Essay by Eric Worrall
Exxon CEO Darren Woods has incensed greens by suggesting end users are responsible for generating emissions.
Fury after Exxon chief says public to blame for climate failures
Darren Woods tells Fortune consumers not willing to pay for clean-energy transition, prompting backlash from climate experts
The world is off track to meet its climate goals and the public is to blame, Darren Woods, chief executive of oil giant ExxonMobil, has claimed – prompting a backlash from climate experts.
As the world’s largest investor-owned oil company, Exxon is among the top contributors to global planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions. But in an interview, published on Tuesday, Woods argued that big oil is not primarily responsible for the climate crisis.
The real issue, Woods said, is that the clean-energy transition may prove too expensive for consumers’ liking.
“The dirty secret nobody talks about is how much all this is going to cost and who’s willing to pay for it,” he told Fortune last week. “The people who are generating those emissions need to be aware of and pay the price for generating those emissions. That is ultimately how you solve the problem.”
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“It’s like a drug lord blaming everyone but himself for drug problems,” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia business school.
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Wagner said that Exxon was touting its ambition to slash the emissions of its own operations while also betting that the rest of the world won’t do the same, in order to continue selling oil.
“He can’t have it both ways in saying ‘we are an energy company’ but then basically ignoring the cheapest source of electricity in history as something Exxon should be investing in,” he said.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/04/exxon-chief-public-climate-failures
A video of CEO Darren Woods being interviewed by Fortune Magazine.
The “Dirty Secret” comments are made around 18:43. Woods also said that “Today’s technology will not solve this problem”, and emphasised the importance of getting the cost down, and the need for cost transparency with end users – and how important getting the cost down is for people’s willingness to pay for Net Zero.
Woods called for a carbon price (23:10 minutes).
30:55 “I will tell you today, there is not a viable market where consumers step in and are willing to pay a premium for low carbon products. That is the reality of what we face today. I can’t drive demand, and I can’t make consumers pay more for low carbon products”.
The big question – why are Greens so upset with what Exxon CEO Darren Woods said? Darren’s responses to questions in the video amounted to suggesting the government needs to do more to make low carbon options palatable, by putting a price on carbon, by supporting efforts to bring down the price of green solutions, or both.
I think what upset Greens is the Exxon CEO’s suggestion that Greens have to take personal responsibility for their piece of the Net Zero transition.
And of course, greens were likely upset by the Exxon CEOs suggestion that green energy is expensive – which contradicts Columbia Business School Gernot Wagner’s claim that Exxon is “ignoring [renewables] the cheapest source of electricity in history” – at least I presume he is talking about renewables.
Wagner’s inference that renewables are cheap is absurd.
Green energy is not cheap, it is hideously expensive. You just need to look at runaway energy prices in California and Europe, both champions of green energy, to know how expensive real world green energy is.
Even worse, the cost of energy in places like California and Europe is not a problem with implementation. Google admitted Net Zero is impossibly expensive in 2014, with an article published in Spectrum, about their failed attempt to discover an economically viable path to Net Zero. “Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.“. The Google team failed to find an economically viable path to replacing coal with renewables, even when they added science fiction assumptions to their models, like wind towers which erect themselves without human assistance. The Google study authors were not advocating giving up, they were just saying more or less the same as Exxon CEO Darren Woods said in the video above. Today’s green energy technology is not a viable solution to the world’s energy needs.
Can you think of a more woke, leftist, green leaning company than Google? If even Google say green energy with current technology cannot work, perhaps Google are also part of Wagner’s conspiracy of energy company capitalists who are plotting to reduce their own profits?
Blaming Exxon, weaving bizarre big oil conspiracy theories, and responding with fury to the suggestion that greens themselves have to take personal responsibility – well I guess we’re all used to seeing that from greens.
We are also used to seeing lots of hypocrisy from greens. Greens have not exactly been champions of the lifestyle choices they want to inflict on everyone else, somehow the special people usually give themselves a moral pass from the rules they want to inflict on the rest of us.
