NYT: Exxon Chief Cautions Against Rapid Action to Cut Carbon Emissions

[UpInArms]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/business/14exxon.html?ex=1329109200&en=adb60e978b63d904&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

(free registration or try www.bugmenot.com)

HOUSTON, Feb. 13 — The chief executive of Exxon Mobil, Rex W. Tillerson, warned Tuesday that governments should not rush into policies that could damage the global economy in order to limit carbon emissions.

In a speech at a major industry gathering, Mr. Tillerson acknowledged that the planet was warming while carbon dioxide levels were increasing, suggesting a more accommodating position than the hard-nosed stance Exxon had held.

But in the same speech, Mr. Tillerson, who leads the world’s largest publicly traded company, gave an unalloyed defense of the oil industry and predicted that hydrocarbons would dominate the world’s transportation as energy demand grows by an expected 40 percent by 2030.

There is no significant alternative to oil in coming decades and Exxon will continue to make oil and natural gas its primary products, he said.

<snip>

But at the end of speechmaking and answering questions, Mr. Tillerson expressed concern that policy makers could damage the world economy with precipitous environmental policies. He warned that future generations could be sorry for hasty policies taken today without more careful study.

...more...

[w4rma]

1. Shut up you warmongering, terrorist supporting, propaganda spewing, profiteering SOB. (nt)

[OKthatsIT]

35. You forgot GANSTERS

We have 'free energy' alternatives ready to ROCK. That is, if they stay alive long enough to patent....

oh...you forgot MASS MURDERERS, too.

[Robbien]

2. Yes, it may cut into the year end bonuses and the management

may get grumpy. Billions for them, "tens of thousands" for the environment.

[mtnester]

3. I expected nothing less

scum

[Doondoo]

4. Well dayum, if EXXON is against it then we should be TOO!!!!!!!!!!!

[sutz12]

5. In my best Gomer Pyle voice..............

Sur-prise, sur-prise, sur-prise.

[Eugene]

6. Tillerson: We admit there might be a problem, but is it really THAT urgent?

Exxon's acknowledgement that global warming is probably for real is movement.
It's on the scale of continental drift, but it's still movement.

Tillerson is still trying to hype the uncertainty in global warming forecasts.
He still says that hydrocarbons are the only practical way forward. And he
still insists that cutting CO2 output will hurt economic growth. In short,
global warming isn't urgent enough for big oil to stop business as usual.

Nice try, but big oil will have to do better.

[gratuitous]

7. Gentlemen! We have to protect our phoney-baloney jobs!

Sure, the planet's being poisoned, and our industry is one of the prime culprits, but come on! We didn't even quite make $40 billion in profits last year. Let's not get all hasty here.

Let's see how many BTUs Mr. Tillerson might yield, hmmm?

[mikeytherat]

8. I didn't get a "harrumph" from that guy!

Give Mr. Tillerson "harrumph"!

mikey_the_rat

[YankeyMCC]

13. I nominate this post as

the most appropriate use of a movie quote to point out the hypocrisy and irony of the content of the story in the OP.

[all.of.me]

9. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

shut up.

[Broadslidin]

10. The Only Place For The government steno pool n.y.t. is The Dust Bin....!!

Can this so called 'for the record' newspaper
which has built its empire on unquestioned
sleazy confidential government sources be trusted...?

[blitzen]

11. Hah! He's worried about "future generations"! Yeah, right....

that would be a first among BushCo

[smoogatz]

12. The fact that they're admitting there's a connection between CO2

emmissions and global warming is significant--you can credit Al Gore for making the connection inarguable. Of course, in the next sentence Tillerson says, essentially, "whatever, we're just going to keep making the planet hotter and hotter and you'd better not try to stop us." Which just proves that you're not going to solve the problem without administering a serious bitch-slap to the energy industry as a whole: they don't give a flying fuck about anything but profits.

[Uncle Joe]

19. I wonder, what they think the economic consequences will be

when the looming global warming/climate change freight train really hits the fan? Just taking in to account the coastal areas flooded driving tens or hundreds of millions of climate refugees in land, not to mention the other effects extreme drought, blizzards, a European ice age because the gulf stream is altered or shut down.

The good ship Earth has a leak in it while at sea, and these people are complaining about the cost of patch after denying for years we even had a problem!

[smoogatz]

22. they're betting they'll all be dead by then.

Probably so--Tillerson appears to be a man in his 60's. And they're also betting that they'll leave behind fortunes sufficiently enormous to insulate their immediate families from the worst effects of climate change. Not their problem.

