The hypocrisy of ExxonMobil’s new multi-million dollar ad campaign is a classic example of extreme hubris: if we say it, it must be so. The ads -- running nonstop on TV and in print -- extol the company’s commitment to our great energy challenges... but cleverly never mention the words “global warming.”
These ads are beyond audacious, with lines like “It will take straightforward honest dialogue about the hard truths that confront us all.” And: “Wishful thinking must not cloud real thinking.” Who is writing this stuff?
No doubt it was in pursuit of “straightforward honest dialogue” that they plowed $12 million dollars into organizations whose main purpose is to spread misinformation and confusion about the wide consensus in the scientific community that global warming is happening now -- and we caused it.
Are there real live human beings running this company? Do they go home after work, kiss their wives and have family dinner? Do their kids say “Hi, Daddy, how was work today?”
ExxonMobil is a huge part of our global warming problem. It’s time they started taking the excess cash they are making off of the American people (last quarter they reaped $8 billion in windfall profits from the high prices at the pump) and started really trying to solve the problem. These massive profits (which the company has complained is so much cash they don’t know what to do with it all) make the new energy bill, with its subsidies for this ultra-rich company, a cold, hard slap in the face of the American taxpayer. ExxonMobil and their cronies in Congress had better wake up and engage those “hard truths” they like to talk about, because there’s no advertising campaign yet invented that will refreeze the polar ice caps or slow down the extreme weather heading our way.