ExxonMobil Talks A Good Game, But It’s Still Funding Climate

>Chamber of Horrors

>Most of ExxonMobil’s spending on denier groups last year — 87 percent — went to four organizations: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, American Enterprise Institute, Manhattan Institute and American Legislative Exchange Council.

>ExxonMobil gave more than half of last year’s kitty — a cool $1 million — to the Chamber, which provided President Trump with a key, but fraudulent, rationale for pulling out of the Paris agreement. Parroting a recent report funded by the Chamber and the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF) ― which received $1.78 million from ExxonMobil between 2000 and 2015 ― Trump claimed that over the next several decades the accord would cost the U.S. economy nearly $3 trillion and, by 2040, eliminate 6.5 million industrial sector jobs.

>The Associated Press (AP), Politifact and The Washington Post factchecked the speech and arrived at similar conclusions: The Chamber and ACCF cooked the books.

>“The study makes worst-case assumptions that may inflate the cost of meeting U.S. targets under the Paris accord while largely ignoring the economic benefits to U.S. businesses from building and operating renewable energy projects,” AP reporters Michael Biescker and Paul Wiseman pointed out. “Academic studies have found that increased environmental regulation doesn’t actually have much impact on employment. Jobs lost at polluting companies tend to be offset by new jobs in green technology.”

>The Chamber, which has a long history of denying climate science, made similar dire warnings about job losses in a 2014 report analyzing the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. That report used flawed assumptions to magnify the carbon rule’s cost and exaggerate job losses and, like its recent report on the Paris agreement, didn’t factor in the carbon rule’s considerable benefits.

>The Market Will Take Care of It

?The next biggest ExxonMobil grant last year — $235,000 — went to the American Enterprise Institute, which had already received $4.1 million from the company between 1998 and 2015. AEI economist Benjamin Zycher addresses climate issues more than anyone else these days at the free-market think tank, and his views are diametrically opposed to ExxonMobil’s professed positions. He disputes the conclusions of mainstream climate science, insists that a carbon tax would be “ineffective,” and calls the Paris agreement an “absurdity.”

>Zycher’s colleague Mark Thiessen, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, is also no fan of the international accord. In a June 2 essay, he cited numbers from the Chamber’s discredited report and maintained that “our emissions will arguably decline faster because of Trump’s withdrawal — because our free market economy will be stronger and more innovative without it.”

>Wind Energy Blows

>The Manhattan Institute, which received $705,000 from ExxonMobil between 2006 and 2015, pulled in another $135,000 from the company last year. Staffers there aren’t too keen on the carbon tax or the Paris agreement, either. Senior Fellow Oren Cass, who previously worked at Mitt Romney’s old firm Bain & Company, calls the accord a “fraud” and argues that a carbon tax would be “bad for the country” and “bad for the economy.”

>Another senior fellow at the libertarian think tank, Robert Bryce, previously worked as a newspaper reporter and for the Institute for Energy Research, a former ExxonMobil grantee that is largely underwritten by the Koch brothers. A self-styled agnostic about climate change, Bryce regularly attacks renewable energy. He especially loves to bash wind, carping about the industry’s temporary federal tax breaks over the last 20 years and its threat to birds. Never mind that the oil and gas industry received an average of $4.86 billion a year (in 2010 dollars) in permanent federal subsidies between 1918 and 2009 (that continue to today) or that oil and gas industry fluid waste pits kill roughly three times more birds a year than wind turbines. Bryce never mentions either of those salient facts.

>Not-So-Smart ALEC

>Between 2006 and 2015, ExxonMobil gave $600,000 to the American Legislative Council, a secretive lobby group that drafts sample corporate-friendly legislation for state lawmakers. Last year, the oil company gave ALEC another $76,500.

>Does ALEC also oppose a carbon tax and the Paris accord? You bet.

>In 2013, ALEC drafted a sample resolution for state legislators to reject “all federal and state efforts to establish a carbon tax on fuels for electricity and transportation.” More recently, the director of ALEC’s Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force slammed the Paris agreement as a “bad deal” for America. “The Paris agreement is little more than an effort by the previous president to lend some international legitimacy to his destructive regulatory campaign against affordable domestic energy,” Kenneth Stein, a former legislative aide to Sen. Ted Cruz, wrote in May 25 essay on ALEC’s website. “As has been seen in any number of U.S. industries, regulation and rulemaking stifle progress and innovation — much more so when the regulations become part of an international treaty regime.”

>Why bother with a carbon tax or an international carbon-reduction agreement if, as ALEC erroneously maintains, scientists haven’t determined the role human activity plays in global warming? “Climate change is a historical phenomenon,” its website states, “and the debate will continue on the significance of natural and anthropogenic contributions.”

>More than 100 corporations have quit ALEC for a number of reasons, notably its scientifically indefensible position on climate change. Those companies include a number of energy sector heavyweights, including American Electric Power, BP, ConocoPhillips and Shell. But not ExxonMobil.

>Meet the New Boss...

>The fact that ExxonMobil’s grantees contradict the company’s avowed positions on climate science and policy should come as no surprise. Its funding pattern in Congress is analogous. Over the years, the company has consistently rewarded legislators who reject mainstream climate science and vote against carbon tax resolutions by funding their reelection campaigns. Half of the nearly $1.45 million it spent on candidates in the 2016 election cycle, for example, went to 81 climate science deniers in the House and 24 in the Senate. And 18 of the 22 senators who sent a letter to President Trump urging him to abandon the Paris agreement collectively received $371,000 in campaign contributions from ExxonMobil between 2011 and 2016.

