Two-time Pulitzer winner Steve Coll has written a goldmine of a book called Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power (2012). Indeed this book has bagged the prestigious FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award for 2012.
The book largely covers the years after ExxonMobil was formed by a merger of the two oil giants Exxon and Mobil on December 1, 1999. The book delves deep into various facets of ExxonMobil’s business: its dealings with oligarchs and dictators, its response to civil wars and blackmails and kidnappings, its response to global warming, its views on renewable energy, etc.
Analyzing each and every facet would require a lengthy review. I will just say that ExxonMobil comes across as a responsible company that satisfies all international laws and regulations in conducting its business across the world. The one aspect in which it seems to have been caught on a back foot is global warming. I will focus on that.
Since the 1980s, the company (then Exxon) had taken a deeply skeptical position on global warming. This was foremost because of its CEO Lee Raymond’s belief that the hue and cry about global warming was just hysteria-mongering. Lee Raymond was not a climate scientist but a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota (he was a student of the great Neal Amundson). Since he had worked in mathematical modeling, he considered himself adequately qualified to judge the climate modelers.
This hostile attitude towards global warming theories and their supporters resulted in ExxonMobil becoming a hot target and a villain in the eyes of environmental activists.
ExxonMobil hugely funded scientists and some of its own scientists were slowly coming over to the view that global warming was a reality and it was being accelerated by burning fossil fuels. Still Lee Raymond stuck to his position tenaciously. It was only after his retirement in 2006, that, under the leadership of Rex Tillerson, ExxonMobil changed its position on global warming.
Was Lee Raymond shortsighted in his denial of global warming? I don’t think so. I have myself read literature denying global warming (or at least its seriousness): e.g., Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist (2002), Robert Zubrin’s Energy Victory (2007), and Michael Crichton’s fictional narrative State of Fear (2004). These books are pretty convincing in asserting that global warming is not something to worry about. It must be mentioned that climate science is not an exact science and only now climate models have become powerful enough to offer a judgment one way or another.
Lee Raymond made an honest mistake and his successors have corrected their stand. We must leave it at that.
The book largely covers the years after ExxonMobil was formed by a merger of the two oil giants Exxon and Mobil on December 1, 1999. The book delves deep into various facets of ExxonMobil’s business: its dealings with oligarchs and dictators, its response to civil wars and blackmails and kidnappings, its response to global warming, its views on renewable energy, etc.
Analyzing each and every facet would require a lengthy review. I will just say that ExxonMobil comes across as a responsible company that satisfies all international laws and regulations in conducting its business across the world. The one aspect in which it seems to have been caught on a back foot is global warming. I will focus on that.
Since the 1980s, the company (then Exxon) had taken a deeply skeptical position on global warming. This was foremost because of its CEO Lee Raymond’s belief that the hue and cry about global warming was just hysteria-mongering. Lee Raymond was not a climate scientist but a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota (he was a student of the great Neal Amundson). Since he had worked in mathematical modeling, he considered himself adequately qualified to judge the climate modelers.
This hostile attitude towards global warming theories and their supporters resulted in ExxonMobil becoming a hot target and a villain in the eyes of environmental activists.
ExxonMobil hugely funded scientists and some of its own scientists were slowly coming over to the view that global warming was a reality and it was being accelerated by burning fossil fuels. Still Lee Raymond stuck to his position tenaciously. It was only after his retirement in 2006, that, under the leadership of Rex Tillerson, ExxonMobil changed its position on global warming.
Was Lee Raymond shortsighted in his denial of global warming? I don’t think so. I have myself read literature denying global warming (or at least its seriousness): e.g., Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist (2002), Robert Zubrin’s Energy Victory (2007), and Michael Crichton’s fictional narrative State of Fear (2004). These books are pretty convincing in asserting that global warming is not something to worry about. It must be mentioned that climate science is not an exact science and only now climate models have become powerful enough to offer a judgment one way or another.
Lee Raymond made an honest mistake and his successors have corrected their stand. We must leave it at that.
No comments:
Post a Comment