exxon as sociopath

Last week, Exxon Mobil Corp announced their highest-ever annual profit. It was roughly $40 billion, which works out to about $4.5 million an hour. In spite of that, however, we’re still handing out federal subsidies to Big Oil. I guess it would be one thing if these companies were spending most of their profits in order to prepair for the future, looking for new, renewable sources of energy, etc, but they aren’t. Can you imagine how much progress could be made with even a fraction of $4.5 million an hour? In FY 2005, to give you some idea, MIT spent a little over $564 million on research. Exxon could have covered that in a little over 100 hours. Let’s talk about what they are spending their money on though. Here’s a clip from Think Progress:

On Friday, The Guardian reported that the American Enterprise Institute — which has received more than $1.6 million from ExxonMobil — was offering to pay global warming skeptics to speak out in an effort to push back on the new IPCC climate change study. The IPCC report states that it is “very likely” that man-made greenhouse gases were the main cause of the Earth’s recent warming trend…

I can’t find any evidence yet of how many scientists took them up on their $10,000 offer, but that’s really not what matters. What matters is that the earth is running out of oil, the environment is being pushed to its limits, and the only thing that Exxon execs can think to do about it throw cash at the few individuals they can find who will sacrifice their credibility for a few thousand dollars. They don’t care about finding a solution. All care about is keeping the status quo going for as long as it possibly can. They don’t want to jeopardize those $4.5 million an hour. The corporation is single-minded in its focus. It only cares about “maximizing shareholder value” from one quarter to the next. That’s all. Don’t fool yourself into thinking otherwise.