Exxon Owns the White House

Many people have pointed out that the White House just lifted a passage from an Exxon press release and used it unchanged in their own press release. Bill McKibben is one of them.

This may be not the best way to handle press releases for the American president. Presidents are not supposed to be spokesmen for private businesses.

It also seems lazy and incompetent. Did they expect people not to notice?

But this may have been not lazy and incompetent, but intentional. If so, the message here is not “Exxon creates jobs”. The message in copy-pasting the Exxon press release is “we are very close to Exxon”. People were supposed to notice.

The title of this post is slight hyperbole, but not by very much.

That in turn means that any solution to climate change that requires somehow defeating Exxon as a political adversary is unrealistic right now in the United States. Comparable to advocating for a climate solution involving nuclear power in Germany, this is just not going to happen.

If your strategy requires this kind of unrealistic goal, get used to a much warmer planet.

This is just another reason why the only way to speed up climate change policy is to work with the fossil fuel companies, not against them.

That in turn makes Phaseout Profit Theory vitally important. It may be the only chance left.

by Karl-Friedrich Lenz

(Lenz Blog)