I don’t know if Gernot Wagner is personally a green hypocrite, but plenty of his fellow travellers are. I mean, how often have we seen greens jetting off to climate conferences and making pathetic excuses for why they should be allowed to fly, while demanding everyone else have their flights rationed for the sake of the planet?
Who can forget embarrassing failures of greens to follow their own policy prescriptions, like the German Green Party’s hilariously expensive failure to install a functioning heat pump in their own headquarters, despite demanding Germany immediately pass laws which make such heat pumps mandatory for office buildings?
If Greens want the rest of us to even consider following their lead, they need to start practicing what they preach, by showing us through personal example that Net Zero is viable and affordable, instead of blaming others like Exxon CEO Darren Woods for their own personal failure to transition to a greener lifestyle.
Enhanced atmospheric CO2 does ONLY GOOD…
It provides LIFE to the whole Earth.
No reason to pay anything.
EXCERPT from
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/hunga-tonga-volcanic-eruption
Urban Heat Archipelagos, such as on the US East Coast, from Portland, Maine, to Norfolk, Virginia, significantly contribute to local warming. That area used to be covered with forests.
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https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/12390020087?profile=RESIZE_710x
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Adaptation, such as increasing the width and height of dikes, and capacities of culvert and storm sewer systems, etc., planting billions of trees each year, rebuilding the rain forests, etc., will be required.
Because, huge quantities of solar energy are collected in the Tropics to warm the planet each day, preservation of the world’s equatorial rain forest belt is vital for the future well-being of the earth.
That should have priority over wind, solar, EV, heat pump, etc., measures, implemented mostly in temperate zones.
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Important Role of CO2 for Flora Growth
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Many plants require greater CO2 than 400 ppm to survive and thrive, so they became extinct, along with the fauna they supported. As a result, many areas of the world became arid and deserts. The current CO2 needs to at least double or triple to reinvigorate the world’s flora and fauna.
CO2 has increased from about 280 ppm in 1900 to 423 ppm at end 2023. It increased:
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1) Greening of the world by at least 10 to 15%, as measured by satellites since 1979.
2) Crop yields per acre.
3) Partially due to burning fossil fuels
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https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/new-study-2001-2020-global-greening-is-an-indisputable-fact-and
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/co2-is-a-life-gas-no-co2-no-life
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/co2-is-not-pollution-it-s-the-currency-of-life
You will continue to pay more and receive less.
Remember, anyone who wants to lower your standard of living is not your friend.
Passing The Buck: Further Glimpses Of The Obvious.
“”consumers not willing to pay for clean-energy transition””
“”the public is to blame””
Sounds a lot like that iriot who runs Polestar…
“”Drivers who are “scared of change” are guilty of avoiding electric vehicles (EVs) and need to change their ways, the boss of loss-making European car company Polestar warned.””
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/03/03/boss-of-europes-tesla-despairs-at-ev-avoiders-stop-being-scared-of-change/
The price of a basic Polestar 2 is… £48,750, so they attract the new £40,000+ “expensive car tax“, too.
“”Volvo Will Stop Funding Polestar EV Brand but Keep Collaborating
Geely the two automakers’ Chinese parent company—will now fully support Polestar, which has two new EVs on the way.””
Who got the blame for Betamax?
Resistance to worse-than-useless EVs is NOT due to “resistance to change;” it is “refusing to accept an INFERIOR product that is MORE expensive.”
Next thing you know, the POTUS will be saying a fire ignited by humans is “caused by climate change,” and that people that don’t believe that are “Neanderthals.”
Oh wait…
So, the Exxon-Mobil CEO is dipping and diving and head-faking and deflecting, around the whole issue of CGW/Net Zero/Undependable Energy, and meanwhile the company keeps on pumping/refining/selling the black gold. Looks like the CEO is simply trying to stall the constant Greenie lawfare attacks. Fill ‘er up!
I think he’s trying to make money, at one point he said he is happy to cash in on government subsidies, but long term that is not a sustainable business model. He’s just following where the cash leads.
