We Know That Exxon Knew

Baku, COP29, US elections, and the climate crisis: memories of week 10 of 2024 (March 4-10)

What happened in week 10? This sunset is one of my memories

For the third year in a row, a petrostate is hosting the annual climate summit. This time, it is Azerbaijan, and it has invited more than a hundred senior executives and staff members from oil and gas companies as guests of the presidency. Al Gore, the former US vice president and climate activist, calls for change; countries without firm climate action plans should be barred from hosting a climate summit.

In this series of newsletters, we will look back at a week of 2024 each day. Today, we arrived in week 10, from March 4 to March 10. One of the news stories in that week was also about one of those oil and gas executives. In an interview with Fortune, the chief executive of ExxonMobil, Darren Woods, claimed that the public is to blame for the world being off track to meet its climate goals; big oil is not primarily responsible for the climate crisis. He said: "We have opportunities to make fuels with lower carbon in it, but people aren't willing to spend the money to do that."

But readers of this newsletter know better. We know that Exxon knew. Internal documents show that Exxon knew of the dangers of climate change as early as the 1970s. Instead of warning and taking action, which any responsible person does in any situation of danger, the company chose to do the opposite. It started a campaign to sow doubt about climate change and prevent action to lower fuel consumption.

"It's like a drug lord blaming everyone but himself for drug problems," said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School, in The Guardian.

Satellite

In week 10, a new satellite was launched to track methane emissions from the oil and gas industry. The $88m satellite orbits the planet 15 times daily to identify the worst methane polluters in the oil and gas industry. More than 150 countries have pledged to cut their methane emissions by 30% from 2020 levels by 2030. The data will be freely available, allowing oil and gas companies or environmental regulators to find and fix leaks faster.

What a victory for Trump would mean for the climate

In early March, Carbon Brief published a new analysis showing what a victory for Donald Trump in November's US presidential election could mean for climate change. I remember reading it back then, and I considered a hypothetical Trump win, but I didn't give it too much thought. Naively, I assumed that four years of chaos would have left a lasting memory among American voters. The study didn't encourage more support for Trump either. The researchers concluded that a second term for Trump could lead to an additional four billion tonnes of US emissions by 2030, compared with Biden's plans, should he remain in the White House.

To put it into context, those extra four billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) by 2030 would cause global climate damages worth more than $900bn. You can also compare these Trump emissions of 4GtCO2e to the combined annual emissions of the EU and Japan.

Meanwhile, on the island

In sharp contrast to these shocking numbers, I enjoyed my life far from the United States. There is not a day that I read, think, and worry about climate change and environmental destruction, but there also isn't a day that I don't enjoy life.

These feelings of anxiety and joy may seem to contrast each other, but they are closely related. I know I can and should still enjoy the beauty of life and nature while we still have it. And I share those experiences with my readers and audiences because I want you all to know what is at stake if we don't take better care of our planet. You're less motivated to fight for it if you don't know what we may lose.

The connection between my stories about the climate, biodiversity, and pollution crises and my articles about the beauty at stake is formed by the third and last pillar of my storytelling: politics. It is politics that allow petrostates to organize climate cops. It is politics for those host nations to invite the CEOs of the fossil fuel industry. It is politics for those CEOs to fund campaigns to sow doubt on climate science and to fund the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, who will deregulate environmental protections that may be good for the people and the planet but reduce the all-important shareholder value.

Of those three pillars of my writing, I just gave you a dose of the first (the climate crisis) and the third (politics). Now, let's move to the second: beauty. Here are my photos and memories of early March 2024; you can share yours in the chat.

Yesterday, I showed you misty mornings in my village. This photo shows a foggy afternoon in my street, just before sunset.

Another sunset, this time in the dunes. Can you spot the photographer?

Snowdrops

It's the season for reflections of bare trees in the many puddles.

Rhododendron in my village.

I captured this reflection of the clouds in a puddle in the dunes.

Those are my memories of the news and my life on this island. Tomorrow, in week 11, I will take you to Paris. Please join the chat to comment on the article, give your opinion, share your memories and photos, or comment on the images of others. And please be respectful. I know climate deniers got so bored by their colleagues and co-bots on X that they are now seeking more fertile hunting grounds in our pleasant space. We had the first one in our chat yesterday. If you see them, don't respond; it enhances their credibility in the algorithm; block them and inform me so I can delete their toxic negativity.

For similar themes and photos, read what I posted in week 10:

Notes:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/04/exxon-chief-public-climate-failures