#Darren Woods

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Electrons, not molecules

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then SAN FRANCISCO (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

When hydrocarbon barons do their damndest to torch the Earth with fossil fuels, they call us dreamers. They insist that there's a hard-nosed reality – humanity needs energy – and they're the ones who live in it, while we live in the fairy land where the world can run on sunshine and virtuous thoughts. Without them making the tough decisions, we'd all be starving in the frigid dark.

Here's the thing: they're full of shit.

Mostly.

Humanity does need energy if we're going to avoid starving in the frigid dark, but that energy doesn't have to come from fossil fuels. Indeed, in the long-term, it can't. Even if you're a rootin' tootin, coal-rollin' climate denier, there's a hard-nosed reality you can't deny: if we keep using fossil fuels, they will someday run out. Remember "peak oil" panic? Fossil fuels are finite, and the future of the human race needn't be. We need more.

Thankfully, we have it. Despite what you may have heard, renewables are more than up to the task. Indeed, it's hard to overstate just how much renewable energy is available to us, here at the bottom of our gravity well. I failed to properly appreciate it until I read Deb Chachra's brilliant 2023 book, How Infrastructure Works:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/17/care-work/#charismatic-megaprojects

Chachra, an engineering prof and materials scientist, offers a mind-altering reframing of the question of energy: we have a material problem, not an energy problem. If we could capture a mere 0.4% of the sun's rays that strike the Earth, we could give every person on the planet the energy budget of a Canadian (like an American, only colder).

Energy isn't just wildly abundant, though: it's also continuously replenished. For most of human history, we've treated energy as scarce, eking out marginal gains in energy efficiency – even as we treated materials as disposable, using them once and consigning them to a midden or a landfill. That's completely backwards. We get a fresh shipment of energy every time the sun (or the moon) comes up over the horizon. By contrast, new consignments of material are almost unheard of – the few odd ounces of meteoric ore that survive entry through Earth's atmosphere.

A soi-dissant adult concerned with the very serious business of ensuring our species isn't doomed to the freezing, starving darkness of an energy-deprived future would think about nothing save for this fact and its implications. They'd be trying to figure out how to humanely and responsibly gather the materials needed for the harvest, storage and distribution of this nearly limitless and absolutely free energy.

In other words, that Very Serious, Hard-Nosed Grown-Up should be concerned with using as few molecules as possible to harvest as many electrons as possible. They'd be working on things like turning disused coal-mines into giant gravity batteries:

https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/02/06/this-disused-mine-in-finland-is-being-turned-into-a-gravity-battery-to-store-renewable-ene

Not figuring out how to dig or flush more long-dead corpses out of the Earth's mantle to feed them into a furnace. That is a profoundly unserious response to the human need for energy. It's caveman shit: "Ugh, me burn black sticky gunk, make cave warm, cough cough cough."

Enter Exxon CEO Darren Woods, whose interview with Fortune's Michal Lev-Ram and editor Alan Murray contains this telling quote: "we basically focus our technology on transforming molecules and they happen to be hydrogen and carbon molecules":

https://fortune.com/2024/02/28/leadership-next-exxonmobil-ceo-darren-woods/

As Bill McKibben writes, this is a tell. A company that's in the molecule business is not in the electron business. For all that Woods postures about being a clear-eyed realist beating back the fantasies of solarpunk-addled greenies, Woods does not want a future where we have all our energy needs met:

https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/the-most-epic-and-literal-gaslighting

That's because the only way to get that future is to shift from molecules – whose supply can be owned and therefore sold by Exxon – to electrons, which that commie bastard sun just hands out for free to every person on our planet's surface, despite the obvious moral hazard of all those free lunches. As Woods told Fortune, when it comes to renewables, "we don’t see the ability to generate above-average returns for our shareholders."

Woods dresses this up in high-minded seriousness kabuki, saying that Exxon is continuing to invest in burning rotting corpses because our feckless species "waited too long to open the aperture on the solution sets terms of what we need as a society." In other words, it's just too late for solar. Keep shoveling those corpses into the furnace, they're all that stands between you and the freezing, starving dark.

Now, this is self-serving nonsense. The problem of renewables isn't that it's too late – it's that they don't "generate above-average returns for our shareholders" (that part, however, is gospel truth).

But let's stipulate that Woods sincerely believes that it is too late. It's pretty goddamned rich of this genocidal, eminently guillotineable monster to just drop that in the conversation without mentioning the role his company played in getting us to this juncture. After all, #ExxonKnew. 40 years ago, Exxon's internal research predicted climate change, connected climate change to its own profits, and predicted how bad it would be today.

Those predictions were spookily accurate and the company took them to heart, leaping into action. For 40 years, the company has been building its offshore drilling platforms higher and higher in anticipation of rising seas and superstorms – and over that same period, Exxon has spent millions lobbying and sowing disinformation to make sure that the rest of us don't take the emergency as seriously as they are, lest we switch from molecules to electrons.

