Comes this morning a page 1 article (sub. req.) on Exxon in the WSJ. It is noteworthy for two reasons. 1) CEO and chairman Lee Raymond gave the guy an interview; Raymond hardly ever gives interviews. And 2) for anyone who read the New Yorker‘s recent amazing three-part opus on global warming, Exxon’s stance is impossible to fathom. From the WSJ piece:
Openly and unapologetically, the world’s No. 1 oil company disputes the notion that fossil fuels are the main cause of global warming. Along with the Bush administration, Exxon opposes the Kyoto accord and the very idea of capping global-warming emissions. Congress is debating an energy bill that may be amended to include a cap, but the administration and Exxon say the costs would be huge and the benefits uncertain. Exxon also contributes money to think tanks and other groups that agree with its stance. …
“We’re not playing the issue. I’m not sure I can say that about others,” Lee Raymond, Exxon’s chairman and chief executive, said in a recent interview at Exxon headquarters in Irving, Texas. “I get this question a lot of times: ‘Why don’t you just go spend $50 million on solar cells? Charge it off to the public-affairs budget and just say it’s like another dry hole?’ The answer is: That’s not the way we do things.”
