{"id":1404654,"date":"2023-12-21T06:55:03","date_gmt":"2023-12-21T06:55:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=308460"},"modified":"2023-12-21T06:55:03","modified_gmt":"2023-12-21T06:55:03","slug":"how-big-oil-is-taking-us-for-a-fossil-fuelized-ride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/12\/21\/how-big-oil-is-taking-us-for-a-fossil-fuelized-ride\/","title":{"rendered":"How Big Oil is Taking Us for a Fossil-Fuelized Ride"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n
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Photo by Chris LeBoutillier<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

A recent opinion poll rocked the world of the Big Oil lobbyists in their proverbial thousand-dollar suits and alligator shoes. The\u00a0Pew Research Center<\/a>\u00a0found that 37% of Americans now feel that fighting the climate crisis should be the number one priority of President Joe Biden and Congress, and another 34% put it among their highest priorities, even if they didn\u2019t rank it first.\u00a0Companies like ExxonMobil and countries like Saudi Arabia have tried since the 1990s to\u00a0gaslight<\/a>\u00a0the public into thinking climate change was either a total fantasy or that the burning of coal, natural gas, and petroleum wasn\u2019t causing it. Having lost that battle, the fossil-fuel lobbyists have now fallen back on Plan B.\u00a0They want to convince you that Big Oil is itself swinging into action in a major way to transition to \u2014 yes! \u2014 green energy.<\/p>\n

The hosting of the recent COP28 climate summit by the United Arab Emirates, one of the world\u2019s leading petroleum exporters, exemplified exactly this puffery and, sadly enough, it\u2019s just one instance of this greenwashing world of ours. Everywhere you look, you\u2019ll note other versions, but it certainly was a classic example. Emirati businessman Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber served as president of the Dubai-based 28th Conference of Parties \u2014 countries that had signed onto the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. While his green bona fides include his\u00a0role<\/a>\u00a0as chairman of the board of the UAE\u2019s green energy firm Masdar, controversy swirled around him because he\u2019s also the CEO of ADNOC, the UAE\u2019s national petroleum company.\u00a0Worse yet, he\u2019s committed to expanding the oil and gas production of his postage-stamp-sized nation of one million citizens (and eight million guest workers) in a big-time fashion. He wants ADNOC to\u00a0increase<\/a>\u00a0its daily oil production from its present four million barrels a day to five million by 2027, even though climate scientists\u00a0stress<\/a>\u00a0that global fossil-fuel production must be\u00a0reduced<\/em>\u00a0by 3% annually through 2050 if the world is to avoid the most devastating consequences of climate change.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, since COP28 was held in the heart of the petroleum-producing Middle East, it also platformed bad actors like Saudi Arabia, which\u00a0led the charge<\/a>\u00a0to stop the conference from committing to ending the use of fossil fuels by a specific date. The awarding of COP28 to the Emirates by the UNFCCC Secretariat allowed a whole country, perhaps a whole region, to be greenwashed, a genuinely shocking decision that ought to be investigated by the U.N.\u2019s Office of Internal Oversight Services. (And next year, it looks like COP29 will be hosted by\u00a0another significant oil producer<\/a>. In other words, the oil countries seem to be on a hot streak!)<\/p>\n

Imaginary Algae<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mind you, those Gulf oil states are anything but the only major greenwashers on this planet. After all, the private sector has outdone itself in this arena. A congressional investigation into the major oil companies produced a long\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0and an\u00a0appendix<\/a>that came out last year, including internal corporate emails showing repeated and systemic\u00a0bad faith<\/a>\u00a0on the subject of climate change.\u00a0ExxonMobil executives, for instance, had publicly committed their company to the\u00a0goals<\/a>\u00a0of the 2015 Paris Agreement to keep the increase in the average surface temperature of the earth to no more than 1.5\u00b0 Centigrade (2.7\u00b0 Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial era.\u00a0Although a 1.5-degree increase might sound small, keep in mind that, as a global average, it includes the cold oceans of the higher latitudes, the North and South Poles, and the Himalayas. In already hot climates like South Asia and the Middle East, that means over time it might translate into a stunning 10- to 15-degree increase that could make some places literally unlivable.<\/p>\n

