Forbes magazine, famous for its lists of the 400 richest Americans, recently anointed ExxonMobil with the title “Green Company of the Year.” Exxon is a direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company and much admired for its leadership in America’s oil and gas industry.
Forbes reporter Christopher Helman seemed greatly impressed by Exxon’s prediction that next year it will exceed all private operators worldwide in the production of natural gas. Since gas could replace coal as fuel in electric power plants, the result could ideally be a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of up to 40 to 50 percent. With this prospect, however uncertain, in mind, reporter Helman felt justified to celebrate Exxon as pioneer in the struggle against global warming and as “Green Company of the Year.”
Regrettably, Helman forgot the infamous Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989, one of the most devastating environmental disasters ever caused by man. Exxon’s vessel spilled 10.8 million gallons of Prudhoe Bay crude oil into the Sound, well known as a rich habitat for salmon, sea otters, seals, and seabirds.
Regrettably also, Helman did not consider Exxon’s record of funding climate change deniers. Already in 1998, The New York Times charged that, in its opposition to the scientific assertions of global warming, Exxon “employed the same strategy and some of the same personnel as the tobacco industry.” Exxon asked for studies to showcase what the Heritage Foundation called “the junk science behind the global warming hysteria.” The company doled out millions of dollars in research grants to, among others, the American Enterprise Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Heartland Institute, the Frontiers of Freedom Institute, and the Heritage Foundation.
At present, Exxon is a leading opponent of the Waxman-Markey climate bill, officially known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, which is to create clean energy jobs and achieve American energy independence. The House approved it on June 26 by a vote of 219 to 212, but the measure has yet to be taken up by the Senate. While the Heritage Foundation wildly claimed that an emissions cap would kill millions of jobs and raise the price of gas to $4 a gallon, the Congressional Budget Office showed that middle-class households would pay only $175 a year more in 2020 if the Waxman-Markey bill becomes law.
Exxon’s aggressive involvement in the extraction of oil from Alberta’s tar (or oil) sands is yet another case of the effect of the company’s operations on the environment. Deforestation and river draining are likely to occur when the bitumen in the sands is initially mined. Large deposits of toxic chemicals may be left behind, and the release of carbon dioxide would increase air pollution. Exxon is a 70 percent owner of Canada’s Imperial Oil and has a 24 percent interest in Syncrude, a major player in tar sands exploitation.
Forbes magazine, just like Exxon, is really quite ambiguous about climate change. Both rightly acclaim the desirability of cutting environmental carbon. Yet, both continue to flirt with global warming deniers. In the same issue in which Forbes salutes Exxon as the“Green Company of the Year,” it claims in an editorial that “the very thesis that environmental carbon is bad is a matter of faith, not science" and concludes that “environmentalism is a religion, not a science."
When the Environmental Protection Agency held a 60-day comment period on its finding that global warming poses a threat to our health and welfare, it received 41,000 supporting comments, 2,000 people rallied at the hearing in Seattle while in Arlington, Virginia, the skeptics were outnumbered 9 to 1.