Climate Denial

Here's an email I wrote to Joe Nocera of the NY Times in response to his article about the Rockefeller family's attempts to push Exxon in a new direction. You can almost count on business writers to be antagonistic toward global warming, perhaps because their audience (wealthy corporate types) remain in denial about the science supporting climate change, and the liklihood of catastrophic damage likely to result from climate change. What a shame...

Dear Joe,

You write, "Expecting Exxon Mobil to move the world to an oil-free future is a little like expecting buggy-whip manufacturers to invent the automobile." This is a poor analogy. A better one would have been "expecting buggy manufacturers to begin making automobiles." Which is exactly what some buggy manufacturers did. Exxon doesn't just define itself as an oil and gas company. It also states as its mission, "To help meet the world’s growing energy needs...and explore emerging energy sources and technologies." By any definition or standard, Exxon is failing to adequately or meaningfully explore emerging energy sources and technologies. And to assume that the worlds growing energy needs can only be met by fossil fuels is foolhardy. Exxon should be reinvesting billions in solar nano-tech. It should be developing long-term strategies to address the growing global desire to shift away from fossil fuels. But it's not. Their main discipline, it would seem, is to make short term profits with little or no regard for the long-term direction of energy.
Also, to characterize climate change as something that might not cause much harm, or be cheap to fix, is misleading. Yes, those assertions are possible, but a stunning majority of scientists are giving them a very low probability. By any reasonable reading of the scientific literature, catastrophic consequences of climate change are a high probability. So please, stop writing about remote, pie-in-the-sky possibilities and start looking at the future in terms of likelihoods. That would qualify as a disciplined approach.

Sincerely,

- JT Compton
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