Scientists worry that exceeding that level could throw the world\u2019s climate system into full-scale chaos, producing mega-storms, substantial sea level rise, ravaging wildfires, and deadly heat and drought over large parts of the earth\u2019s surface.\u00a0Still, despite his public commitment to it in 2019, the CEO of ExxonMobil, Darren Woods,\u00a0asked<\/a>\u00a0an oil industry lobbying group to\u00a0delete<\/a>\u00a0a reference to the 2015 Paris climate agreement from the draft of a statement on sustainability it had prepared.\u00a0That mention, Woods said, \u201ccould create a potential commitment to advocate on the Paris agreement goals.\u201d So much for oil company pledges!<\/p>\n

In a similar fashion, in 2020, executives of the London-based Shell PLC\u00a0asked<\/a>\u00a0public relations employees to highlight that the company\u2019s vow to reach zero net carbon emissions by 2050 was \u201ca collective ambition for the world,\u201d rather than a \u201cShell goal or target.\u201d\u00a0As a company executive\u00a0admitted<\/a>\u00a0all too bluntly, \u201cShell has no immediate plans to move to a net-zero emissions portfolio over our investment horizon of 10-20 years.\u201d (Oh, and in case you missed this, the profits of the major fossil-fuel outfits have in recent years\u00a0gone through the roof<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Nor is corporate greenwashing simply a matter of public pronouncements by oil company executives. ExxonMobil has run a multi-million-dollar campaign of television and streaming advertising attempting to pull the wool over people\u2019s eyes about what it\u2019s doing. In one instance, it paid the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0to run an extended\u00a0commercial<\/a>\u00a0gussied up as if it were a news article, a shameful procedure to which the\u00a0Times<\/em>acquiesced.\u00a0Studies<\/a>\u00a0show that most readers miss disclaimers about such pieces actually being paid advertisements. It was entitled, \u201cgrand plant waste to fuel a sustainable energy future.\u201d The advertisement was extremely misleading.\u00a0As Chris Wells, an associate professor of emerging media studies at Boston University\u2019s College of Communication, told\u00a0BU Today<\/em><\/a>\u00a0last February, \u201cExxon is doing a lot of advertising around its investments in algae-based biofuels. But these technologies are not yet viable, and there is a lot of skepticism that they ever will be.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, about a month after Wells gave that interview, ExxonMobil\u00a0admitted<\/a>\u00a0publicly that it had pulled out of algae biofuels research entirely at the end of 2022, having invested about $29 million a year over 12 years. It spent more millions, however, in advertising to give the public the impression that this paltry investment outweighed the company\u2019s multi-billion-dollar efforts to bring ever more petroleum online.<\/p>\n

The environmentalist group\u00a0Client Earth<\/a>\u00a0notes that ExxonMobil spends between $20 billion and $25 billion annually looking for \u2014 yes, of course! \u2014 new oil fields and is committed to doing so through at least 2025.\u00a0The company had a net profit of $55.7 billion in 2022.\u00a0In other words, it\u2019s still devoting nearly half of its annual profits to looking for more petroleum when, of course, it could be using them to launch its transition to sustainable forms of energy. Such \u2014 to put it politely \u2014 inertia is clearly unwise. New electric vehicle sales in the U.S. soared to about a million this year alone, and EVs will have\u00a0avoided<\/a>\u00a0using 1.8 million barrels of oil in 2023. Better yet, the cost of battery packs for the vehicles\u00a0fell 14%<\/a>\u00a0and is expected to keep heading down, guaranteeing that EVs will be ever more affordable over time. Moreover, in significant parts of the rest of the world, as the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0reported recently<\/a>, electric-powered two- and three-wheeled vehicles are beginning to give the giant oil companies a run for their money.\u00a0In the decades to come, ExxonMobil\u2019s inflexibility and refusal to innovate will undoubtedly doom the company, but the question remains: In the process, will it doom the rest of us, too?<\/p>\n

