Exxon's Support of a Tax on Carbon: Rhetoric or Reality?

InsideClimateNews (who I’ve been unimpressed with before) via Brian at Eli’s tell us that Exxon may claim to favour a carbon tax, but aren’t exactly enthusiastic about it. Because someone else was saying it, my natural initial reaction was to disagree; but having poked their sources a bit, it looks fairly solid. But not particularly original (see? When you can’t complain by disagreeing with people you can complain that you said it already, instead). I said, in October,

Since 2009, the company has supported a revenue-neutral carbon tax is nice; but I think their “support” has been weak. It is their policy, but they don’t push it hard; they don’t campaign for it.

Did you know that “mustela” probably comes from “mus”, which is “mouse”; for theon [telos] in Greek means ‘long’.

Most interestingly they have a speech by Tillerson from 2013. They even have a link to the relevant text transcribed: As to our advocacy around a carbon tax—I would not support putting a carbon tax in place today…. Of course, we ought to worry about context, so let’s look.

First 30 minutes of the video: intro and speech (heavy on “energy is good for jobs and prosperity and pays lots of taxes” type stuff). Questions at end.
Question (man with no tie, you can tell he’s a hippie): GW is one of the great moral questions of our time, but Exxon is notorious for backing denial; yet company website acks that its a critical problem; and back a carbon tax.
Reply: its a serious problem, a risk management problem; blurred bit about science; pushes collaboration with MIT; manage in two ways: mitigate, e.g. energy efficiency, gas-for-coal, CAFE; with minimum effect on economic performance so as to not destroy economy. But what if none of my mitigation steps make any difference? What if it turns out to be happening for reasons I don’t understand? [WMC: this is hard to parse and at best ambiguous; but he is in question-answering] Then, adaptation. [WMC: he seems to have skipped straight from energy efficiency to adaptation, without pausing at carbon taxes. Lots of hand-waving, literally. Then we’re at the text from the transcript.]

So, the text of the transcript is very slightly lacking context, but not to any significant degree. He really does say that he wouldn’t support carbon taxes now; he comes close to saying that they put forward carbon taxes because they’d prefer them to cap-n-trade; he’s pretty close to saying only a global carbon tax would suit him.

Incidentally, I’m impressed by the sensibleness and seriousness of the session.

“little bride” is sweet, and the piece led me to schöntierlein. Which also tells me it comes from “Dér. de bel*; suff. -ette*”, so maybe “small pretty thing” is right. Meanwhile, the etymology of feles is unknown, but maybe “cognate with Welsh bele ‎(“marten”)”.

Refs

* The EU’s method of dealing with climate change always was insane – Timmy at AS, but also declares the ASI’s undying support for a carbon tax.

• Tillerson still pretty dodgy in 2020.