CO2 is not the problem
About 3% of the WV present in the atmosphere participates in the greenhouse effect, and about 0.12% of CO2 present in the atmosphere participates in the greenhouse effect, because those percentages are all that is required to fully absorb the earth’s black body radiation, at their specific absorption wavelengths, at 300 K. See Image 11A and URL
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The rest of the WV molecules first gained their energy by evaporation, then by collisions.
The rest of the CO2 molecules, and almost all other atmosphere molecules gained their energy by collisions.
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-greenhouse-model-and-co2-contribution
He’s wrong. The US is currently piling up debt at about $1 trillion every three months. At that rate it can sustain subsidies for everyone for everything. Just ask Gernot at Columbia.
At that rate nothing is sustainable!
Argentina balanced its budget and so should the US
Just eliminate the heatlth, education and welfare part, HEW part, of the government
Nothing in the Constitution requires it
And close the north and south borders as tight as a sardine can
No valid documents, obtained in your own country, no entry.
Tough Love
Correction: “Nothing in the Constitution _authorizes_ it.”
The constitution states/confirms the inalienable rights the people already have.
The government has no power to give out rights
Rights cannot be abridged.
Any rights can be added, but only by changing the constitution, which requires 2/3 vote in the House and Senate, and 2/3 of States must ratify
HEW is unconstitutional
Rights, as used in the Declaration of Independence and the bill of rights, and privileges are different concepts. The courts are well aware of the differences and tend to assume that privileges are the only things that apply to most people because most people have given up basic rights in order to operate under contract in admiralty law — to simplify a complex topic.
JonasM was not disagreeing with your main point, wilpost, nor am I, but he corrected you appropriately in that the Constitution does not authorize the federal government to get involved with anything not enumerated in it. The thirteen original sovereign states consented to sharing certain specified (enumerated) sovereign powers through a federal government. They did not authorize ceding any other powers.
Most people today do not grasp the actual meaning of the term federal government. It is not a synonym for central government or supreme government. Federal refers to a covenant or treaty of alliance among sovereign entities. A state is not a province nor an administrative district, it is sovereign entity. US states are in a perpetual union, sharing a limited set of powers.
Health, education, welfare, environmental protection, and most of what the feddle gubmint meddles in are unconstitutional infringements on the various states’ 10th amendment powers. An absurd interpretation of the interstate commerce clause has been used to justify what is clearly contrary to the original intent of the framers. In effect it is the repeal of the 10th amendment and the relegation of sovereign state governments to mere administrative districts.
Invest in wheel barrows — for people to use to haul money to their grocery store.
silly, the tracking system will soon be in place so that currency is no loner at issue. It will all be electronic transactions.
Virtual wheelbarrows can hold any quantity of debased currency!
The only downside is that there won’t be a hundred trillion dollar bill with Dementia Joe’s squinting scowl on it or a $50T Kackles Kamala bill if we dispense with paper.
Warmest February weather in south eastern Michigan on record. I LOVE IT. TWO SNOW THROWERS FOR SALE.
Keep them, just in case. You don’t need them this year but you might the next. You might have the memory of a goldfish as regards weather but some of us are aware that one mild February does not mean that they will all be mild from now on. As the greatest weather forecasters in history might well say, “Sh!t happens!”
Indeed!
Or, just follow the advice of George Carlin’s Al Sleet, the Hippy Dippin Weather Man…
“And remember, if you don’t like the weather, MOVE.”
‘Tonight’s forecast…….dark.’
The easy way out for everyone on this, is for Exxon to sue the EPA and make them prove CO2 is a dangerous pollutant or overturn the ruling.
“It’s like a drug lord blaming everyone but himself for drug problems,” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia business school.
Presumably that analogy applies to BIG LITHIUM too?
Two killed in fire are NSW’s first deaths linked to lithium-ion batteries (msn.com)
According to FRNSW data, there are approximately five lithium-ion battery-related fires in NSW every week.
“This appears to be what we have been fearing for a while now, a person or persons dying due to a lithium-ion battery-related fire in this state,” FRNSW Commissioner Jeremy Fewtrell said.
