Struggling To Live On $1/Day? Exxon And Peabody Want To Be Your New BFFs!!!
Big Oil and King Coal are in it for the little guy.
Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), Chevron Corp. (CVX), Peabody Energy Corp. (BTU) and Glencore Plc (GLEN) have increasingly taken to portraying themselves as champions of the world’s poor. Billions of people in developing countries, they say, need access to cheap oil, natural gas and coal to pull themselves from poverty into the middle class. With environment envoys from almost 200 countries gathered in Lima to negotiate greenhouse-gas limits, Exxon this week urged governments to heed what it called “this imperative of human progress” when designing climate rules. The chief executive officer of Peabody, the largest U.S. coal producer, was more direct in September, arguing it would be “misguided and anti-poor” to spurn fossil fuels.
“They’ve decided they can be on the side of the angels and still sell a lot of oil and gas,” said Michael Lynch, the president of Winchester, Massachusetts-based Strategic Energy & Economic Research. “They’re finding that they can say, ‘This is what’s going to happen, but it’s not all immoral and ugly.’”
Exxon spent years denying the existence of human-made climate change altogether before saying people could adapt to warmer temperatures. Lining up with the bootstrappers of the developing world and calling for a balanced approach is a more subtle stance. It’s also one that may divide governments seeking agreement on how to avert climate change.
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Resource companies “cannot afford to go on putting their heads in the sand,” said Helen Westropp, global business director at London branding agency Coley Porter Bell. “They could face such a backlash if they’re not careful, not just from customers but from shareholders and governments.” Previous attempts downplayed the effects, or even the reality, of climate change. Exxon Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson, for example, in 2012 described global warming as “an engineering problem” to which humans would adapt. His predecessor, Lee Raymond, denied climate change existed.
Ed. - Progress!!
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-12/stuck-earning-1-a-day-exxon-wants-to-help.html