Want to Know How Seriously We Are Approaching Climate Change? Look to Fossil Fuel Investments

March 22, 2019 – Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, Total, and BP, the world’s five biggest publicly traded oil companies have made it clear that the green revolution in energy is a non-starter. These five are investing $110 billion USD in new fossil fuel projects. Their spending on image making re climate change has used a billion dollars of shareholders’ money since 2015 to make it appear that they take climate change seriously. And the total amount the five have spent on green and renewable energy projects amounts to $3.6 billion, or less than 3% of the money they are putting into oil and natural gas investments. But you wouldn’t know it from the way these companies position themselves in the realm of advertising (see the New York Times ads below).

The numbers say it all. The industry has no interest in combating climate change. It has no interest in altering its business model even in the face of growing shareholder demands for asset risk accountability.

London-based InfluenceMap, is a not-for-profit organization that brings together experts from around the world to track the current state of government and business responses to climate change and energy through policy and investment activity. It tracks the numbers and activities of companies related to climate change. States Dylan Tanner, its Executive Director, “As the pressure of climate change and the actual physical manifestations of it become accelerated, this account of what oil majors consider to be ‘on board with climate change’ becomes disconnected from reality.”

The InfluenceMap graphic appearing below positions the oil majors compared to other corporate entities in terms of corporate accountability when it comes to lobbying efforts to counter any action on climate change. Note all five oil majors sit within the upper left quadrant indicating their strategic opposition to any action on climate change.

Singling out ExxonMobil, it is among the most egregious of the five continuing its obfuscation activities related to climate change and actively promoting anti-climate change lobbying efforts and blocking actions to meet the objectives of the Paris Climate Agreement. The track record goes back many years.

Back in 1997, ExxonMobil’s CEO, Lee Raymond denied that human activity was influencing climate even though his own researchers had proven the case two decades. At the time he stated “the scientific evidence is inconclusive.”

When Rex Tillerson took the company’s helm, this former Secretary of State did his own song and dance stating on two occasions that human impact on climate “is very hard for anyone to predict,” and that the market should be the “best tool for emissions,” not government-mandated caps or carbon pricing.

In 2012 it funded and supported an anti-climate change report published by The Heartland Institute, an NGO not-for-profit backed by it and other fossil fuel companies.

Two years ago, the company’s CEO, Darren Woods stated, “the solution is not just to leave fossil fuels in the ground.” Finally, the ExxonMobil truth came out. The company had no intentions of transitioning in the near-term to a low-carbon business model but was doubling down on new investments in oil and gas projects globally, and in particular, in the United States, welcomed by the Trump administration and its anti-climate science rhetoric and actions.

Advertising deception has been a prime ExxonMobil strategy. Consider two ads which appeared in the New York Times, one in 2009 and the second in 2018. If you didn’t know better you would be inclined to believe that ExxonMobil’s future was in biofuels and alternate forms of zero-carbon energy. But with InfluenceMap’s reveal, you now know how ExxonMobil sees its future. It’s not biofuels. It’s putting more carbon into the atmosphere without regard to consequences.

A few more facts to ponder. The big five oil companies spent in the last three years almost $600 million promoting their actions to address climate change. They spent in the same period close to $3 billion publicizing corporate sustainability initiatives. Leading the pack in this obfuscation was ExxonMobil. In terms of lobbying the government, the spend was $200 million per year with BP spending $53 million to ExxonMobil’s $41 million annually. Considering BP’s Deepwater Horizon exposure, it is no surprise that this oil giant is spending more to influence legislators regarding its long-term liability in The Gulf of Mexico.