THE POWERS AND principalities of this world don’t rest, as we were reminded this fall when ExxonMobil announced it was spending about $60 billion to buy one of the largest fracking companies on Earth (followed two weeks later by Chevron’s announced $53 billion acquisition of oil driller Hess). ExxonMobil cheerfully said that once the deal closes, its production volume in Texas’ Permian Basin would more than double to 1.3 million barrels of oil equivalent per day.
“The combined capabilities of our two companies will provide long-term value creation well in excess of what either company is capable of doing on a standalone basis,” ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods said in a statement, which is also a reminder that the powers and principalities use language differently than the rest of us. In this case “value creation” is synonymous with “creation destruction” — those millions of barrels a day translate directly into carbon dioxide, which translates directly into fire, flood, and immiseration. They are running Genesis in reverse, but the money’s good.
What Exxon’s really doing is betting that it can outmaneuver climate scientists, popes, and environmental justice activists: that it and its band of brothers have the political juice necessary to keep their enterprise going against every warning from scientists that the expansion of the fossil fuel enterprise must stop now. That they’re doing it in the year when scientists say the earth is hotter than at any time since at least 123,000 B.C.E. just adds insult to injury.
They may well get away with it. They have so far, using the Ukraine crisis (which they helped cause by empowering Vladimir Putin with billions of dollars in investment) to make record profits, which powered this new wager. Some may remember the hope from a couple of years ago when a group of “activist investors” called Engine No. 1 managed to land a trio of new directors on Exxon’s board, amid promises that this would change the company’s direction. Instead, it’s “not made a discernible difference in the way Exxon is addressing climate change,” as one environmental leader put it. Even an accumulating pile of court cases so far hasn’t blunted their charge to heat the Earth. In fact, it was reported last month that they have a new legal strategy to get all the new directors dismissed at once.
We obviously can’t wave the white flag — indeed, at places like Third Act (which I founded and where I volunteer), we’re taking on new aspects of the fight, in particular trying to slow the buildout of new fossil fuel export terminals along the Gulf Coast (America can’t soak up all that gas and oil from the Permian Basin; like Colombian drug cartels, our powers and principalities now need to ship it overseas). I imagine we’ll win this battle eventually; what’s unclear is whether that win will come in time. It’s already too late for many.
Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, is the author most recently of The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at his Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened.
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