“We continue to warn the community about the potential for these batteries to explode in flames.
Story Tip
China scientists warn of global cooling trick up nature’s sleeve
It’s time for
a cool change
I know that it’s time
for a cool change
…
You know what the next piece of bullshit will be when that happens – they’ll tell people that the global warming CAUSED the cooling.
Cause, you know, that’s what all that “trapped heat” does./sarc
___________________________________________________________
Woods needs to stop buying into the bullshit. There isn’t any problem.
Agreed. In American business, you either lead, follow, or get out of the way. Back in Oct 2021 when the Democrat House-controlled Oversight Committee had their witch hunt hearings aimed at fossil fuel execs – Exxon’s Darren Woods included – the essentially unspoken thing was that the execs should resign in shame for running disinformation campaigns. I suggested at the time, the hearings could be mirror-flipped against the enviro-activists promulgating the false accusation that there was an industry conspiracy to employ skeptic scientist shills, but the one thing I agreed with was that these current anti-science execs should resign — they are not representing the best interests of their individual organizations by bending themselves into pretzel shapes to appease the greenies. As I suggest at my GelbspanFiles dissections of the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits, the fossil fuel company defendants need to grow a spine and drive a stake through the heart of the blatantly false accusations about them running disinformation campaigns where they supposedly paid scientist ‘shills’ to “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact.”
Steve,
No, he is saying that Exxon did not invent decarbonisation (if I could summarise the transition in one word). The people did, through the government. The government is responsible for servicing what the people want, not Exxon. His role is to comply with the will of the people in the way that exercises corporate strengths and experience and capability, to maximise corporate profitability.
Who can argue against that? Geoff S
I dunno, lightning is free and plentiful. We just need a bottle that can store it without breaking. Perhaps I should petition HM Government to shovel some taxpayer money my way to investigate further… Forget the wind turbines and solar panels, all I need is a lightning rod and a Tesla Powerwall. What could possibly go wrong?
I have no idea what could possibly go wrong but can I watch? From a distance, obviously!
(… url wrong … never mind)
Just get Hockeystick Mann to spit on his hand and hold a five iron up to the sky in the middle of a thunderstorm. Free and abundant energy!
Plus the lightning could perform a public service.
Big oil execs run big companies first. Thus, they must be men of low character because they must both faithfully represent the political leitmotif of the age and duly promote the products they sell. Only few can pull this off this otherwise paralyzing dissonance. This fellow has found a way to sleep at night — blaming the consumer.
Communists and Columbia business school teachers, though I repeat myself, blame stores for high prices of goods. They believe in the free lunch, milk comes from a grocer.
Darren Woods runs a company that runs on science … but he spews anti-science tripe to appease the enviro left who’d ruin him by any means possible no matter what he does to appease them. It would appear he says what he says in order to preserve his job. How he sleeps at night after saying what he says is beyond me.
Which is pretty much what I said, no?
Just searching for the source of the bizarre downvotes…
I think you might have been a bit too eloquent…
Russell Cook,
There are not many large global corporations, so there are not many global CEOs. Very, very few people have had experience in the task, so very people armchair critics are in a position to invent and criticise the motives of CEOs.
Although I was never CEO of a large corporation (and we had continual problems of high turnover of CEOs because they failed) I was experienced in the mineral resources sector and resonate with Darren Woods when he speaks of industry-government interactions (which are mostly never-ending time wasters).
The biggest threat to our continuing growth and profitability was from politicians and bureaucrats who were more interested in pushing ideologies than in learning about the people they regulate.
Wood’s opening statements (if I summarise accurately) are that the transformation sought by the people, expressed as government policy, is already very expensive, will be enornously expensive – and that the people asking for it are not prepared to pay for it. They might not even be able to pay for it. Therefore, for it to happen, large corporations need to be profitable to generate some of the money for the transition.
Is that not so? Is that not clear?
