Darren Woods

Climate Change Denial Business Darren Woods

Darren Woods joined ExxonMobil in 1992 and worked his way up to the position of chairman and CEO in 2017. He is a vice chairman of the National Petroleum Council, “serves on the board of directors of the American Petroleum Institute and the board of trustees of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.” In 2018 he was ranked 34th on Forbes list of most powerful people for increasing ExxonMobil’s profits.

Climate Change

Darren Woods dismisses carbon emission targets as a “beauty” match between companies. He is accelerating the company’s “rejection of climate proposals, challenging sponsors and rebuffing ballot measures as either micromanaging or unneeded.” In 2020, ExxonMobil “blocked six climate resolutions from appearing on the proxy ballot at its May 27 shareholder meeting.”

ExxonMobil started research on climate change around 1977, 11 years before it became known to the public. Scientist James Black warned, “doubling CO2 gases in the atmosphere would increase average global temperatures by two or three degrees,” which ExxonMobil deliberately ignored. In 1989, Exxonmobil helped create a Global Climate Coalition to discourage the US, China, and India from joining the Kyoto Protocol, which would have set limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

In the 2000s, ExxonMobil published an ad “Unsettled Science,” which misused data to argue that “fossil fuels may not be causing global warming.”

ExxonMobil is notorious for using language that “downplays its role in the climate crisis… and undermines climate litigation, regulation, and activism.” This language includes calling on consumers to heat their homes efficiently, be smart about energy use, and improve their gas mileage. This rhetoric deflects responsibility to consumers and blames fossil fuel use on demand, rather than the supplier.

Alaska:

ExxonMobil is the largest holder of gas in Alaska. In 2008, a Native Alaskan village filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil and other gas companies claiming “the defendants’ contribution to global warming through their emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses substantially and unreasonably interferes with the plaintiffs’ rights to use and enjoy public and private property in Kivalina.” ExxonMobil successfully got the lawsuit dismissed on claims that the lawsuit was a political, not legal matter.