Exxon boss speaks out against climate change 'fear factor'

Putting to one side Tillerson’s assertions with respect to climate change/fear factor – the assertion that poor people "They'd love to burn fossil fuels because their quality of life would rise immeasurably," needs to be tested against reality.

Taking the example of Senegal, there are a number of businesses that provide electrical lighting and refrigeration to villages that are not connected to the national power network. This is accomplished through the use of PV panels and batteries. This solution is found to be cheaper than the fossil fuels sold by Tillerson’s company (which would power things such as diesel generators etc). There are a number of companies active in this market and they make a business out of it. The poor people are economic actors willing to pay European rates for electricity. No subsides and no government intervention is involved.

Poverty is tackled in this sense by providing clean light (not kerosene lamps) and low cost refrigeration (for storing food). PWR has no connection to any of these companies in any respect.

Moving on to another Tillerson assertion "You'd save millions upon millions of lives making fossil fuels available to parts of the world that don't have it," as the previous comments show – renewables could do the same thing, but cheaper and better.

The last word goes to JK Galbraith (The Culture of Contentment page 115) with respect to the US Council on Foreign Relations and Tillersons talk Galbraith noted “issues discussed did not touch on the intellectually challenging…. or politically divisive issues” one supposes a place where conventional wisdom is aired to the usual suspects.

Suggestion to Tillerson: get better PR, your current bunch are not up to it.

Tackling global poverty should have a higher international priority than reducing carbon emissions, because it would give billions of the world’s energy poor access to oil and gas supplies, in his view.

No conflict of interest there. More people to buy oil. While lack of access to energy and poverty are correlated, i find it hard to imagine a resources such as oil being available to more than 6 million people at a reasonable price. If you talk coal, the other fossil fuel perhaps, but even Mr. Rex Tillerson (or should i say T Rex http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrannosaurus) would probably agree that coal is not a simple engineering problem.

on the top of what has been rightly pointed out already with respect to provide clean renewable energy insstead of incresing burngin fossil fuel, I would invite Mr. Exxon to consider in conscience (assuming he has one)whether exploitation of poor countries' oil resources by Exxon, Chevron and the likes like happening since decades in Niger delta are contributing to keep entire populations into poverty. Oil coppanies are well knwon to steal natural resources in developping countries paying peanuts to often undemocratic beaurocrats who keep their people in miserable conditions. I find outraging to be lectured on poverty by people like Exxon CEO

@ Martin,
I agree that adaption will be necessary and energy is important for poverty reduction. What is your position on subsidies for fossils fuel extraction? is it a good thing that governments spend to support the use and production of fossil fuels, but do not cover the externalities via taxes.

In response to Mr Livermore's comment on "kneejerk reaction" I provided some concrete examples of where renewables are being deployed more cheaply (and sustainably) than the fossil fuel "solution" proposed by Exxon. Thus on a simple economics basis the use of, for example, PV to provide a social good (light & energy) outperforms the use of fossil fuel.

Moving the argument on to subsidies (or indeed climate change or the EU's emissions policy) suggests that you have no counter arguments to the central point: poor people do not need to be dependent on fossil fuels sold by Exxon. There are alternatives, they are cheaper, healthier (try sitting in a hut with a kerosene lamp) and more sustainable - once installed PV panels last for 20 to 25 years, LEDs last as long.

To restate, I have no involvement with any RES projects in Senegal or anywhere else for that matter.

Tillerson and his ilk would like poor people to get "hooked" on the fossil fuel habit. There are alternatives. It is unfortunate that you divert the argument down paths irrelevant to the points Tillerson made.