Exxon’s CEO and Me
Originally published on The Huffington Post.
Dear Rex Tillerson, CEO, Exxon/Mobil:
I’m the one who asked you about global warming at the Council on Foreign Relations last week. Your answer was light years ahead of Mitt Romney and half our Congress in admitting that “increasing CO2 emissions in the atmosphere is going to have… a warming impact.” At least you accept the basic physics that CO2 traps heat. That’s progress. (Watch video and a transcript of our exchange.)
You acknowledged human emissions are raising sea levels and will force us to “move crop production areas around.” Moving them around is the least of it — the Midwest is likely to become a dust bowl in our lifetime, and the price of food will rise a great deal.
But where you lost me and the rest of the audience — and where you risk our economy and our kids — is in saying “we’ll adapt” to climate change which is “an engineering problem, and it has engineering solutions.” That answer, and the attitude behind it, threatens us all and is a giant business mistake, probably the worst in history.