This joke is impossible to make: Exxon, the company most responsible for the climate crisis tweeted Monday that it was keeping Louisianans and those on the Gulf Coast who were affected by Hurricane Ida in the company's thoughts and prayers.
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Exxon is, in the grand scheme for oil companies, a disorganized presence on social networks. (Yes, I do like to keep an eye on this stuff. It's amazing, isn't it? It is not from Exxons official website, but ExxonMobil Beaumont which is an ExxonMobil Beaumont outpost located outside of Port Arthur Texas. This account is not the only Exxon-linked one that responded to Ida.
ExxonMobil's Baytown operations in Texas sent almost identical thoughts and prayers tweets. They chose a white background instead of red, and added words of encouragement to each other to be as supportive as possible. ExxonMobil Baton Rouge's account went beyond the call, posting regular updates about its hurricane-related flaring activities and providing a link to help people build a disaster plan for hurricane season.
Exxon has been in a bit of crisis PR wise this summer. This is due to a shareholder revolt and embarrassing investigative expos. It's natural for the company to want to show support to the local communities that were affected by the worst storm to hit the U.S. There is one thing that's not so obvious: Exxon is the biggest carbon emitter in history. It has spent decades lying about climate change while making profits.
Climate change is evident in Hurricane Ida. The unusually warm Gulf of Mexico waters gave the storm its strength, transforming it from a Category 1 storm into a Category 4 storm within a matter of days. Ida arrived less than a month following the publication of the devastating Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. It stated that severe storms will likely become more frequent due to decades of carbon emission from human activities like drilling for and burning Exxons main product.
Exxon's critical role in suppressing climate science over literal decades gives this tweet a delightfully, horribly ironic twist. It reminds me of the great tradition of Republican politicians funded from the NRA tweeting their thoughts after mass shootings.
If these receipts were actually distributed, these specific locations would have to answer for the impacts they had on the local communities. Beaumont is located in Port Arthur, a majority-Black community. It is close to some of the nation's largest refineries and is a hotspot for environmental injustice. The cancer rates of Black residents of that county are almost 40% higher than those in Texas. In addition, 80% of Black residents live in an area with heart and lung problems. The Beaumont location is also run by union-busters. Exxon locked out over 650 workers in May to get a vote from the United Steelworkers.
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In 2017, a Baytown judge ordered that the refinery pay almost $20 million for eight consecutive violations of Clean Air Act. This was to prevent the refinery from spewing harmful chemicals into the atmosphere without a permit. The fine was reduced to $14 million. Exxon has been working towards a net zero emission goal. Exxon also announced earlier this summer that it would invest $240 million in upgrading its Baton Rouge refinery. This is the fifth-largest U.S. oil refinery. Subsidence is another factor that has made Louisiana's marshland more susceptible to storm surges like Idas.
Although it may seem presumptuous, I would like to offer a piece of advice to one the largest oil companies in the world: If you're going to continue stalling on climate action and polluting communities while selling fossil fuels, perhaps just don't tweet about it.
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Here is a list with places you can donate if you are looking for more than just thoughts and prayers for the Hurricane Ida victims, as well as multibillion-dollar oil corporations.