Yeah, it’s clear, while also being a position — for Woods and other Big Oil CEOs — of anti-science weak-willed appeasement to the enviro-left, ceding the moral high ground that there is any global warming issue for oil companies to address at all. When you operate on pro-science and there are plenty of science assessments available to say IPCC assessments are massively overblown and were based on a preconceived anti-science conclusion from the get-go, you do not offer the excuse that saving the world from oil-caused warming is just too cost prohibitive. Instead, when you are hauled before congress and accused of celebrating the “victory” of deceiving the public, and when you stand accused of “repositioning global warming as theory” in disinformation campaigns, and when you stand accused of knowing as a fact back in the ’70s that your industry caused global warming, you deliver an absolute beatdown to your accusers showing how the accusations are based on worthless, never-implemented memos, and that global cooling concerns were all the rage in the ’70s.
What is not clear about taking that kind of leadership position against what are otherwise unsupportable accusations aimed at the industry? This is exactly the reason why I support the implied demand from the Democrats that the 6 execs hauled before the Oct 2021 House Oversight Committee witch hunt hearing all needed to resign, especially API’s Mike Sommers, who was notified well in advance with what he was going to be hit with, and yet the best he could come up with was a pathetic explanation about not knowing about the memo when confronted by – of all unqualified questioners – Rep Ilhan Omar.
But it IS the consumer that releases the CO2 from the fossil fuels.
Just like guns don’t kill people, people do.
If half the people truly were passionate about CO2 release being a great climate control knob, and behaved accordingly, they would…
Trade in ALL their ICE vehicles for EVs regardless of cost
Install Solar Panels in their rooftops and over their backyards
Install Powerwall Batteries on their homes recharged from the solar array
Stop using anything with plastic
Convert heating and cooking to electric
Install heat pumps (which really do not work as indicated)
Stop buying Gasoline, Diesel, Gas or Coal for energy
If they did, the Oil industry would be out of business from lack of sales … But they don’t, they keep on driving ICE and protesting JSO and being hypocrites
If you want to proclaim CO2 from fossil fuel usage is an issue of imminent disaster then it IS the End User that releases it
Like the Gun User that fires the weapon
They might do all those things you said they would do — if they had any reason to believe it would make the slightest difference. Knowing that it would not make a difference in the claimed problem, their rational choice is to ignore those suggestions.
Willy,
Please repeat one sentence of what Darren Woods said that shows “low character”. Then, please, another sentence showing that he represents the leitmotif of the age – if you listen, he says that he does not agree with major parts of it, he would do it differently, it will not succeed by 2050, that it is not the job of corporations to resist, that he is there for discussion with those who seek change.
Geoff S
But in an interview, published on Tuesday, Woods argued that big oil is not primarily responsible for the climate crisis.
NO! That can’t be true because I know the food industry IS responsible for me being overweight!
They’re messing up my waistline too! It’s a conspiracy! 🙂
There are few fat people in Cuba, Venezuela, and there were relatively few in China before capital controls were eased. Starving people don’t go to gyms.
‘There are few fat people in Cuba, Venezuela, …’
Back when I worked in Venezuela, the most common sobriquet among members of the local work force was ‘Gordo’.
Wishful thinking there today.
Local shop had iced cinnamon scrolls on special yesterday… I was FORCED to buy one. !! 😉
Scrolls? What was written on them? Magic spells? Ancient secrets? The recipe for delicious cinnamon rolls?
Down here, in Australia, where English matters… they are called “scrolls” 🙂
Cinnamon scrolls recipe Recipe | Better Homes and Gardens (bhg.com.au)
May the Force be with you…and me too…me too…me too…
HAY where’s mine???
Changing behavior through pricing is more effective than changing behavior through fiat. But if government had tried to tax typewriters out of existence in favor of the then crude and expensive word processors there would have been an unbearable hue and cry.
Markets are not always perfect, but they are usually far better than whatever is in second place.
‘Markets are not always perfect, but they are usually far better than whatever is in second place.’