A Deceptive Greenwashing Marketing Campaign<\/strong><\/p>\n

In another, better world, the courts could punish the oil majors for their greenwashing. That misleading paid ad in the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0forms but one cornerstone of a wide-ranging lawsuit against ExxonMobil by the state of Massachusetts, initiated in 2019, which has so far survived that company\u2019s legal challenges.\u00a0As the office of Attorney General, Andrea Campbell\u00a0explains<\/a>, it is \u201calleging that the company violates Massachusetts law through a deceptive \u2018greenwashing\u2019 marketing campaign that misleadingly presents Exxon as a leader in cutting-edge clean energy research and climate action\u2026 and\u2026 its products as \u2018green\u2019 while the company is massively ramping up fossil fuel production and spending only about one-half of 1% of revenues on developing clean energy.\u201d\u00a0Campbell, an African-American born in Boston, is keenly\u00a0aware<\/a>\u00a0that climate change is an equity issue, since its deleterious effects will initially be felt most strongly among the less privileged. (Of course, given our present Supreme Court, don\u2019t hold your breath on this one.)<\/p>\n

In its\u00a0complaint<\/a>, the state points to marketing campaigns like those featured on ExxonMobil\u2019s YouTube channel, which still shows an\u00a0ad<\/a>\u00a0produced eight years ago, \u201cMaking the World\u2019s Energy go Further,\u201d that, in just 30 seconds, presents a medley of greenwashing\u2019s greatest early hits \u2014 algae biofuel, \u201cnew technology for capturing CO2 emissions,\u201d and cars twice as efficient in their gas mileage.\u00a0Algae biofuels, however, have by now bitten the dust; there is no affordable and safe method of capturing and storing carbon dioxide; and electric cars are between \u201c2.6 to 4.8 times more efficient at traveling a mile compared to a gasoline internal combustion engine,\u201d according to the\u00a0Natural Resources Defense Council<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The biggest fault in such commercials, however, is that the oil company\u2019s ad makers were trying to convince the public that ExxonMobil was putting major resources into sustainable alternatives.\u00a0 As the state of Massachusetts points out, in reality \u201cExxonMobil has ramped up production and reportedly is now the most active driller in the Permian Basin, the shale oil field located in western Texas and southeastern New Mexico that yields low-cost oil in months, rather than the years required for larger offshore projects to begin producing crude\u2026 ExxonMobil has invested billions of dollars into the development of massive Canadian oil sands projects, which are among the costliest and most polluting oil extraction projects in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carbon Capture and Lake Nyos<\/strong><\/p>\n

An even more dangerous scam than algae biofuels (implausible but not life-threatening) is the idea of carbon capture and storage (CCS). Remind me: Why would we try to store billions of tons of a poisonous gas? On August 21, 1986, subterranean carbon dioxide deposits bubbled up through\u00a0Lake Nyos<\/a>\u00a0in Cameroon, killing nearly 2,000 people, thousands of cattle and other animals, and in the process turned four local villages into graveyards. Some\u00a0scientists<\/a>\u00a0fear similar underground carbon dioxide storage elsewhere could set off earthquakes.\u00a0And what if such quakes in turn release the gas? Honestly, since I still remember the 1989\u00a0Exxon Valdez<\/a>disaster where 11 million gallons of oil, spilled into the waters off Alaska, wrecked hundreds of miles of shoreline and killed unknown numbers of sea creatures and birds, I\u2019d just as soon not have ExxonMobil store carbon dioxide in my neighborhood.<\/p>\n

Worse yet, most of the CO2 harvested by oil companies so far has been injected into drill sites to help bring in \u2014 yes, you guessed it! \u2014 more petroleum. Worse yet,\u00a0studies<\/a>\u00a0have shown that carbon-capture technology itself emits a lot of carbon dioxide, that it can only capture a fraction of the CO2 emitted by fossil fuels, and that just shutting down coal, fossil gas, and petroleum production and substituting wind, solar, hydro, and batteries is far safer, cheaper, and better for the environment.<\/p>\n

