Exxon Mobil's response to climate change is consummate arrogance

[G_j]

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/apr/03/exxon-mobil-climate-change-oil-gas-fossil-fuels

As scientists laid bare the impacts of climate change, the oil and gas giant said climate policies are highly unlikely to stop it digging up fossil fuels. So what are we going to do about it?


Bill McKibben
Thursday 3 April 2014 07.13 EDT

<snip>

But Monday also saw the release of another document somewhat less expected, and probably at least as important in the ongoing battle over the future of the atmosphere and hence all of us who live in its narrow envelope.

Here’s the backstory. For 18 months now some of us have been campaigning for colleges, churches, cities and the like to sell their shares in fossil fuel companies, on the grounds that their business plans call for burning far more carbon than scientists believe the planet can safely handle.

<snip>

Profound thanks are due, then, to those shareholder activists who urged “constructive engagement” with the oil, gas and coal barons.

Because those organisations, groups like As You Sow, CERES, and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, managed in very short order to get Exxon Mobil, the leader of the fossil fuel industry, to show its cards. In fact, in a truly historic moment, Exxon Mobil turned over the whole deck — and to its credit it showed it has nothing up its sleeve, no tricky rhetoric or sleight of hand. Just endless amounts of oil and gas.

[countryjake]

1. It's as if they're saying, "Try & stop us... neener neener neener!"

It's funny how ExxonMobil explains with such a straight-face in their reports about all of that "social upheaval" that they claim would result if anyone tried to curtail the use of fossil fuels, globally. As if the climate-change this planet is undergoing won't soon result in even worse "social upheaval".

I used to have stock in Exxon, dumped it during the seventies.