News & Analysis
January 7, 2021
On Sunday, before the world gaped in horror at the events in Washington, The New York Times published what can gently be described as a real head-scratcher: a deeply sympathetic profile of several soon-to-be graduating students whose “well-laid plans” to secure “lucrative” careers in the oil industry are being dashed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Petroleum engineering students are having a hard time, facing the uncertain future of their industry of choice https://t.co/b4CGCvPgHK
— Clifford Krauss (@ckrausss) January 3, 2021
Climate folks on Twitter were… not impressed.
Siri, show me the worst possible framing for an article about an industry hell-bent on destroying the planet & taking the economy down w/ ithttps://t.co/Y9i4vl83s1
— Collin Rees #DefundThePolice (@collinrees) January 4, 2021
The article’s entire conceit — from the notion that Big Oil’s decline is somehow tragic, or in the words of its 22-year-old lead subject, “entirely unforeseen,” to the romantically-lit glamor shots of the students next to polluting oil rigs and refineries — begs more than a few questions about the most responsible way to frame such a story, and who deserves sympathy (and blame) for the collapse of Big Oil jobs.
For starters, the article makes one single, half-hearted mention of the climate crisis: “Even after the pandemic ends, some of [the students and recent graduates] fear that growing concerns about climate change will lead to the inevitable decline of oil and gas.” [emphasis added]
What’s notably absent is any acknowledgement of 1) the severity of threats posed by climate change, and 2) Big Oil’s leading role in creating the crisis. Seems like that would be some pretty important context!
Imagine a glossy profile of workers worried about getting good paying jobs on the Death Star without mentioning that the point of the Death Star is to destroy planets.
Instead, the article places its laser focus on the economic fallout of COVID-19 as the cause of Big Oil’s downfall. “Demand is going to come back,” predicts one 23-year old who got an internship at an oil company where his cousins are managers. But that assumes the decline in demand for oil is tied to the pandemic alone. As NPR’s Camila Domonoske points out, “Between hurricanes, geopolitical rivalries, irate investors and climate pressures, oil producers faced a host of challenges that weren't created by the coronavirus — and can't be cured with a vaccine.”
Indeed, long before COVID-19 reared its ugly head, Big Oil was propped up by generous government subsidies and banking on risky investments. Even while Americans suffered at length, and still continue to without aid from the federal government, oil companies received bailouts and exclusive invitations to the White House. Which begs the question: who is really responsible for the industry’s drawn-out fate — and could the outcome, for workers and for all of us, have been prevented?
Though the industry’s downturn may have come as a surprise to young people eyeing work in fossil fuels, Big Oil knew full well what it was getting itself into. As recently reported by Bloomberg, Exxon and its peers regularly calculate climate risks without revealing that data to shareholders or the public. And while these companies claim to be reducing emissions and greening their operations, internal documents reveal their still staggeringly disproportionate and climbing investments in fossil fuels — and their failure to put money behind the cleaner technology they’d promised.
That deceptive behavior is nothing new. While major oil companies are still advertising themselves as part of a socially responsible, forward-looking industry that’s crucial to the employment of many Americans, they are being sued by state and local governments across the United States for lying about the catastrophic climate impacts they knew their products would cause. And all of us — including this next generation of potential workers in their own industry — are paying the price.
So what if these companies hadn’t been liars? Over thirty years ago, oil industry executives had the resources, knowledge and tools to lead a transition to clean energy at their fingertips -- but chose to line their own pockets with short-term profits instead. If Exxon actually were the clean, green company it could have been and pretends to be today, perhaps the Times story would be about the next generation of young people the industry was training as clean energy engineers and the like. Instead, executives are continuing to collect bonuses, bailouts and bankruptcy settlements while laying off over 100,000 workers between March and August alone, and hanging workers out to dry.
So do these young people at the start of their careers deserve sympathy? Maybe, I guess, but what about neighborhoods next to fossil fuel projects, who have suffered with polluted air and water for years? What about the communities losing their homes and livelihoods to hurricanes, drought, and rising seas? What about small businesses flooding regularly, or people who’ve had to flee their homes from climate disasters in the middle of a pandemic, or all the young people who will inherit the costs of a warming world? For that matter, what about the older, legacy oil workers who were promised steady lifetime employment, but are somehow not mentioned in this piece?
We can talk about the end of oil all we want — but we can’t leave their own actions, those who enable them, and the consequences of their toxic legacy, out of the picture.
