{"id":765583,"date":"2022-08-01T12:29:17","date_gmt":"2022-08-01T12:29:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2022\/08\/democrat-climate-bill-fossil-fuels-exxonmobil\/"},"modified":"2022-08-01T12:42:34","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T12:42:34","slug":"we-cant-save-the-planet-and-make-exxonmobil-happy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/08\/01\/we-cant-save-the-planet-and-make-exxonmobil-happy\/","title":{"rendered":"We Can\u2019t Save the Planet and Make ExxonMobil Happy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

To stop the worst of climate change, we have to choose: Are we going to save the planet or are we going to continue making fossil fuel companies happy? It's impossible to do both.<\/h3>\n\n\n
\n \n
\n If ExxonMobil is celebrating climate legislation, it\u2019s a bad sign. (DANIEL LEAL \/ AFP via Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

In the climate change era, if ExxonMobil is celebrating legislation, it\u2019s a bad sign. So when the company\u2019s CEO, Darren Woods, last week\u00a0lauded<\/a>\u00a0Congress\u2019s new climate spending bill, that was a warning not just about the specific \u201call-of-the-above\u201d energy provisions in the bill but also about our continued unwillingness to make binary choices, even when they are necessary.<\/p>\n

Choice avoidance is the Washington Consensus. Politicians seeking to simultaneously appease voters and their CEO donors routinely tell us we get to have our cake and eat it too. They insist we can have billionaires and shared prosperity, legalized corruption with democracy, lower inflation plus corporate profiteering, and a livable planet alongside a prosperous ExxonMobil. You name the crisis, and we are infantilized to believe the world is an all-you-can-eat buffet and that either\/or choices aren\u2019t necessary.<\/p>\n

It is an alluring fantasy \u2014 but the last decade shows it is just that: a fantasy.<\/p>\n

Think about health care. In 2009, we were told we did not have to follow every other industrialized country and choose universal health care over corporate health insurance. Instead, President Barack Obama\u00a0promised<\/a>\u00a0a \u201cuniquely American system\u201d that would avoid such a choice \u2014 it would create robust health insurance and pharmaceutical profits, and also a humane system of medical care for all.<\/p>\n

A decade later, reality tells a different story: health insurance and pharmaceutical giants are making huge<\/a>\u00a0profits<\/a>, paying out\u00a0billions to executives<\/a>, and\u00a0jacking<\/a>\u00a0up prices<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 but\u00a0millions<\/a>\u00a0remain unable to access basic care. Even now, after the corporate health care system\u00a0delivered<\/a>\u00a0hundreds of thousands of preventable pandemic deaths, we\u2019re avoiding the necessary binary choice to discard the current system and embrace something like Medicare for All. Despite a\u00a0recent government report<\/a>\u00a0touting the benefits of making that choice, we\u2019re told the best solution is choice avoidance \u2014\u00a0just giving more government subsidies<\/a>\u00a0to the same predatory insurers rationing care.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the same story for Wall Street.<\/p>\n

After the 2008 financial crisis crushed millions of Americans, lawmakers said we didn\u2019t have to choose to reinstate New Deal laws that safeguarded against such crises. They told us we didn\u2019t have to choose to nationalize, break up, or limit the size of financial institutions. And they assured us we didn\u2019t even have to prosecute or fire the specific bankers who engineered the meltdown. Instead, their solution was just propping up too-big-to-fail banks with bailouts and cheap money, shielding financial executives from punishment, and creating some light-touch regulations that\u00a0fundamentally change nothing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A decade later, Wall Street\u00a0profits<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0bonuses<\/a>\u00a0are booming, the financial services industry occupies an\u00a0outsize<\/a>\u00a0share of our economy, and\u00a0governments<\/a>\u00a0are funneling even more cash into that sector. Meanwhile, banks have\u00a0extracted<\/a>\u00a0nearly half a trillion dollars in overdraft fees from consumers, and\u00a0some experts<\/a>\u00a0say another financial crisis is on the horizon.<\/p>\n

Now comes the climate crisis, where the costs of decades of choice avoidance are wildfires, droughts,\u00a0fire tornados<\/a>,\u00a0deadlier hurricanes<\/a>,\u00a0derechos<\/a>, and all sorts of other weather monsters. As scientists\u00a0say<\/a>\u00a0we only have a few years left to prevent climate change\u2019s worst effects, we are at another decision point \u2014 and yet we are still refusing to choose.<\/p>\n

