Letters to the Editor: Starve oil companies. That’s the best response to Exxon’s climate deceit
To the editor: Your article on the accuracy of Exxon Mobil Corp.’s own global warming research makes a brief mention of how the language of climate denial has shifted toward delay. Not only did Exxon know what it was doing when it spread disinformation in the past, it is still doing it. Today this disinformation takes the form of delay, distraction and division.
It’s time for Exxon and other fossil fuel companies to be stripped of their social license to operate. Financial institutions like JP Morgan Chase (the largest investor in fossil fuels) need to retract all funding and starve these corporations until they abandon fossil fuels and adopt a renewable-only energy portfolio.
No punitive measure could ever fit the damage Exxon has done to human society and its ability to continue on this planet, but forcing it to become part of the solution would at least be a start.
Joseph DeRose, Los Angeles
..
To the editor: Back in 1985, my 10-year-old son came home from school and asked, “Mom, did you know that one day the Earth could get so hot we couldn’t live on it?”
This is the kind of science fiction that fascinates young boys, I thought. I didn’t ask him how this idea came up. How I wish I had.
Instead, I told myself what I wanted to hear: that if the planet ever did get that hot, humans will have evolved so much by that time that they would know what to do.
Exxon told us what it wanted us to hear. It chose to “emphasize the uncertainty” and talk about “unproven climate models” or “sheer speculation.” But in 1981, Exxon’s own models predicted average temperature rises of about 0.36 of a degree Fahrenheit per decade.
Now, in 2023, we can see that temperatures have risen about 0.32 of a degree per decade since 1981. This is not far off science fiction. It’s time to stop burning fossil fuels now.
Penelope Mann, Claremont
..
To the editor: Will our representatives hold Exxon (and others) accountable? Will they push the U.S. to be a global leader in the fight to preserve our planet for future generations? Will they finally put a price on carbon and incentivize sustainable living?
Thanks to the deliberate, decades-long disinformation campaign of the fossil fuel industry, we’ve run out of time. I hope every single Times reader contacts their representatives to demand accountability and to urge action against global warming.
Shani Murray, Placentia
..
To the editor: Has there ever been greater proof that capitalism is its own worst enemy than the latest disclosure that Big Oil knew better than anyone how devastating to planetary survival its profit-uber-alles policies were?
Economist Joseph Schumpeter only captured part of the problem when he defined the nature of capitalism as “creative destruction.” When cigarette companies in the 1950s began knowingly killing off their customers and oil companies since the 1970s began consciously expediting the end of the world, destruction had clearly overtaken the creative side of the equation.
Shifting the balance back to the creative side and then some has got to be the most pressing issue of our time.
Vincent Brook, Los Angeles