[robinlynne]

30. I know the answer to that. Since exxon MUST continue to reap huge profits,

we will have to pay more for gas, and people will lose jobs, and the oil industry will buy politicians to make sure we can't use electric cars or create alternative enrgy sources... oh wait. they're already doing that...

[hatrack]

14. At first, they said it didn't exist

When that lost its effectiveness, they said that scientists didn't really know, so that they wouldn't have to act.

When that lost its effectiveness, they paid others to attack the scientists, so that they wouldn't have to act.

When that lost its effectiveness, they admitted that it was a problem, but that we didn't really know whether it was anthropogenic or natural, so that they wouldn't have to act.

Since that's lost its effectiveness, they are admitting that it is a problem and that we're largely responsible, but that we can't speed up our response for fear of damaging the Holy Global Economy, so that once again they won't have to act.


Anybody think that ExxonMobil is going to do anything more than fund a few more "studies" and put out press releases?

Yeah, that's what I thought too.

[Selteri]

15. These people don't seem to get it that all the profit in the world doesn't matter

At least, it doesn't matter when you don't have anyplace to live in because you destroyed and destabilized the environment so much that you force an extinction event for your own species. Sigh - What's the saddest part of this is that if they were to work toward cleaning up and improving that their profits for the next multiple generations would soar higher than anything they can imagine.

Oh well, makes more room for me to continue to work on my own company that will take the place of those mooks.

[tabasco]

16. yeah, oil companies give great advice on environmental protection.

That's why the wise Dick Cheney called all the CEOs to Washington for those secret meetings. I'm sure they want to keep those energy meeting records secret because they don't want everybody to know they're really a bunch of tree huggers.

[Lorien]

17. What will the world economy look like without crops, with

flooded cities, without wood products or seafood, and ultimately without enough oxygen to breathe?

Greedy short sighted dumbasses. :banghead:

[ozymandius]

18. The whore wears Armani.

Tillerson cares about future generations like Altria (Philip Morris) cares about future generations.

[brentspeak]

20. Put a sock in it, Tillerson

[Zenlitened]

21. Um, define "haste," Tillerson. You and your cronies have been instrumental...

... in keeping alternative energy research relegated to the basement for... how long now? Decades?

Meanwhile, you stand up there and proudly -- if stupidly -- proclaim: "We are NOT an energy company, we are a petroleum company!"

(See under, "Railroad, not transportation.")

At some point, do the shareholders start to wonder if Tizzy Tilly has got the vision it takes to lead a major corporation?

:shrug:

[cascadiance]

23. They still haven't paid off their bills for destroying the coast of Alaska!

Millions of dollars they owe Alaskans fromt he Exxon Valdez spill, and still have it tied up in courts and have destroyed the fishing communities up there both financially and environmentally! These are the #1 bastards on the corporate bad boy list!

[progressivebydesign]

24. Shut up you profit-mongering piece of shit. n/t

[daleo]

25. You need a world to have a world economy

If they really believe in the science of global warming, they shouldn't be balking at reducing CO2.

It's like a tobacco company saying "we know smoking causes lung cancer, but we think smokers can adapt to living without lungs".

[damntexdem]

26. Yes, in downtown Houston in future decades, they may swim to the surface ...

and complain that the water isn't deep enough yet because we slowed global warming. ;-)

[Seldona]

27. Don't mess with their $75k per MINUTE profits?

Who would have thought?

:sarcasm:

[robinlynne]

28. maybe we just need to nationalize exxon, and change some priorities here...

[sakabatou]

29. ::headdesk:: x9000

[JerseygirlCT]

31. Right. Let's not be hasty. Wouldn't be prudent. nt

[wovenpaint]

32. Money must trump global warming

since chimp sez that money trumps peace, then it only makes sense that it trumps the environment as well.....

:sarcasm:

[YankeyMCC]

33. "When all the trees have been cut down,

when all the animals have been hunted,
when all the waters are polluted,
when all the air is unsafe to breathe,
only then will you discover you cannot eat money."

- Cree teaching

[Javaman]

34. ruin global economy, right, check. more like ruin your record profits.

scumbags, all of them.

[Telly Savalas]

36. If you don't like Exxon, then don't buy their oil.

Drive less.

Bike and walk more.

Support the growth of our nation's public transportation infrastructure.

[LeftHander]

37. $270 plus billion in profits last quarter? STFU.....nt

[killbotfactory]

38. Okay, they can foot the bill for the effects of global warming

which will be much, much, much more expensive that preventing it in the first place.

[Hawkowl]

39. Exxon is NOT the world economy

Cutting carbon emissions would probably BOOST the world economy by spawning innovation, new industries, and high tech research and jobs here and across the world. I HATE these greedy, murderous, filthy criminal oil gangsters.