Exxon Lobbyist Caught on Camera Going Full Cartoon Villain

well it's time to crack open a cold one and then pour a little

out for the end of an era here at exxon mobil

that's right for 30 years exxon has been accused of funding disinformation

campaigns and paying off politicians

and lying about climate

change and for 30 years they've had one response

it wasn't me it's the classic

shaggy defense and it's been incredibly

effective for exxon because all of their senior leadership

has stuck to the wasn't me strategy

and their army of lawyers and money has been able to use this blanket

denial to fight off any legal challenges

until june of 2021

when exxonmobil was to borrow a brace from shaggy

caught butt naked banging on the bathroom

floor in an undercover

sting operation by greenpeace

activists greenpeace contacted exxon mobil's senior director of federal relations

a man named keith mccoy

and pretended to be from a middle eastern oil company pr firm that wanted

to hire mccoy for a cushy new job but first they wanted to know

how in the heck exxon was able to avoid accountability

for all of their actions

and keith mccoy in

full hd confessed to like eight different cartoon

villain level evil plots that exxon mobil had spearheaded

to delay action on climate change

30 years of wasn't me's up in smoke in a single zoom call did

we aggressively fight against

some of the science

uh yes carbon tax isn't going to happen but it gives us a talking

point that we can say well what is exxon mobil for well we're for

our carbon tax they start talking about how this is an exon mobile chemical

and exxon mobil is poisoning our waterways

we need congressmen so and so to introduce the spill we need him to

make a floor statement we need him to send a letter

you name it keith mccoy spent the better part of an hour speed confessing

so there's a lot to unpack and i urge you to check out the

many stories that actual

good journalists have written links in the description

but for me there were three specific

turbo confessions that i think were particularly

important right out of the gates if you ever find yourself using the term

shadow group to describe your business associates

you're probably not the good guys did we join

some of these shadow groups

to work against some of the early efforts

yes that's true did we aggressively

fight against some of the science

uh yes you know we were looking out for our investments

we were looking out for

our shareholders in this context

a shadow group is when you or someone you know sets up a separate

group that you then fund to promote fake or misleading

scientific conclusions that support your preferred conclusion

shadow groups are basically how people catfished

each other before facebook

and keith mccoy just admitted that exxon used shadow groups to trick people into

thinking climate change was fake so they could keep making their insane

profits and that's especially

cruella deville style when you consider the fact that exxon has known climate change

is real for over 40 years as demonstrated

from internal documentation going back to july of 1977

where exxon scientist dr james black held an internal meeting explicitly

warning the top executives

about it i made a whole video about this and you can watch it

on my channel if you

feel like it but the tldr

is that in the 90s exxon switched to a deny and delay strategy

not unlike big tobacco

oh fun fact not fun but fact fact exxon mobil actually used some of

the same exact experts that big tobacco used when they tried to convince people

that smoking cigarettes didn't give you cancer

even though they had a mountain of evidence that said it super did

you ever seen the matrix

have you ever seen the matrix

no wait which one is the matrix whoopi goldberg and she can see ghosts

right and if you want an independent

explanation of what a shadow group is feel free to visit

www.shadowgroupexplanation definitely not climatetownrelated.com

and while you're at it consider subscribing

to me on patreon

a thing that will not give you cancer

wait these are my confessions

isn't going to happen but it gives us a talking point that we can

say well what is exxon mobil for well we're for a carbon tax the

senior director of federal policy

admits on camera that they only support a carbon tax because they know it

won't pass and they can use their fake support of it as a talking

point oh my god

he admitted actually do we have a shaggy reference we can use here steven

call me on camera

he even got him on camera

thank you shaggy anyway a carbon tax is actually

a very effective way to fight climate change

it's basically a pollution

tax that says let's charge companies a fee for every ton of carbon dioxide

pollution they emit companies will be incentivized

to reduce their own carbon emissions to reduce the fees they pay and we

can let the precious

free market solve the problem

countries like england and sweden already have a carbon tax and guess what it

actually works so when a bunch of big oil companies like exxon started promoting

a carbon tax in recent years it turned a lot of heads

maybe these big oil companies

aren't trying to delay climate change and are ready to help tackle the problem

a thing they explicitly

state on their websites

but it turns out none of that's true apparently exxonmobil

just did the math and found out that in today's political climate there's no

way to get 60 senators including

10 republicans to vote in favor of actual climate policy

but you don't have to take my word for it take it away senior

director of federal relations at exxon mobil it's going to take political

courage political will in order to get something

done and that doesn't exist in politics

it just doesn't it's basically

never going to happen right is the calculation

no it's not it's not good carbon tax isn't going to happen and they've

been running this carbon tax hustle for over a decade here's former ceo

and former secretary of state

rex tillerson remember that talking about the carbon tax back in 2009

a revenue neutral carbon tax though has the advantage

of being well focused

for achieving our society's

shared goals of reducing emissions over the long term carbon tax carbon tax carbon

tax carbon tax carbon tax carbon tax carbon tax carbon tax carbon tax now

some people have suggested that a revenue carbon attacks has no chance of gaining

sufficient support in congress to become a law

i disagree with this assessment

carbon tax isn't going to happen it's an

easy talking point so since the carbon tax was the only climate policy exxon

mobil would get behind

and a lie detector test determined

that was a lie exxon

probably shouldn't be trusted when it comes to the current climate policy legislation