>Rex Tillerson began playing this game soon after he became the company’s CEO in 2006. In January 2007, the Union of Concerned Scientists published a report documenting that between 1998 and 2005, ExxonMobil had spent at least $16 million on a network of more than 40 anti-regulation groups to manufacture doubt about climate science. A week after its release, Tillerson acknowledged that his company had a PR problem. “We recognize that we need to soften our public image,” he said, according to a January 10 story in Greenwire, a trade publication. “It is something we are working on.”

>Ten years later, ExxonMobil’s PR offensive continues. Publicly, company officials repeatedly assure the news media and the general public they have seen the light. Climate change is indeed real and we need to address it. At the same time, however, ExxonMobil is still bankrolling climate disinformation groups and deniers in Congress to stymie government action.

>In January, Darren Woods, who has been working for ExxonMobil since 1992, replaced Tillerson as CEO. So far, he’s the same as the old boss. His inaugural blog post, which champions natural gas as “powerful tool” to reduce carbon emissions and stresses the challenge of “managing the risks of climate change” while meeting growing worldwide energy demand, could have easily been written by Tillerson. And, like his predecessor, Woods dutifully reiterated ExxonMobil’s nominal support for a revenue-neutral carbon tax and the Paris agreement. But until the company stops funding climate science denier groups and the members of Congress standing in the way, it will remain a major obstacle to saving the planet from the worst consequences of climate change.

>Elliott Negin is a senior writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists. The other climate science disinformation groups on ExxonMobil’s payroll last year include the Center for American and International Law ($28,500), Federalist Society ($10,000), Hoover Institution ($25,000), Mercatus Center ($10,000), Mountain States Legal Foundation ($5,000), National Black Chamber of Commerce ($35,000), National Taxpayers Union Foundation ($50,000), and Washington Legal Foundation ($40,000).

These stories make me smile.
They let the world see the true nature of the USA.

>>155714
Electing a chump who falls for the "we don't really know" bait speaks even louder imo.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/29/merkel-vows-to-put-climate-change-at-centre-of-g20-talks

Team USA already sliding this.

>>155714
Jealousy is a dangerous emotion

>>155714
Excellent post shitposteriski, 2 tulips have been deposited in your cellar

>>155744
They're working hard.

>>155748
Americans can't tell the difference between contempt and jealousy.
So much makes sense now.

>>155697

>huffingtonpost

fake news

>>155819
Are the Union of Concerned Scientists fake news?

>>155822
Well first of that's a pretty retarded name that doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in whatever they do.
And second it's a union.

These guys are probably Commies and should be shot.

>>155825
Let America burn tbh.
Nothing of value would be lost.

>>155828
They're already dying.

https://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/world/2017/05/30/german-chancellor-angela-merkel-now-leader-free-world/102308694/

>>155841
Wow. So Merkel is the leader of World Order now.
How many nuclear weapons does she have?
You that's the problem. If it ever comes down to tango there are two relevant powers on this planet. The US and Russia. Everyone else are babies playing politics with nothing to back it up.

And if Trump succeeds to join forces with Putin then there is a really good chance for the white man to finally cleanse this world of all subhumans.
Ain't nothing Merkel can do about it.

>>155842
>The US and Russia
Wow, your delusion is huge.
China is easily world power number two.
As for Trump joining forces with Putin., I welcome any move that continues America's slide into corruption and decay.

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-russia-20170709-story.html

>>155852
>muh China
Not really. Sure the Commies have a lot of worthless manpower but their nuclear forces are pathetic.
in a real all out war they would last 5 seconds.

>>155854
>muh nukes
I don't think you understand what makes a nation a world power tbh.
Enjoy your long slow journey into irrelevance.

>>155858
let me guess, you think the more Muslim immigrants and solar panels you have the stronger your nation is

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
YOU FAGGOT

>>155859
>Muslim immigrants and solar panels

What has that got to do with China being a world power.

It's like every time a Yank gets BTFO all they can do is distract.

Russia has loads of Muslims by the way.

>>155861
>Russia has loads of Muslims by the way.
B-but based Putin hates mudslimes and globalists.

>>155872
No.

He hates peasants.

>>155886
especially if they're jews, excuse me. I mean Bolsheviks.

>>155861
Europe is on the verge of collapse, socially and economically. The EU is struggling to justify itself and unrest will eventually boil over.

China is struggling financially, it has completely exhausted it's reserve funds after the last recession hit and it won't be able to survive another economic slow down. It is prepping it's military for the eventual land grabs it will make in the next decade in order to feed the engine. It's "green energy" crusade is a ruse to court western support. They continue to trade and buy coal from NKorea and will use them as a proxy against the west.

>>155888
>Bolsheviks
>Those digits
Bless those numbers. The Fuhrer posts among us.

>>155889
>Europe is on the verge of collapse
Keep hearing this from Yanks.
Not actually seeing it.

>>155889
>as a proxy against the west
No Burger, you're on your own with this one.
NK is your fight.

>>155889
>i-it'll collapse any time now guys! just you wait, europoors can't beat american corporate feudalism!
lel, I'll never get tired of hearing this

>>155910
>>155905
>>155898
You sound panicked

>>155912
Enjoy Kim's nukes.

>>155915
Enjoy the next terror attack(s). I'd get used to them.

>>155926
>I'd get used to them.

Because you're funding them?
Because you start wars on Europe's borders?

Yeah we all saw Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia and his 'drive them out of your land' speech.
Really made me wonder where they're planning drive them toward.
USA is not our friend.

I love how /pol/ will use literally anything to distract from the thread's real subject.

>>155946
Good goy. You only have one real friend.