The following editorial first appeared in The Baltimore Sun:
Plenty of ink will be spilled in the coming days from critics anxious about Donald Trump’s secretary of state nominee’s ties with Russia — when ever-opportunistic Sen. Marco Rubio is on the list (a spot he reserved Sunday with the tweet, “Being a ‘friend of Vladimir’ is not an attribute I’m hoping for in a #SecretaryOfState”), you know it’s getting serious. But there’s another major reason for the U.S. Senate to keep ExxonMobil Corp. CEO Rex W. Tillerson out of Foggy Bottom.
ExxonMobil is currently under investigation for decades of actively misleading its shareholders and the public about climate change — not simply hiding the known impact of what burning oil and gas was doing to the atmosphere but financing climate change deniers to deliberately prevaricate and confuse. The company has never faced any consequences for that disinformation campaign, which may have cost taxpayers and governments (including ours) billions and perhaps trillions in future mitigation costs.
And Tillerson is no johnny-come-lately to Exxon. He’s worked for the company for more than four decades and has served as ExxonMobil CEO since 2006. We would make the obvious point that Trump could scarcely have picked someone more thoroughly compromised and ruinous on the issue of climate change if he hadn’t already chosen Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a “big league” denier, to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, an organization he happens to be suing on behalf of the oil and gas industry.
One can just imagine what some future White House briefing on a proposed international climate accord would be like with Messrs. Pruitt and Tillerson offering their expertise to Trump, who has already gone on record suggesting climate change is a Chinese hoax. “You think we should sign, Rex and Scott? No? Well, let’s adjourn to Air Force One and burn some fuel.”
Even George W. Bush, a Republican president who actually worked in the oil industry, was more cautious regarding climate change, and his first appointments reflected that 16 years ago when the evidence of global warming was, while still convincing, not nearly as well documented as it is today. Although President Bush failed to take sufficient action, his first secretary of state, Colin Powell, actually recognized the validity of climate change science — and has since endorsed international agreements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The Tillerson nomination extends a troubling trend of choosing for his cabinet a lot of wealthy plutocrats and Wall Street denizens — from a proposed labor secretary who hates the minimum wage and expanded overtime pay to a treasury secretary who was a partner at Goldman Sachs. This isn’t a populist cabinet, as one might expect from a GOP so heavily invested in the tea party or from a candidate who reached out to the working class. It’s the guest list for a rowdy get-together this weekend at Jay Gatsby’s house on Long Island’s Gold Coast.
Perhaps Tillerson may have the intestinal fortitude to pull a 180 in his cozy and admiring relationship with Vladimir Putin and actually challenge the Russian president on the annexation of Crimea or maybe genocide in Aleppo, where children are being burned to death. Still, it’s hard to believe he’s suddenly going to recognize that public interest trumps Exxon’s interests or that using “fake news” and other instruments of propaganda to deny basic science for the sake of short-term profits and CEO bonuses is both legally and morally wrong.
Under such circumstances, one would hope Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the Democrats’ ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, could muster a bit more concern than what was expressed in the statement his office issued Tuesday. The fairly routine press release essentially warns Tillerson that questions would be asked at his confirmation hearing and that the senator is “deeply troubled” by the mogul’s past opposition to U.S. sanctions on Russia.
It’s all very well to be civil about this, Senator Cardin, but is a desire to “know more about Tillerson’s worldview” really what’s necessary under the circumstances? If Democrats aren’t willing to fight more passionately about the dangers posed by global warming, exactly who will? It won’t be Rex Tillerson, that’s pretty certain.