This all too common way of thinking is why ‘socialism’ in all its forms is still ‘a thing’ despite its awful history of murder and immiseration. The problem with socialism isn’t with its desired ends, it’s with the inevitable means it requires to pursue those ends.
https://mises.org/mises-wire/socialists-it-doesnt-matter-if-socialism-works-what-matters-power
Woods talks like “society” has decided for him to pursue decarbonization and net zero but, man, this is just so hard to do.
NO! You are the CEO of one of the largest, most technically capable companies in the world, and you ought to know better than anyone else that THERE IS NO CLIMATE PROBLEM. Our problem is that YOU have bought into the manufactured illusion of it all.
Sorry for raising my voice.
I’d like to know the truth behind the rationale for his positions. He may be kowtowing to board pressure by environmental activists, perhaps even Rockefeller influences, as most likely he would like to keep his over $20 million annual pay job.
There is truth in his statement that Exxon responds to market demand, and perhaps there is no need to explain the benefits of its products to its customers. Perhaps he’s in a no win situation because whatever he says is demonized and wouldn’t convince anyone anyway.
I agree he is in a no-win situation. I cringe at the way big business is facilitating the propagation of bad policies based on bad science.
Yeah.
It’s even worse than bad science. Fascists have always begun their march merrily.
David,
Listen to his talk again. He is not facilitating the propagation of bad policies. He is resisting it in ways such as noting that it is too expensive, people are not prepared to pay for it, it cannot be done by 2050. That is not facilitating.
Geoff S
I understand your point, and it is well taken. But please understand I am not referring only to this particular talk. Farther back, Exxon and many other large companies could have stood against the unsound claims on technical grounds and did not.
At your suggestion, I went back and listened to the entire interview today. He is a very good communicator. I do think they (Exxon) are facilitating measures they know or ought to know are ineffective for climate mitigation – and therefore contrary to society’s needs and to high ethics. These include direct air capture, CCS for industrial processes, and the production of hydrogen for fuel, which Woods discusses. I know he is in a no-win position, but still he ought to start saying so more openly, that in technical terms, these measures are not known to be worth anything at all in the long run.
Time to tell the “environmental activists” to go pound sand. There is no “crisis” or “problem” caused by our pittance of CO2 “emissions,” nor will we stop the advance of GLOBAL human “emissions” since “developing nations,” not the “west,” are driving the total.
The real irony being that in the US, after years of declining emissions, Biden’s stupid efforts to strangle oil and gas development have resulted in INCREASED US emissions, because using COAL to generate electricity has increased due to gas being in reduced supply and/or more expensive. 😆😅🤣😂
No need to apologize, your / our frustration is completely understandable. The issue is that when government expands into every aspect of our lives, terms like ‘society’ and ‘market’ become synonymous with the ‘state’, so in this regard, Wood’s terminology is correct.
David,
Yes, I get what you are saying, but imagine the scenario if Woods tomorrow said that the transformation that the people want does not align with Exxon thinking and that consequentially, they would decline to participate in selected parts of the IRA.
I mean, how would you tell all and sundry that decarbonization is junk?
How could you plan for the consequences, how would you draw a rabbit from the hat and say “We have special information that says CO2 control knobs are false”? You would, for a start, need rather unequivocal scientific evidence, evidence that has eluded a very large scientific effort to date. Earth climate science is complicated, but it is not the role of a corporate CEO to say his coin toss said to junk it.
Geoff S
Geoff, thank you for this cogent reply. I agree that Woods must be careful. I imagine him beginning to say things similar to what Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan has said recently, along the lines of “Trump was right” about some pretty important policy choices.
But about scientific evidence, it is not so complicated to assess, from authoritative sources, that the core claims of climate harm from CO2 are unsound and have been so all along. I invite your attention to these very short silent videos and the text in the descriptions. I would be most interested in your opinions.
Time lapse of 7 days of hourly GOES East Band 16 images..The point is that the atmosphere obviously does not end up operating as a passive radiative “trap.” Clouds and motion; dynamic self-regulation.
https://youtu.be/Yarzo13_TSE
Time lapse of ERA5 hourly “vertical integral of energy conversion”, plotted as daily min/max/median values at all longitudes at 45N for a whole year. The point is that the single-digit “forcing” of incremental CO2 is lost in the overwhelming energy conversion performance of the atmosphere.
https://youtu.be/hDurP-4gVrY
I fully realize that there is a huge inertia now in “climate science” that must be countered to recover us from the destructive path we are on.
