"Now a new Republican government,
elected with the help of $1.2m from Exxon
Mobil, has abandoned the centrepiece of
those international efforts, the Kyoto
treaty on global warming. The Bush
administration, staffed from the president
down by former oil executives, has also
ruled out plans to limit US emissions of
carbon dioxide in the foreseeable future. "
…………………………………………..**************………………………….
"But perhaps more importantly, Exxon's
executives appear to hold sway over a
man who once dreamed of rivalling their
success but failed as an oil man and had
to settle this year for becoming president. "
By Julian Borger in Irving, Texas and Terry Macalister
Tuesday April 17, 2001
The Guardian
The home of global capitalism can be
found just outside Dallas. Set in the midst
of a sprawling industrial park, it is a huge,
squat pink stone edifice, with a sloping
black roof like a rustic villa, but a villa
made for giants.
It is the headquarters of Exxon Mobil, and
it houses a plush management suite that
is known across the energy industry as
the "God Pod", with the reverence befitting
a corporation which last month emerged
as the most profitable in the history of
human endeavour.
It is no exaggeration to say the decisions
made here in Irving, in this high temple of
private enterprise, will shape the future of
the planet.
Exxon Mobil, which trades in Britain as
Esso, does not believe in the certainty of
global warming - it casts doubt on
evidence that industrial emissions of
greenhouse gases are raising
temperatures. And not only is it sceptical,
it has conducted an aggressive and
expensive public relations operation to
challenge scientific orthodoxy on the
subject, as part of its battle to halt
international efforts to put an expensive
cap on the smokestacks.
Now a new Republican government,
elected with the help of $1.2m from Exxon
Mobil, has abandoned the centrepiece of
those international efforts, the Kyoto
treaty on global warming. The Bush
administration, staffed from the president
down by former oil executives, has also
ruled out plans to limit US emissions of
carbon dioxide in the foreseeable future.
The exact link between campaign
contributions and the subsequent acts of
an administration can only be guessed at.
But Exxon's critics argue that the
behemoth's assertive embrace of any
scientific evidence against global warming
- however anecdotal or dubious in origin -
has lent it a credibility it does not deserve.
It has also given President George Bush
"cover" for his rejection of Kyoto.
The mood in Irving in the new Bush era is
confident, even jovial. But it is equally
clear that its executives have been put on
their guard against complacency. Exxon
Mobil (born of a mega-merger in 1999)
has, to say the least, an image problem.
In Australia, the first ever conference of
the world's green parties yesterday agreed
to launch a boycott against Exxon and
other US oil companies. They want to
"send a message" to the companies on
the role they allegedly played in getting
Mr Bush elected.
"We know we have a giant target painted
on our chests," said Ken Cohen, Exxon
Mobil's head of government relations and
public affairs. Consequently, the company
has decided to emerge from its customary
insularity and mount something
resembling a charm offensive.
And that is presumably why the outer
gates of the God Pod were opened last
week, and two of the corporation's vice
presidents were deployed to explain why
Exxon Mobil remains dubious about
global warming and how it is nevertheless
cleaning up its act the free-market way.
Mr Cohen and Frank Sprow, in charge of
safety and environmental health, both
insist that Exxon Mobil's position has
been misunderstood. Rather than denying
the existence of global warming outright,
they argue, Exxon Mobil is simply
pointing out the room for error in such an
ever-changing and unpredictable
phenomenon as climate, and urging
caution.
"You really can't bring human influence
out of the noise of natural variability at this
point," Mr Sprow said. "Science is a
process of inquiry... I'd like the answer
tomorrow afternoon but it may be a
decade before the science really gets
crisp, because there's so much
fundamental information that has to be
worked on."
Even though the science may not be rock
hard, Mr Sprow said, Exxon is working on
alternative energy sources, such as low
emission fuel cells for cars, and cutting
down emissions in its refineries. It spends
$12m a year researching means of
reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and
has so far managed to reduce its own
output by 3%.
These arguments have not convinced the
corporation's enemies in the green camp.
It is big enough and controversial enough
to have galvanised an entire environmental
movement, Campaign Exxon Mobil,
devoted to keeping it under surveillance.
The campaign's spokesman, Peter
Altman, argues that the vaunted $12m in
carbon dioxide research is a fairly paltry
share of the $17bn net income Exxon
Mobil earned last year. Furthermore, he
said, whatever beneficial effect that money
might have is more than outweighed by
the corporation's role in undermining the
accepted wisdom that global warming is a
real threat.
Other oil companies, such as BP and
Shell, have crossed the barricades. At its
annual general meeting on Thursday, BP
will come under pressure from green
activists who have laid down formal
motions calling on the company to switch
more resources to the development of
renewable energy sources.
However, Exxon Mobil has kept up the
fight on climate change, going out of its
way to support maverick sceptics whose
conclusions agree with its own.
"The big difference with Exxon is that it
spends a lot of time and money in getting
that message across," Mr Altman said.
In particular, the Exxon chairman, Lee
Raymond, has referred approvingly to a
1998 petition apparently signed by 17,000
scientists questioning the evidence for
global warming. However, it later emerged
that the petition had been circulated by a
certain Oregon Institute for Science and
Medicine, an obscure body of eccentric
views whose headquarters turned out to
be a large tin shed.
The petition had been disguised as the
work of the National Academy of
Sciences and it had been "signed" by
such authorities as Ginger Spice and the
fictional doctors from the sit-com
M.A.S.H.
The controversy, Mr Sprow said, had
arisen from unfortunate
misunderstandings. Mr Raymond had not
sought to claim the Oregon petition as
definitive, but only to raise provocative
questions about the nature of climate
change science.
Mr Sprow is urbane and sophisticated. He
insisted repeatedly that Exxon is not "in a
state of denial" over global warming.
However, on two vital issues it is clear
that Exxon's position remains unchanged.
It does not have faith in the dire warnings
issued this year by the UN-appointed
International Panel on Climate Control
(IPCC) and it is vigorously opposed to the
Kyoto treaty.
In its latest assessment of the threat, the
IPCC found "new and stronger evidence
that most of the warming observed over
the last 50 years is attributable to human
activities". The panel, which consulted
about 2,000 scientists from 100 countries,
predicted that the earth would heat up
between 1.4C and 5.8C over the next
century, with potentially catastrophic
results.
The report was presented as a scientific
consensus, but Exxon challenges that
claim. It points to the role of political
appointees on the IPCC in selecting and
summarising scientific evidence. The
same sort of people were promoting a
bureaucratic solution to the problem
embodied in Kyoto.
Mr Sprow argued that there is little
likelihood of Kyoto being implemented by
the majority of industrialised countries,
and that it would hardly make a significant
difference to long-run greenhouse gas
emissions even if they did.
For Exxon, these are both reasons to
dump the treaty. For Kyoto's supporters,
however, they are all reasons to put the
treaty (which would require a 7% drop in
US emissions between 1990 and 2012)
into effect quickly and then move beyond
it.
By poking spanners into the works, the
environmental lobby believes, Exxon is
helping delay concerted action to stave off
global warming and the chaos it may
wreak with the climate.
"Exxon is grasping at straws," said Kert
Davies, the director of Greenpeace's US
global warming campaign. "They're
looking for everything they can do to
reposition the existing knowledge on
global warming from fact to theory."
Even before its current public relations
drive, Exxon has had remarkable success
in making its influence felt.
But perhaps more importantly, Exxon's
executives appear to hold sway over a
man who once dreamed of rivalling their
success but failed as an oil man and had
to settle this year for becoming president of the United States
guardian.co.uk. |
