WSJ Attacks Exxon for Not Losing Money on New Energy Sources
Article looks down on free market success and leaves out scientists on the other side of the global warming debate.
By Amy Menefee [1]
June 14, 2005
When The Wall Street Journal isnt happy
with profitable business practices, something is amiss.
Jeffrey Balls front-page article on June 14, 2005,
took ExxonMobil Corp. to task for putting money into cleaning up
fossil fuel energy rather than investing in alternative sources such
as wind power. Ball highlighted Exxons competitors, BP and Royal
Dutch/Shell, saying that they accept a growing scientific consensus
that fossil fuels are a main contributor to the problem and they
endorse the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 accord regulating gas
emissions.
Ball extensively quoted Exxon CEO Lee Raymond and
included scientists who have done research for Exxon, but he left
out independent scientific opposition to Kyoto and global warming
theory in general. Ball claimed that a consensus of scientists
believe its clear by now that fossil-fuel emissions are warming
the earth and leading to dangerous consequences. Outside of Exxons
payroll, there are many scientists he could have consulted,
including more than 17,000 who signed a petition stating that the
Kyoto Protocol was based on faulty assumptions.
Ball said Exxons approach to global warming typifies
the bottom-line focus of its entire business, as if that were a bad
focus for a corporation. The article continued that spending
shareholders money to diversify into businesses that arent yet
profitable and that aim to solve a problem his scientists believe
may not be significant strikes the Exxon chief as a sloppy way to
run a company.
Exxon is a for-profit corporation answering to
shareholders, and its primary business is oil. As Ball points out,
it does this better than any other oil company in the world due to
its bottom-line focus. The reporter did not include Exxon
shareholders who were pleased with the companys performance.
About halfway through the article, Ball explained that
Exxon did, in fact, invest in research and development of
alternative energy sources beginning in the 1970s. But the ventures
werent profitable. As early as 1980, eight years before the United
Nations put together a scientists panel on greenhouse gases,
Exxons own scientists were studying theories of global warming.
Their research turned up doubts that mankind is responsible for any
warming trend there might be, Ball reported.
Citing one of the growing chorus of critics who say
Exxons strategy is short-sighted, Ball quoted environmental
advocate Andrew Logans view that there are two possible
scenarios. One was that there is no climate change; the other was
that there is, and humans are causing it. The Exxon scientists
offered a third option: that there could be a warming trend, but man
is not responsible for it meaning no man-made regulatory scheme
could affect the planets climate in a significant way.
Ball stated that Exxon believes cleaner energy
solutions must be cost-effective for other nations to develop them.
Accounting for the cost of cleaning up energy is not something the
media do well, as the Business & Media Institute has documented. Ball
continued that trend, failing to cite the cost of the Kyoto accord
for the United States, which the Energy Information Administration
estimated would be upwards of $400 billion per year.
He also belittled Exxons $100 million investment in
Stanford University energy research, saying that it represents less
than two days of Exxons earnings. However, he emphasized Exxons
contributions to the anti-regulation Competitive Enterprise
Institute, which amounted to a mere $465,000 in 2003 less than 10
minutes of Exxons earnings, using the same calculation.
Overall, the Journals story came out lopsided, with
Exxon on one side and the rest of the world against it. Implying
that Exxon should abandon the traditional free market methods that
have yielded a profit, the article stacked the deck against the
corporation and failed to portray the global warming debate
accurately.
For more on media coverage of global warming, see the BMI Special Report, Destroying America to Save the World. [2]