Exxon Mobil's Slightly Changed Stance On Climate Just More PR Bullshit

[hatrack]

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Mr. Tillerson — President-elect Donald J. Trump’s nominee to be secretary of state — presided over the company’s shift, which appears to have begun with public statements delivered without fanfare by the company in 2006. In 2007, he personally acknowledged that climate change was happening and that human activity was a contributing factor. Now, at the Wilson Center, he was taking it further, saying that Exxon was willing to accept action from Congress on the problem.

Was this a sincere change of heart, or merely a cynical shift in corporate messaging? Environmental activists are skeptical. “They deliberately changed their stripes on climate, but it was all P.R.,” said Kert Davies, who has spent years investigating the company’s internal documents and practices at Greenpeace and who founded the Climate Investigations Center, an environmental research and advocacy organization.

The history of Exxon’s shift suggests that however earnest Exxon Mobil might sound in its pronouncements on policy, it has done little or nothing to help put carbon taxes into effect.

Both carbon taxes and cap and trade put a price on carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that makes a major contribution to climate change. Both can reduce emissions, and policy experts endlessly debate which would be more effective. But in January 2009, one difference was clear: A cap and trade plan sponsored in the House of Representatives by Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, both Democrats, was gaining bipartisan support. A more straightforward carbon tax was going nowhere.

EDIT

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/28/business/energy-environment/rex-tillerson-secretary-of-state-exxon.html?_r=1

[raul_andres]

1. yeah, just PR