Woods argued the “dirty secret” is that customers weren’t willing to pay for the added cost of cleaner fossil fuels.
In his comments Tuesday, Woods argued the “dirty secret” is that customers weren’t willing to pay for the added cost of cleaner fossil fuels.
Referring to carbon capture, Woods said Exxon has “tabled proposals” with governments “to get out there and start down this path using existing technology.”
“People can’t afford it, and governments around the world rightly know that their constituents will have real concerns,” he added.
“So we’ve got to find a way to get the cost down to grow the utility of the solution, and make it more available and more affordable, so that you can begin the [clean energy] transition.”
For example, he said Exxon “could, today, make sustainable aviation fuel for the airline business. But the airline companies can’t afford to pay.”
They’re deflecting, but not entirely wrong. Most people rather want to keep their comfortable status quo, than being directly affected by actually effective climate actions. Otherwise people would behave and vote differently. You can’t always blame things on the lack of policies when you willingly vote for the people upholding the status quo instead of those who actually want to do something against it. You can see how much resistance there is whenever there’s even the slightest bit of climate related policy tried to get shoved through parliaments.
I can’t even convince my “liberal” friends and family to buy an electric car (That I know they can afford), because they are afraid of the slight inconvenience of charging. He is right, the West is unwilling to accept a lower standard of living to address oil usage.
Yeah, and now try to convince people that they shouldn’t even drive individual cars at all. It’s just not going to happen. Especially not within the next decade. Not that this time frame seem to matter too much now that we potentially are already past the 1.5 degrees, much ahead of time. I guess we as a species deserve what’s coming for us. Too bad we had to take so many other casualties on our way.
I have talked with friends about beef. On the one hand, the beef industry is a terribly cruel process producing a relatively expensive food that’s significantly contributing to climate change and destruction of forests. By eating less of it you’d save money, reduce animal and human suffering and protect the planet. On the other hand, it’s tasty. Many people will listen to the problems and even acknowledge them, but changing their eating habits is another matter.
It certainly doesn’t help that these people hired the pr firms that did propaganda for big tobacco to kneecap the climate movement. Maybe if they had spent that money in the other direction they could have been collecting subsidizes to develop cleaner fuels.