Exxon knew, and Exxon lied. McKibben quotes Woods' predecessor Lee Raymond, speaking in the runup to the Kyoto Treaty negotiations: "It is highly unlikely that the temperature in the middle of the next century will be significantly affected whether policies are enacted now or 20 years from now."

When Woods says we need to keep shoveling corpses into the furnace because we "waited too long to open the aperture on the solution sets terms of what we need as a society," he means that his company lied to us in order to convince us to wait too long.

When Woods – and his fellow enemies of humanity in the C-suites of Chevron and other corpse-torching giants – was sending the arson billions to his shareholders, he held back a healthy share to fund this deceit. He colluded with the likes of Joe Manchin ("[D-POLLUTION]" -McKibben) to fill the Inflation Reduction Act with gifts for molecules. The point of fantasies like "direct air carbon-capture" is to extend the economic life of molecule businesses, by tricking us into thinking that we can keep sending billions to Exxon without suffocating in its waste-product.

These lies aren't up for debate. Back in 2021, Greenpeace tricked Exxon's top DC lobbyist Keith McCoy into thinking that he was on a Zoom call with a corporate recruiter and asked him about his work for Exxon, and McCoy spilled the beans:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/01/basilisk-tamers/#exxonknew

He confessed to everything: funding fake grassroots groups and falsifying the science – he even names the senators who took his bribes. McCoy singled out Manchin for special praise, calling him "a kingmaker" and boasting about the "standing weekly calls" Exxon had with Manchin's office.

Exxon's response to this nine-minute confession was to insist that their most senior American lobbyist "wasn't involved at all in forming policy positions."

McKibben points to the forthcoming book The Price Is Wrong, by Brett Christophers, which explains how the neoclassical economics establishment's beloved "price signals" will continue to lead us into the furnace:

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3069-the-price-is-wrong

The crux of that book is:

We cannot expect markets and the private sector to solve the climate crisis while the profits that are their lifeblood remain unappetizing.

Nearly 100 years ago, Upton Sinclair wrote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." Today, we can say that it's impossible to get an oil executive to understand that humanity needs electrons, not molecules, because his shareholders' obscene wealth depends on it.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

#pluralistic #bill mckibben #exxon #exxonknew #solarpunk #climate #climate emergency #climate crisis #gaslighting #guillotine watch #Darren Woods #incentives matter

[dadsinsuits]

Darren Woods

#suitdaddy #suiteddaddy #suit and tie #men in suits #suited daddy #suited grandpa #suitedman #suit daddy #daddy #silverfox #suitfetish #suit bulge #buisness suit #suited men #suitedmen #suited man #americans #buisnessman #Darren Woods

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

The world isn’t on track to meet its climate goals — and it’s the public’s fault, a leading oil company CEO told journalists.

Exxon Mobil Corp. CEO Darren Woods told editors from Fortune that the world has “waited too long” to begin investing in a broader suite of technologies to slow planetary heating.

That heating is largely caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and much of the current impacts of that combustion — rising temperatures, extreme weather — were predicted by Exxon scientists almost half a century ago.

The company’s 1970s and 1980s projections were “at least as skillful as, those of independent academic and government models,” according to a 2023 Harvard study.

Since taking over from former CEO Rex Tillerson, Woods has walked a tightrope between acknowledging the critical problem of climate change — as well as the role of fossil fuels in helping drive it — while insisting fossil fuels must also provide the solution.

In comments before last year’s United Nations Climate Conference (COP28), Woods made a forceful case for carbon capture and storage, a technology in which the planet-heating chemicals released by burning fossil fuels are collected and stored underground.

“While renewable energy is essential to help the world achieve net zero, it is not sufficient,” he said. “Wind and solar alone can’t solve emissions in the industrial sectors that are at the heart of a modern society.”

International experts agree with the idea in the broadest strokes.

Carbon capture marks an essential component of the transition to “net zero,” in which no new chemicals like carbon dioxide or methane reach — and heat — the atmosphere, according to a report by International Energy Agency (IEA) last year.

But the remaining question is how much carbon capture will be needed, which depends on the future role of fossil fuels.

While this technology is feasible, it is very expensive — particularly in a paradigm in which new renewables already outcompete fossil fuels on price.

And the fossil fuel industry hasn’t been spending money on developing carbon capture technology, IEA head Fatih Birol wrote last year on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

To be part of a climate solution, Birol added, the fossil fuel industry must “let go of the illusion that implausibly large amounts of carbon capture are the solution.”

He noted that capturing and storing current fossil fuel emissions would require a thousand-fold leap in annual investment from $4 billion in 2022 to $3.5 trillion.

