Readers React: Exxon’s climate-killing pursuit of profit reflects American thinking

To the editor: The Times has shown us that Exxon Mobil, as powerful as it is (and with resources to hire the best advisors), is still subject to whimsical fantasies about the future. The corporation understood the consequences of climate change back when Jimmy Carter was president, yet it ignored the science and thwarted remedial action, as if Exxon could reverse physics by itself. (“How Exxon went from leader to skeptic on climate change research,” Oct. 23)

Other petroleum corporations (mostly European) are calling for a carbon tax, but not Exxon (or Chevron). Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and even Caltech refuse to divest from fossil fuel companies.

There’s something uniquely American about placing personal prosperity ahead of community well-being, a kind of frontiersman entitlement attitude from the pre-industrial era that persists to this day. Everything around us since then has changed, but not that attitude.

I subscribe to the ethos of “it takes a village” — we’re going to either make it or break it together.

Robert Haw, Altadena

..

To the editor: Now we know that Exxon had evidence in the 1980s (thanks in part to its own research) that carbon dioxide emissions were causing climate change, but it chose in its public relations to emphasize the uncertainties of the science to protect its profits.

Anyone resolved not to act when the outcome is uncertain would never board an airplane.

How to decide whose advice to follow when it is not absolutely certain who is right? One way is to consider the consequences of each side’s being wrong. If climate change believers prove to be wrong, we may undo the steps they have recommended. If climate change doubters prove to be wrong, runaway warming will have begun and it will be too late to avoid cataclysm.

James Van Cleve, Claremont

..

To the editor: I read your article on Exxon’s climate change stance and was struck speechless, especially as a grandfather wondering about the long-term fate of my children and grandchildren.

I think of Walt Whitman’s term for the incomprehensible greed he saw emerging after the Civil War — “scrofulous” — and wonder whether there exists any classification or name for deliberate corporate and political subterfuge such as this.

Exxon’s greed defies our individual and communal abilities to grasp exactly what work of deformity and death civilization is delivering all of us to.

David Matlin, San Diego

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook