Move Over Monsanto and Nestle, We Have a New #1!
How Exxon and Koch Industries have revealed themselves to be the worst entities in the history of human civilization
The East India Company kept running slaves between Africa and the USA after the practice was outlawed in their own country. It made them (for a time) the richest company on the planet. They did this knowingly.
Monsanto falsified reports and documents to continue to sell bottles of cancer in the form of agricultural and lawn products (think Roundup). They did this knowingly.
Nestle malnourished a generation of babies to such an extent, that it caused the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million babies a year at its peak. They did this knowingly.
Apple markets the shit out of the iPhone, while they had to install nets around the Foxcom factory in China to prevent the workers from jumping to their death as conditions are so terrible. They do this knowingly.
But those companies are the United Way or Salvation Army compared to Exxon and Koch Industries.
And, I am just singling out the ringleaders as there are many associated companies who were involved but it’s unclear who knew that they were killing all life on Earth 40 years ago and who didn’t.
Did you know Exxon was the leading institution researching climate and the effects of CO2 and methane on our atmosphere going back to the 1950s? Not Harvard, not Cal-Tech, Exxon.
Exxon wanted a leg up on the competition as it was clear, as long ago as the late 1950s and early 1960s, that fossil fuels and the CO2 released were bad for the environment. They wanted to adapt before anyone else so they spent millions employing the top climatologists in the field. It was a smart business move.
In fact, Exxon was a leader in green energy research (per the Frontline documentary noted below) throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90’s. They were poised to be heroes. However, Lee Raymond (Exxon CEO 1993–2005) knew the profit was in the oil, and not solar panels. So he discontinued green energy programs in favor of the environment-destroying oil exploration. He decided to maximize profits until someone stopped him.
In the early 1990’s Exxon fired everyone in the research division that wasn’t associated with crude oil and discontinued all the programs they helped to evolve.
Before the scientific team at Exxon were canned, (with small payouts, NDA’s, and thinly veiled threats to keep quiet) they loyally did their jobs and kept the leadership of Exxon up to date as to how badly they were destroying our habitat.
So when the leadership of Exxon knew what they were doing to the Earth, they didn’t increase spending on the alternative energy sources that Exxon had been a leader in the development of. Instead, Exxon chose to shut down the research & development team for alternative energy (solar, wind, lithium batteries)and they went all-in on fossil fuels even though Exxon’s own experts made him painfully aware they were destroying the planet.
Let that sink in.
By the early 2000s, fracking had become a booming business. Improved techniques allowed exploration where it was almost impossible in the past. The cleaner-burning natural gas was considered a savior over the environmentally harmful crude oil.
Exxon wasn’t the first to get behind fracking, but they were first to know what the methane being released (a by-product of fracking) into the atmosphere was doing. Yet they got into it and didn’t say a word when it was touted as a “clean burning” energy alternative.
That’s pretty evil, but it gets much, much worse.
Armed with the realities of what Exxon was doing, Lee Raymond, with the help of Koch Industries, started a massive misinformation campaign. I guess the money they saved on the R/D department came in handy as the campaign cost close to a billion a year before 2000 and is now closer to $5 billion a year.
The Koch Brothers had been cultivating a massive misinformation campaign since the early 1980s. The main thing they needed was money. Because convincing the world the Devil doesn’t exist is very expensive I guess.
They set up “Conservative Think Tanks” (link below to Wikipedia that has a solid list and at the bottom of the page I will link to a story I did on Koch’s a year ago with much more detail) to pay lobbyists and elected officials to do as they are told.
To be clear, what the elected officials were told to do was “lie”.
Koch-list-
They changed laws, fought new legislation, attacked honest people trying to save the planet, and ultimately they (Koch, with financial help from Exxon, among others) got the U.S. Supreme Court to make bribing sitting politicians legal. Think I’m kidding or making this up?
Citizens United vs. the FEC
The piece I did last year goes into great detail and is linked to the bottom of the page, but here is the Wiki link to get you up to speed.
The Kochs and Exxon have controlled the GOP since Bush #1 at least. Had they never known what they knew, they would just be greedy, but multiple former employees of Exxon and Koch said in a recent 3-part Frontline documentary (they finally ignored their NDA’s en masse), that they knew what they were doing.
Of course, when you refuse to be interviewed (and refuse to let anyone with an interest in your company be interviewed) when PBS’ Frontline says they are doing a piece on “your knowingly facilitating the mass-extension of all humans on planet earth,” it is what it is.
Three-part Frontline special
The most incriminating documentary I have seen on the subject by a long shot. Please watch:
PART 1
PART 2
PART 3
Not only did Exxon know, but their employees were also the ones who first knew. Scientist after scientist said, “they had a voice to power” rule so the heads of EXXON could be ahead of the business trend.
“Everyone knew what was going on and they just lied”, said a former EXXON scientist.
Lee Raymond is 91 and should be called in front of Congress, at the very least. He was the first person to call the evidence his experts were screaming at him, “inconclusive”.
It was such a cognitive choice to lie that the next CEO came out and admitted he knew what was going on as soon as he took over. Rex Tillerson (yeah, he was next after Lee Raymond) had a press conference to (sorta) come clean. He admitted they were now aware of the damage fossil fuels caused and that they would work to change things.
That press conference was 10 years ago.
Nice work changing the direction of energy and Exxon there, Rex.
That was many years ago. I’d tell you a date and perhaps a link to the press conference, but shockingly, the only place on earth I can find it is inside the Frontline documentaries I have already linked.
Since then, the Koch machine and Exxon have only put more money into the lobbying and prepaid “scientific” reports trying to cast doubt on what has now been scientific consensus for the better part of 25 years. Or 30 to 40 years if you were a scientist or executive working for Exxon.
LASTLY
There have been 5 mass extinctions:
From www.earthsurfaceprocesses.com/:
With the exception of the K/T event, which is generally accepted to have been caused by a meteorite impact, it is likely that mass extinctions were caused by the coincidence of different types of environmental catastrophes generated within the Earth, without external influence, which the biosphere could not adapt to. Any one event on its own may not have been so bad, but the combination of events that have different underlying causes may be the ultimate cause of mass extinctions.
Thus it is an interesting truth that the biggest event in history, the end-Permian extinction, is not associated with evidence of a meteorite impact.
They were caused by “Changes the earth couldn’t adapt to”. Supervolcanoes, meteorites the size of a small city plowing the earth at light speed, things we don’t have control over. We have/had control over this.
If we leave any artifacts for the next group of life forms to learn from, we can point to Exxon and Koch Industries as the villains, but what difference will it make to the Klingons or Goat-rhino-snail creations that come next?
Maybe carve it into a rock or something because it’ll be 100s of thousands of years before a civilization repeats what we knowingly destroyed.
Link to Koch article.