(2023-07-12) Oil Companies Are Laughing While The World Burns

Oil companies are laughing while the world burns. ABC, CBS, and NBC (big media) aired a combined 123 segments about the heat wave, but only seven mentioned climate change.

At this point, failing to connect extreme heat to climate change is more than oversight—it’s misinformation

To truly do the climate story justice, the news media must go further, and connect climate change to the fossil fuel companies refusing to reduce their planet-destroying emissions.

In the past week, as the world continued to suffer under extreme heat advisories, fossil fuel CEOs denied the need to phase out their core products. Shell CEO Wael Sawan told the BBC that the world still "desperately needs oil and gas” and that cutting production would be “dangerous and irresponsible.” French petroleum company TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne said the company would invest two-thirds of its capital in oil and gas, with one-third left over for low-carbon technology.

Fossil fuel companies raked in record-breaking profits this year, with major fossil fuel companies making nearly $100 billion in the first quarter

Hundreds of new oil and gas projects around the world have been approved in the past year, according to a New York Times analysis

Worse, the fossil fuel industry is taking more direct action to influence climate policy. The world’s largest climate conference, COP28 (COP), is being led this year by a United Arab Emirates oil baron. Al-Jaber and other UAE leadership have already said they have a new “game-changing plan” to solve the climate crisis: involving oil and gas companies more fully in the U.N. climate talks.

last week, the U.N.’s former climate chief admitted she was wrong to ever trust them as good-faith partners in tackling climate change. In an op-ed for Al Jazeera, former executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change Christiana Figueres wrote: More than most members of the climate community, I have for years held space for the oil and gas industry to finally wake up and stand up to its critical responsibility in history... But what the industry is doing with its unprecedented profits over the past 12 months has changed my mind.