Correction:
Green energy . . . . is hideously expensive and neither is it green.
Woods is spot on. We already have an initial rate, set by 45q borrow and spend legislation.
“Big oil” is not the culprit here. They are providing something we want and need. Such a tax would merely stop the cost communizations from the emitters to the rest of us. The proceeds should be quickly, totally, evenly, remitted to every US resident, after paying out for legit sequestrations. Rough justice since the highest emitters – disproportionately high income/net worthers – suffer less from AGW/fossil fuel pollution than those on the flip side.
You are correct Bob “big oil” is not the culprit. People like you are. There is no need to have any fear of CO2 emissions.
who is suffering from AGW fossil fuel pollution? Where can such pollution be found?
I always laugh when I hear that wind and solar produce the cheapest electricity out there!
If that were true
a) people would be falling over themselves to get this cheap electric and
b) companies would be investing like mad to get some of that action.
But, what happens in the green reality, companies falling over themselves to exit contracts and refusing to bid for new supply contracts because the price is too low!!!
Would you be interested in Tesla Cyber Truck? One with a 320 mile range can be had for $99990 plus options, tax, title, etc. You may save on fuel costs.
I’m just a bit short of that at the moment. Only about $99989 short you understand.
LOL, and lest anyone forgets, that “320 mile range” is pure fiction.
Undoubtedly based on a 100% charge (but the first thing they do is tell you not to charge to more than 80%), and assuming you run the battery to flat (but they tell you not to go below 10 -20%). So multiply by 60% -70% of that for starters.
Then consider all the other “parameters” likely used to calculate that fictitious “range” like “room temperature” or thereabouts (70 something degrees Fahrenheit) ambient temperature with significant reductions to be expected in very hot, or, especially, very cold ambient temperatures, single occupant (so no passengers), no “baggage” of any kind (so leave your stuff at home), flat, dry road (expect less range for hills, rain, snow, etc.), no accessory use of any kind (so no radio, no navigation system, no heat, ventilation fans or air conditioning, no headlights, no wipers, no defogger, no heated seats or steering wheels, etc.), plus probably ridiculous assumptions about the speed of travel (one person’s FOIA request revealed the assumed driving speed to estimate the “range” was THIRTEEN mph).
None of which even vaguely represents the real world driving conditions for most drivers most of the time.
In particular, the faster you drive in an EV, the faster it sucks down the battery charge. So exactly when you need the MOST range (on a long highway trip at highway speeds), you get the LEAST range in an EV. In an ICE car, your range GROWS when you need it the most, which is exactly what you want and need.
And that is especially an issue when an EV takes long to charge, as opposed to a few minutes to fill up a gas tank.
The outrageous prices are the least of a car buyer’s worries; the massively degraded UTILITY is the real issue.
I wouldn’t buy a similar EV for the same or less than the ICE contemporary, because it’s not as useful (not to mention their tendency to self-immolate).
Indeed, everyone, even those who feel especially virtuous, need to take responsibility … or pay the price as stated here. The problem is, what is the price? We are haggling about that, aren’t we? Like others here, I can’t imagine any significant cost; others seem to think it should cost the entire modern world — every convenience.
We are far apart, as people would say in the markets.
Why must I pay any price for CO2 emissions? Why should anyone?
Nobody is to ‘blame’ for anything. There is nothing blameworthy around. Oh yes – of course. We must blame the hundreds of millions that burn ‘traditional biomass’. ( ie dung and their local environment) to keep alive. Producing three times the global energy of all the windmills and solar panels in the world.
Blame blame!
From the above article:
“The people who are generating those emissions need to be aware of and pay the price for generating those emissions. That is ultimately how you solve the problem.”
— Exxon CEO Darren Woods
Well, what else than such blatant hypocrisy do you expect from such a high-heeled executive?