In his comments Tuesday, Woods argued the “dirty secret” is that customers weren’t willing to pay for the added cost of cleaner fossil fuels.

Referring to carbon capture, Woods said Exxon has “tabled proposals” with governments “to get out there and start down this path using existing technology.”

“People can’t afford it, and governments around the world rightly know that their constituents will have real concerns,” he added. “So we’ve got to find a way to get the cost down to grow the utility of the solution, and make it more available and more affordable, so that you can begin the [clean energy] transition.”

For example, he said Exxon “could, today, make sustainable aviation fuel for the airline business. But the airline companies can’t afford to pay.”

Woods blamed “activists” for trying to exclude the fossil fuel industry from the fight to slow rising temperatures, even though the sector is “the industry that has the most capacity and the highest potential for helping with some of the technologies.”

That is an increasingly controversial argument. Across the world, wind and solar plants with giant attached batteries are outcompeting gas plants, though battery life still needs to be longer to make renewable power truly dispatchable.

Carbon capture is “an answer in search of a question,” Gregory Nemet, a public policy professor at the University of Wisconsin, told The Hill last year.

“If your question is what to do about climate change, your answer is one thing,” he said — likely a massive buildout in solar, wind and batteries.

But for fossil fuel companies asking “‘What is the role for natural gas in a carbon-constrained world?’ — well, maybe carbon capture has to be part of your answer.”

In the background of Woods’s comments about customers’ unwillingness to pay for cleaner fossil fuels is a bigger debate over price in general.

This spring, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will release its finalized rule on companies’ climate disclosures.

That much-anticipated rule will weigh in on the key question of whose responsibility it is to account for emissions — the customer who burns them (Scope II), or the fossil fuel company that produces them (Scope III).

Exxon has long argued for Scope II, based on the idea that it provides a product and is not responsible for how customers use it.

Last week, Reuters reported that the SEC would likely drop Scope III, a positive development for the companies.

Woods argued last year that SEC Scope III rules would cause Exxon to produce less fossil fuels — which he said would perversely raise global emissions, as its products were replaced by dirtier production elsewhere.

This broad idea — that fossil fuels use can only be cleaned up on the “demand side” — is one some economists dispute.

For the U.S. to decarbonize in an orderly fashion, “restrictive supply-side policies that curtail fossil fuel extraction and support workers and communities must play a role,” Rutgers University economists Mark Paul and Lina Moe wrote last year.

Without concrete moves to plan for a reduction in the fossil fuel supply, “the end of fossil fuels will be a chaotic collapse where workers, communities, and the environment suffer,” they added.

But Woods’s comments Tuesday doubled down on the claim that the energy transition will succeed only when end-users pay the price.

“People who are generating the emissions need to be aware of [it] and pay the price,” Woods said. “That’s ultimately how you solve the problem.”

#us politics #news #the hill #2024 #carbon emissions #green energy #climate change #climate crisis #exxon mobil #Darren Woods #United Nations Climate Conference #COP28 #carbon capture and storage #renewable energy #International Energy Agency #Fatih Birol #fossil fuels #Securities and Exchange Commission #emissions

[alicemccombs]

#exxon #Darren Woods #climateactionnow #healearth

[doriannegay]

Here is the link for the sneaky videos i was able to film discreetly during Little Shop.

not a full slime tutorial of course but it's still a little something for those of you who couldn't come and see Darren perform <3

#darren criss #evan rachel wood #little shop of horrors #broadway #off broadway

[d-criss-news]

[HQ] Darren Criss as Seymour, Evan Rachel Wood as Audrey and Bryce Pinkham as Orin in the Westside Theatre's off-Broadway production of 'Little Shop of Horrors'. (Photos by Emilio Madrid) | Source

#darren criss #evan rachel wood #bryce pinkham #little shop of horrors #little shop of horrors bway #photos #press #feb 2024

[datshitrandom]

Darren Criss | 2023

#darren criss #2023 in review #mia criss #mia swier #evan rachel wood #joey richter #lauren lopez #this is a really #loooooooong #long post #sowy #it was a busy year for our mr. criss #the fact that i started putting this together in july lol #thats just sad #🙃 #120 images and didn't cover everything #and i know i could have turn sone into gifs but i just like a looong post in chronological order #gifs later #please do not repost #q

[dorothy16]

via noel macneal’s instagram story.

