Exxon lobbyist confesses to his crimes
50 years ago, Exxonmobil’s scientists warned that continued use of fossil fuels would render our planet uninhabitable by humans. Exxon’s response? They buried the reports and embarked on a disinformation campaign modeled on the tobacco industry’s cancer denial.
That campaign continues, even as floods-of-the-century crop up every month or two, as thousand-year heatwaves strike again and again, as wildfires stain our skies the color of blood and zoonitic plagues shut down all activity for years at a time.
Exxon, of course, claims that they’re good corporate citizens, committed to preserving the habitability of the only known planet in the entire universe capable of supporting our species.
Exxon spent millions on corruption: disinformation and influence campaigns (AKA “bribes”) to make tens of billions — and imposed trillions in costs upon the rest of us, and incalculable losses in the form of lost human lives and natural wonders.
https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/30/based/#high-bidders
Exxon denies this — in public. In private, the people who direct these campaigns are immensely proud of their work and keenly aware of the fact that other large, corrupting industries are always on the lookout for talent who can corrupt on their behalf.
For the past eight years, Keith McCoy has been the top Exxon lobbyist in Washington, DC. When Unearthed (Greenpeace UK’s media arm) contacted him pretending to be a corporate recruiter with a lucrative offer, he jumped at the chance to boast about his corrupting accomplishments.
The resulting nine-minute video confirms everything that Exxon’s critics — and anti-corruption campaigners — have said for decades. It’s a gleeful, boastful confession that catalogs the company’s many lies and cheerfully identifies them as such.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v1Yg6XejyE
In the video, McCoy describes how Exxon uses front-groups to sow doubt about the climate emergency and the need to eliminate fossil fuel consumption.
https://www.channel4.com/news/revealed-exxonmobils-lobbying-war-on-climate-change-legislation
He names the senators whom he has (successfully) lobbied to blunt or remove climate protections from Biden’s $2T stimulus. It’s a heartwarmingly bipartisan parade of biddable officials-for-hire whom Exxon has helped out with an often lucrative side-hustle.
On the Democrat side, there’s Joe Manchin (D-WV), Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), Jon Tester (D-MT), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Chris Coons (D-DE) and Mark Kelly (D-AZ).
While the Republicans are Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), John Barrasso (R-WY), John Cornyn (R-TX), Steve Daines (R-MT), and Marco Rubio (R-FL).
McCoy is especially fond of Joe Manchin, whom he calls “a kingmaker” whose office holds “standing weekly check-in calls” with Exxon lobbyists.
https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1410432121710252037
McCoy speaks fondly of the Trump years, and invites the interviewer to google “trump exxon” to get a sense of just how many gifts his employer received during 2016–20.
He also frankly admits that Exxon front groups like the American Petroleum Institute are “whipping boys” sent to hearings in Exxon’s stead, to absorb the performative criticism of lawmakers who nevertheless fail to take substantive action to curb Exxon’s slow genocide.
And he describes how Exxon secretly funded “shadow groups” to “aggressively fight against some of the science.” He stresses — probably correctly — that nothing that Exxon did was illegal.
He neglects to mention the work Exxon has done to ensure that this unimaginably terrible conduct remained legal.
But he isn’t shy about Exxon’s ability to influence policy otherwise. For example, he admits that the only reason Exxon has publicly endorsed carbon taxes is that they know they can prevent any carbon tax from becoming law — it’s all a show.
Exxon corporate, confronted with the video, claimed that it was all reflective of Greenpeace’s bias against giant, sociopathic polluting companies and asks who we’re going to believe, an oil company or our own lying ears?
Do watch the video, if only to hear McCoy describe how he baits the hook for senators and then “reels them in.”
“I make sure I get them the right information that they need so they look good. And then they help me out. They’re a captive audience. They know they need you.”
McCoy has since posted a groveling retraction on Linkedin, claiming his “statements clearly do not represent ExxonMobil’s positions on important public policy issues.” He doesn’t explain why he made those statements if they’re not true.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6816098352954961920/claiming
Exxon has “condemned” the statements and claims McCoy — the company’s most senior lobbyist — “wasn’t involved at all in forming policy positions.”
https://twitter.com/exxonmobil/status/1410389476199784450
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