“Mobil Corp. Chief Executive Darren Woods’s compensation rose 52% to $35.9 million last year {2022}, as the oil-and-gas company brought in record profit.
“Most of Mr. Woods’s compensation came from stock awards of $24.9 million, according to a company filing Thursday made to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. That is up more than $11 million from the year prior.”
source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/exxon-ceos-pay-jumps-52-amid-rising-oil-prices-record-profit-a8069ca0
Anybody here care to guess how much of his yearly compensation he himself pays toward offsetting the annual emissions his lifestyle creates . . . you know, those from his use of private corporate jets, being driven around in chauffeured limousines, owning a luxury home and perhaps two or three vacation homes, owning an unknown number of autos and yachts, being wined-and-dined as well as vacationing in lavish locales oversees, etc., etc., etc.?
I’ll start the bidding at zero.
It’s the age-old story coming from emperors and posers-to-such: “Do as I say, not as I do.”
I recently had to listen, briefly, to the claim that the high prices of so many things are do to the large salaries of the top executives. Let’s consider those “top executives” of Exxon or Mobil or pick your own favorite. It certainly is a great deal more wealth than I could possibly lay my hands; envy might be easy.
Now take all their personal earnings and instead spread it evenly over all their customers. Would even the poorest of those customers notice any difference in his/her life?
So, does that imply you believe Mr. Woods hypocrisy is therefore excusable?
What is the hypocrisy that you speak of; not acknowledging that FF burning has no “emissions” downside?
As I stated in my OP above:
Mr. Woods basically stating to others “Do as I say, not as I do.”
I doubt that he would say that he as a user of FF in his personal life should be treated any differently than other users of FF.
I’m pretty sure those large salaries have been around a lot longer than 3 years – they also existed when prices were much lower.
The envy has existed much longer too, as well as the ‘tax the rich’ mentality where of course “rich” is an arbitrary evaluation.
Heh, no that’s another part of his compensation “package.”
I’m just sick of the pandering to Eco-Nazis. Time to tell them to piss off. There is no “crisis” and there is no “problem” that needs to be “paid for” by ANYBODY.
The ex-Exxon CEO?
C’mon. How could any user of the English language pass up the opportunity to write that down?
Wrong approach. He should have said ‘if you believe using fossil fuels is harmful then stop using them’.
“Incensed greens!?” That sounds like the jalapeños I throw in my smoker with a nice brisket every summer; except that I prefer to use the ripe, red ones!
No, no, no! You mean the Malignant Morons of Marxism (MoronCubed, since 3M is busy) are upset because…well, their upset again because that is the only thing they learned in school beside envy, gluttony, sloth and some minor sins like proper drug use and sexual fetishism! If you are NOT upsetting them then you are preaching from the Book of Green Revelations; which is comprised of all the improvements to humanity and our planet that have come from the mouths of true believers like Karl, Vladimir, Joseph, Pol Pot and Mao! Green on the outside, but red, red, red to the core!
“The people causing those emissions”
…. Are Chinese
Well they have to be emitted somewhere. Nothing gets produced without all the energy inputs being from fossil fuels here in modern civilization.
With modern Progressivism, it’s always assumed that it will be someone else made to make the real sacrifices. Selling “cheap” or “free” is always easier. Reality, not so much.
So says the green propaganda. There’s enough of a nugget of truth in that statement so it’s not an outright lie. It’s reasonable to say that the energy delivered by the wind and the sun is cheap (you could even say it’s free). But generating electricity from that free energy requires a lot of material and labour, which have a far-from-insignificant cost. It’s also true to say that electricity generated from wind and solar is cheap – but only if you accept that said cheap electricity isn’t available 70 percent of the time. And it is only available at irregular and unpredictable intervals that don’t coincide with the times that you might actually need it.
Once the cost of backup and/or storage is added, that cheap electricity is suddenly no longer cheap. In fact it’s damned expensive, as we are finding out while the west transitions to the sunny uplands of the promised all-electric utopia.
delivering it cost even more than generating it, it is most definitely not cheap.