Opinion: The Oil Industry Lobby is the Cancer of Our Time

What to do to stop climate change? How to avoid a fact that will jeopardize the very existence of the human race and the world as we know it? It has been fifty years since the popularization of climate change in the 70s, since the world began to realize the consequences of an Industrial Revolution that launched us towards new technologies, but that failed to foresee that resources are not eternal and that eventually they would end . And in these fifty years, countless scientists, environmental leaders, communities and environmental agents have struggled to stop something that seems to have no brake: the planet is warming and the time will come when we will not stand it.

Also read: The Paradox of Climate Change: Rivers Dry Up and Seas Rise

But with fifty years of struggle behind us, supported by science, we have not yet taken a truly drastic step . Yes, we could talk about the Paris or Escazú Agreements, the laws that are advocating for the use of renewable energies, all actions that are extremely valuable for this race, but time is getting shorter and the actions are also falling short. There are changes because the bureaucracy encourages them, but also because, as if they were villains taken from Disney movies, there are still industries and politicians around the world who delegitimize the fight against the environmental crisis.

A clear cancer: the oil industry lobby

A report by journalists from Unearthed, the Greenpeace UK investigative outlet, was recently published in which they uncovered the actions of the oil company ExxonMobil to undermine and limit the measures being taken by the White House to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. They did this from conversations that undercover journalists had with two ExxonMobil lobbyists who work in Washington in the company's government affairs area. One of them, Keith McCoy, even admitted that the company "aggressively" fights to delegitimize climate science by funding shadow groups that deny global warming.

The worst of all this? They are having results. The report mentions that after bipartisan talks, Biden agreed to a scaled-down the final version of his initial infrastructure plan, which involves reducing funding for climate initiatives . And all of this also becomes supremely cynical when we think of Exxon openly claiming to support the fight against climate change.

This fact not only generates controversy, but also leaves us with many questions. One of the most important: if this is done by ExxonMobil, won't other companies in the oil industry do it? Sure, there are many who apparently show their green approach and support for the science of climate change . But how many are not working below the rope to debunk science and finance the denial of global warming?

Literally our planet is dying, literally our species is heading towards extinction, and in the meantime these groups with economic interests and no will to change are doing everything possible to make it so. Because of course, they get the money, but they don't live the immediate consequences of the environmental crisis at a distance. Those who do live it are indigenous communities that lost their home in the Amazon rainforest, marine species that drowned in oil spills, entire families with symptoms of cancer due to water contamination in cities like Bangladesh . Those are the people that live the consequences.

The cancer of our time is the lack of humanity, and at the same time humanity itself, which pulls more towards the economic and individual interests of respected names who have little respect for life itself .