Carbon capture is, however, a favorite greenwashing tool of Big Oil, since company executives can pretend that a technological breakthrough somewhere on the horizon justifies continuing to spew out record quantities of CO2 in the present moment.\u00a0Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) wasted billions of taxpayer dollars by including provisions for CCS research and development in Joe Biden\u2019s otherwise admirable\u00a0Inflation Reduction Act<\/a>. In the process, he managed to insert a key greenwashing technique into even the most progressive climate legislation ever passed by an industrialized hydrocarbon state.<\/p>\n

As for Sultan Al-Jaber, the head of COP28, he let his mask slip in November in a testy exchange with former Irish President\u00a0Mary Robinson<\/a>, who had invited him to an online discussion of how women\u2019s lives could be improved if the climate crisis were effectively addressed. When she urged him to act as president of COP28, he\u00a0exploded<\/a>: \u201cI\u2019m not in any way signing up to any discussion that is alarmist. There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what\u2019s going to achieve 1.5C.\u201d\u00a0He was pushing back against the goal advocated by scientists and many diplomats of quickly phasing hydrocarbons\u00a0out<\/em>. He claims to advocate phasing them\u00a0down<\/em>, not presumably eliminating them. He added, \u201cPlease help me, show me the roadmap for a phase-out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves.\u201d Al-Jaber was posturing, since he surely knows that the International Energy Agency has issued just such a\u00a0roadmap<\/a>, which does indeed require rapid reductions in fossil fuel use. Oh, and if he has his way, it\u2019s quite conceivable that, somewhere down the road, the capital city of the United Arab Emirates, Dubai, could become\u00a0too hot<\/a>\u00a0to be livable.<\/p>\n

Given the plummeting cost of green energy, it\u2019s clear that moving quickly and completely away from fossil fuels will improve the quality of life for people globally while making energy cheaper. In the end, COP28 could only issue an anodyne\u00a0call<\/a>\u00a0for \u201ctransitioning away\u201d from fossil fuels. Despite al-Jaber\u2019s globe-straddling greenwashing at the climate summit, however, there is no realistic alternative to phasing fossil fuels not just down but out, and on an accelerated timeline, if our planet\u2019s climate isn\u2019t to turn into a Frankenstein\u2019s monster. After all, 2023 has already proved a unique year for heat \u2014 with\u00a0month after month of record-setting warmth<\/a>across the globe.\u00a0And sadly, as fossil-fuel production\u00a0only continues to increase<\/a>, that\u2019s just the beginning, not the end, when it comes to potentially broiling this planet.<\/p>\n

Admittedly, under the best of circumstances, this transition would be challenging and, according to the\u00a0United Nations<\/a>, will certainly require more investments than the countries of the world are now making, but it still appears eminently achievable. As for ExxonMobil and other oil majors, every day they resist investing their obscene profits in truly innovative green energy technology is a day they come closer to future financial ruin. In the meantime, they are, of course, wreaking historically unprecedented harm on the planet, as was all too apparent with the serial climate disasters of 2023, now believed to be the\u00a0hottest<\/a>\u00a0of the last 125,000 years.<\/p>\n

This column is distributed by TomDispatch.<\/i><\/p>\n

The post How Big Oil is Taking Us for a Fossil-Fuelized Ride<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent opinion poll rocked the world of the Big Oil lobbyists in their proverbial thousand-dollar suits and alligator shoes. The\u00a0Pew Research Center\u00a0found that 37% of Americans now feel that fighting the climate crisis should be the number one priority of President Joe Biden and Congress, and another 34% put it among their highest priorities, More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post How Big Oil is Taking Us for a Fossil-Fuelized Ride<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5818,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1404654"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5818"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1404654"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1404654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1404655,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1404654\/revisions\/1404655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1404654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1404654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1404654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}