#darren criss #alan menken #james lapine #evan rachel wood #noel macneal #little shop of horrors #little shop backstage #noel macneal ig #me edits

[na-page]

Darren Criss | Final curtain call - Little Shop of Horrors | March 31, 2024

#i really glad finally see him #darren criss #love of my life #evan rachel wood #little shop of horrors #lsoh 0331 #my video

[texaschainsawmascara]

Black Swan / Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me / killed my old self but the new me isn’t much better / Euphoria 2x05 / Pahanhautoja (Hatching) / The Girl on the Train / Like Differently Love - Malia Makana / Letters to Dr. Y. - Anne Sexton / x / Thirteen / Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad; “Lost” tr. by Sholeh Wolpé / Salvare la faccia (Psychout for Murder) / Crying During Sex - Ethel Cain / Again - Pom Pom Squad

#parallels #black swan #darren aronofsky #natalie portman #mila kunis #vincent cassel #twin peaks fire walk with me #david lynch #laura palmer #hatching #the girl on the train #malia makana #thirteen #evan rachel wood #psychout for murder #forugh farrokhzad #ethel cain #anne sexton #pom pom squad #mia berrin

[yourdailyqueer]

Darren Keith Woods

Gender: Male

Sexuality: Gay

DOB: Born 1958

Ethnicity: White - American

Occupation: Opera singer, opera director, musician

#Darren Keith Woods #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbt men #queerness #male #gay #1958 #white #singer #opera singer #musician

[sillyname30]

littleshopnyc: - So this is love ❤️

#darren criss #evan rachel wood #little shop of horrors #instagram

[cassie1022]

#darren criss #evan rachel wood #little shop of horrors #hollywood reporter

[darrencrissdaily]

The fact that in year five, we continue to attract talent like Evan Rachel Wood and Darren Criss is a testament to Howard Ashman’s and Alan Menken’s Little Shop of Horrors being one of the finest achievements in musical theater — and to Michael Mayer’s perfectly and joyously staged production

#darren criss #evan rachel wood #darren: little shop of horrors

[fishyyyyy99]

I finished watching my rewatch of Never Have I Ever right in time for season 4 (the last season) of Sex Education, which I just finished watching a few hours ago.

Anyway, I'm just going to brain vomit a bunch of my thoughts, so if you disagree, please do so politely (because fandoms genuinely terrify me sometimes):

Maeve and Otis deserved the Ben and Devi treatment. No, I don't mean that they should have ended up together. Breaking up was the right thing for Otis and Maeve. And I really loved the way it was written, and Maeve's letter to Otis. But Ben and Devi's very special connection was emphasised throughout all four seasons, but I feel like they stopped doing that for Maeve and Otis somewhere along the way (though there were still some very nice scenes). But also, I have to say that in season 1, Maeve and Otis were the BEST (and I have never stopped shipping them simply because of how much I loved them back then). They were my favourite fictional ship ever, back then. I would have been obsessed with them, like I ended up being with Ben and Devi, if they'd stayed that way.

Paxton and Devi deserved the Ruby and Otis treatment. I'm just saying that because more pining is always fun for me. Of course, I wouldn't want Devi to treat Paxton like Otis treated Ruby in the last season, though. Also, I think Ruby was interesting enough that she deserved more space for her individual arc, like Paxton got.

The friendships on Sex Education are chef's kiss. None of the friendships on Never Have I Ever have ever made me feel as much. For me, Ben and Devi's dynamic outshone Devi, Eleanor, and Fabiola's dynamic. But the dynamic between Maeve and Otis eventually ended up being outshone by Maeve and Amy's friendship, in my opinion (and there were several other beautiful friendships portrayed on the show).

I think both shows do portray parent-child relationships quite well, but Nalini and Devi's relationship is my favourite.

I know a lot of people think Sex Education has too many characters, but I will say that I actually ended up interested in all of the characters. I don't think I am as interested in the side characters of Never Have I Ever.

Aimee reminds me a little of Trent, but I like her much better.

Ruby reminds me a little of both Ben and Devi (and Paxton, I suppose).

I wonder what types of conversations Ben and Maeve could have about how their parent-related abandonment issues have made them not feel good enough and have affected their relationships with other people in general, in a hypothetical crossover. It would also be interesting to see the contrast between Maeve's grief over thr death of a parent she both loved and hated, and Devi's grief over the death of a parent she practically worshipped.

Eric exploring his relationship with God as a gay man made me wonder how it would have been if they had done something similar with Aneesa.

Both shows are groundbreaking in different ways.

#devi vishwakumar #maitreyi ramakrishnan #ben gross #jaren lewison #ben x devi #paxton hall yoshida #darren barnet #nalini x devi #nalini vishwakumar #poorna jagannathan #sex education spoilers #never have i ever spoilers #otis x maeve #maeve wiley #otis milburn #emma mackey #asa butterfield #aimee gibbs #aimee lou wood #trent harrison #benjamin norris #aneesa qureshi #megan suri #eric effiong #ncuti gatwa #fabiola torres #eleanor wong #lee rodriguez #ramona young

[theivesbustamate]

Evan Rachel Wood and Darren Criss for The Hollywood Reporter.

📸: Emilio Madrid

#evan rachel wood #erw #i stand with evan rachel wood #darren criss #nyc #thr #the hollywood reporter #interview #2024 #theater play #little shop of horrors