The cancellation of American culture is coming for ExxonMobil

Friday produced an unfortunate energy story. It is an emblematic story of the difficulty it has become for groups of parties with various interests to work cooperatively to find common ground in the field of energy and the environment. It’s one of the thousand stories we see every day of the current culture of cancellation impacting every segment of American society.

Bloomberg reports that ExxonMobil

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was “suspended,” that is, kicked out of a group called the Climate Leadership Council (CLC), an advocacy organization that pushed the US federal government to put a price on carbon, the preferred being via a national carbon tax. The band don’t call it a “tax,” notice, because it’s a harsh word with too much negative connotation. The CLC chooses to call its idea a “fee” and to make the word even sweeter, the CLC envisions that as part of these “fees” the government would pay all Americans an annual “dividend” that would reward a family. of four a check for $ 2,000 at the end of each year. To reinforce its soft language around all of this, CLC even created an advocacy arm it calls Americans for Carbon Dividends.

Nowhere on the CLC website is it mentioned that in order to receive this $ 2,000 “dividend”, this family of four would have had to pay much more than that in the form of higher bills first. gasoline, heat, electricity and any other activity that involves the creation of carbon emissions for the program to work. After all, the purpose of any tax – sorry, “fee” – on anything is to make it more expensive for consumers and therefore less accessible.

So that’s the main goal of the CTC, and it’s one that ExxonMobil has been campaigning for for at least a decade now. Indeed, Exxon was one of the founding members of the CLC, although the company logo was removed from the organization’s website along with Friday’s announcement. Which seems like an odd action to take since this is a list of “founding” members and allegedly not current members. But when the culture of cancellation comes to you, you are erased.

The other founding members of the group include large energy companies like ConocoPhillips, BP, Shell, Total and BHP, as well as several more well-known names. Other corporate members include GM, JP Morgan Chase, Johnson & Johnson

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and AT&T. Member environmental advocacy organizations are the World Wildlife Fund, the World Resources Institute and Conservation International. The list of individual founding members is also quite impressive: Stephen Hawking, George Schulz, Janet Yellen, Ben Bernanke, Steven Chu, and so on.

To say the least, the impressive CLC membership roster is filled with gravity and intellectual weight. One would not expect such a collection of diverse and formidable talent to engage in unproductive actions such as avoiding one of its most important members just in order to avoid controversy. But that is certainly what happened here.

The CLC decision comes just weeks after one of Exxon’s lobbyists in Washington DC was secretly taped by a GreenPeace agent – who was posing as an executive headhunter – making controversial statements that go to the forefront. against the company’s public positions on several issues, including the concept of a carbon tax – or “royalty”. As I wrote when it all happened, GreenPeace then created a fake “news” report on the issue – the very definition of fake news – and sent it out to all the major media organizations, many of whom have aired the story, one that any group, like CLC, with Exxon among its members, has undoubtedly been asked to answer.

Exxon disowned the employee’s comments and condemned him for making them. Exxon employs more than 100,000 people and many of them make statements every day that violate company policy. It happens.

But for all its gravity and intellectual weight, the CLC has apparently decided it just doesn’t want to face the controversy, which GreenPeace has worked hard to keep alive. CLC CEO Greg Bertelsen said on Friday that “after careful consideration, we have decided to suspend ExxonMobil’s membership in the Council and Americans for Carbon Dividends, our advocacy arm.”

Exxon responded with a statement calling the CLC decision “disappointing and counterproductive”. The company added that “it is more important than ever for organizations to work together to advance meaningful policy solutions to address common challenges and the company’s net zero ambitions.”

So the culture of cancellation is making its ugly presence felt in the debate over how best to put a price on carbon emissions. Whether ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest oil companies, is a member of the CLC and its advocacy efforts or not, it will inevitably remain one of the most important players in the debate. It would certainly be more productive to have this actor at the table of the key advocacy organization.

Unfortunately, this is just another prime example of a long list of ENGOs putting politics ahead of the achievement of the political goals they claim to support. If the other corporate members of the CLC don’t realize that they are also on the ENGO menu, they could have a nasty surprise in the not-so-distant future.