a way to profit from it.

It's too late for him and his family and everyone who's ever shared a table with him or has his private phone number to continue existing with the same number of limbs and sensory organs too.
- I like your moxy

When are these murderers gonna go to jail ?

90 comments