While Democrats tout their spending bill\u2019s important new investments in clean energy \u2014 and they\u00a0are<\/em>\u00a0important \u2014 the legislation includes\u00a0language<\/a>\u00a0making new solar and wind projects contingent on expanding oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters. The more clean energy we build out, the more dirty energy becomes available for fossil fuel companies to extract and burn.<\/p>\n

This provision was the bribe for a long-sought vote from Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), a coal magnate who is Congress\u2019s\u00a0top recipient of fossil fuel industry cash<\/a>, and whose staff\u00a0reportedly<\/a>\u00a0confers weekly with Exxon\u2019s lobbyists.<\/p>\n

Natural resources law professor Sam Kalen told\u00a0Bloomberg<\/a>\u00a0that this language is \u201cone of the worst policy provisions I\u2019ve seen,\u201d while the Center for Biological Diversity\u2019s Brett Hartl\u00a0called<\/a>\u00a0it \u201ca climate suicide pact.\u201d Scores of climate groups\u00a0demanded<\/a>\u00a0the language be eliminated before the bill is passed.<\/p>\n

Other climate advocates insisted the existing legislation will\u00a0still reduce emissions<\/a>\u00a0and therefore must move forward. Sociologist Daniel Aldana Cohen astutely\u00a0noted<\/a>\u00a0that even if passed in its current form, the legislation will be \u201copening new terrains of struggle . . . where this unlocks enough investment for new coalitions to fight over, which in turn accelerate and transform policy landscapes across scales.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever you think about the bill, the United States government\u2019s refusal to make a binary energy choice is exactly why Exxon\u2019s CEO and the fossil fuel industry are celebrating. They are thrilled that somehow \u2014 even at this late hour in the climate cataclysm they created \u2014 their bankrolled lawmakers are still pretending fossil fuels and a habitable ecosystem can coexist.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re pleased with the broader recognition that a more comprehensive set of solutions are going to be needed to address the challenges of an energy transition,\u201d\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0ExxonMobil\u2019s Darren Woods.<\/p>\n

The company added in a\u00a0statement<\/a>\u00a0that the \u201cgovernment can promote investment through clear and consistent policy that supports U.S. resource development, such as regular and predictable lease sales, as well as streamlined regulatory approval and support for infrastructure such as pipelines.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kathleen Sgamma, president of the oil and gas lobbying group Western Energy Alliance, praised the provision tying lease sales for renewable energy development to oil and gas leases.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis provision was quite a pleasant surprise,\u201d Sgamma told\u00a0Bloomberg<\/a>. \u201cTying wind and solar to oil and natural is actually a really clever all-of-the-above energy move. The bill forces them not to neglect oil and natural gas.\u201d<\/p>\n

That \u201call-of-the-above energy\u201d strategy \u2014 an Orwellian motto\u00a0parroted from Manchin himself<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 is the climate version of the pernicious choice-avoidance ideology. It comes only months after United Nations scientists effectively\u00a0warned<\/a>\u00a0that an all-of-the-above energy policy that includes fossil fuels is climate denial that will destroy the world.<\/p>\n

The good news in their\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0is that we still can quickly stave off the worst effects of climate change and save our ecosystem. But we can only do that if we stop pretending we never have to make a choice. The science is clear: to save our species, we must halt new fossil fuel development. Now.<\/p>\n

That requires making the kind of binary, zero-sum choice we almost never make \u2014 in this case, a choice to discard one resource for another, not tie clean power to dirty energy.<\/p>\n

Such binary choices take us out of our comfort zone. They require us to acknowledge disturbing realities and accept the prospect of change. They require conditions and fortitude that remains in short supply.<\/p>\n

To survive this emergency, we need honesty from news outlets that may not want to tell hard truths about choices that might reduce their advertisers\u2019 profits.<\/p>\n

We need maturity and climate focus from voters who have gotten used to being sold choice avoidance and easy fixes.<\/p>\n

And, most of all, we need integrity from political leaders who keep promoting \u201call-of-the-above\u201d fictions that imperil our world.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n\n \n \n

You can subscribe to David Sirota\u2019s investigative journalism project, the\u00a0Lever<\/i>,\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

In the climate change era, if ExxonMobil is celebrating legislation, it\u2019s a bad sign. So when the company\u2019s CEO, Darren Woods, last week\u00a0lauded\u00a0Congress\u2019s new climate spending bill, that was a warning not just about the specific \u201call-of-the-above\u201d energy provisions in the bill but also about our continued unwillingness to make binary choices, even when they [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1777,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765583"}],"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\/1777"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=765583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":765800,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765583\/revisions\/765800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}