being debated aka the third

if you spent much time in america you'll notice that our infrastructure

doesn't hold up to extreme weather

or mild weather or no weather and there's this huge infrastructure

package going through congress

right now that would help rebuild america in a more resilient way create a

ton of jobs and help a ton of people but it would require a

bunch of multi-billion dollar corporations

to actually pay their taxes

and that's where exxon draws the line we're playing defense

because the president biden's talking about this big infrastructure

package and he's going to pay for it by increasing corporate taxes

and their strategy is to go after the more vulnerable

senators both democratic and republican

a vulnerable senator is someone who's up for re-election

and would maybe lose that race if exxon decided to fund their competition

you know what keith mccoy actually describes this a lot better

do we have footage of that the democrat

side we look for the moderates

on these issues so it's the mansions

it's the cinemas it's the testers

don't mention i talk to his office every week

he is the king maker

on this because he's a democrat from west virginia which is very conservative

state who's up for reelection in 2022

that's hassan that's kelly

i can't worry about the 2027

class because they're not focused

on reelection the 2022

class is focused on re-election

so i know i have them those are the marco rubios

those are the senator kennedy

those are the senator danes so you can have those conversations

with them because they're a captive audience they

they need you and i need them they're also going after democratic

senator chris coons from delaware

now why would they be going after senator coons who has a very close

release from delaware who has a very close relationship

with biden so we've been working with his office matter of fact our ceo

is talking to him next tuesday

and you know what

it's already working for exxon

because that two trillion dollar infrastructure

plan has stalled and gotten broken down into a smaller

550 billion dollar plan that really only includes roads bridges and some utilities

you know i wonder if a certain exxon

sting operation can shed any light onto that you start to stick to roads

and bridges and instead of a two trillion dollar bill it's a 800 billion

dollar bill if you lower that threshold you stick to highways and bridges

then a lot of the the negative stuff

starts to come out

why would you put in a uh

something on uh uh emissions

reductions on climate change

uh to oil refineries

in a highway bill people say yeah that doesn't make any sense that shouldn't

be in this bill just terrific

stuff and it was almost the perfect crime you just made one tiny mistake

you mic'd yourself up got in front of your own camera and confessed

all of this for an hour to a man you barely knew at the

prospect of maybe making some extra money well obviously

exxon is caught i mean how could they possibly

no way no way no

way yeah after greenpeace

released these videos exxon

dusted off a classic

and just said it wasn't me again

and you gotta admire the absolute

commitment to the bid it is a real power move to say that your

senior director of federal relations

a man whose literal job it is to represent your company's position

doesn't represent your company's

position and just to stick the landing on this whole it wasn't me by

shaggy runner exxon denying it a second time is like if the woman from

the shaggy song had then heard the original

shaggy song in which they explicitly

detail their plans to lie to her and then she confronted

them about that and instead of confessing

shaggy then wrote and recorded

a second song called it wasn't me too and released it on twitter

and if any of this statement is even remotely

true how do i say this

why does keith mccoy

still work at exxon

i mean if he was some kind of liar who went rogue

and said a bunch of dangerous

and incriminating lies about your company all while interviewing

for a different job

wouldn't he have been

of course he would have if you're a fry cook at mcdonald's

and you interview for a job at taco bell in which you get caught

on camera saying you in the fries every night

you get fired if keith mccoy had been lying about all of this they

probably would have fired him but they didn't

because he was probably

telling the truth and exxonmobil

has an amazing strategy when it comes to the truth

they deny it until it blows over then they gather all of it up

and dump it in the ocean

but of course they were going to just deny it because that's a winning

strategy for them and it works so well because our elected representatives

both republican and democrat

won't stop taking money and meetings from exxon

mobile so bravo to you exxon

for bravely launching a secret lobbying campaign

to once again prevent action on climate change

and uh what was the reason

again uh you know we were looking out for our investments

now maybe it's not usually your thing but if you found any of what

i've said compelling i've taken the liberty of putting the phone numbers and contact

information of all of these vulnerable

senators in the description of this video

if you have a chance to give them a call and let them know

that you think it's unacceptable

to take money in meetings with exxon

i think that might really help them out

who are those senators again keith don't mention the cinemas

it's the testers senator capito

tassin that's kelly the senator coons those are the marco rubio

senator kennedy and senator danes so if you are thinking about picking up your

phone and calling these people

do it quick because they're still working on climate legislation

in a different infrastructure

bill which would only actually need 50 votes to pass through budget reconciliation

what am i pod save america

but that would only work if all the democratic

senators and maybe even some republican

senators don't cave to bad faith lobbying efforts by people like keith mccoy

so please contact our senators

all of them get weird with it if you want you better yet invite

some friends over get drunk and just go to town on these guys

and if that's not really your speed

just get educated on the climate crisis maybe even join some local organizations

like citizens climate lobby the sunrise

movement extinction rebellion 350.org

the list goes on because if you're starting to worry about climate change and

you think our system is not that well equipped to handle it you gotta

ask yourself one what was the point of getting it on camera if we're

just gonna let them say it wasn't me

it was you we got it on camera

well that was about four minutes longer than it needed to be huh

seriously thank you so much for watching i really appreciate it and i'm going

to keep making more videos

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patreon page and the link is in the bio

wait people have to pay for these videos now oh no they're still all

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me make them faster and better

oh also uh exclusive

behind the scenes content

and interviews and like stuff that gets cut from the final videos

so you want people to pay for the stuff that's not good enough to

be free i am just

hoping that a few people might want to send like five bucks a month

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you appreciate what could be described

as highly researched low budget

super try climate comedy

climate comedy like edutainment

no like infotainment and you have to pay for it only the bad stuff

the good stuff is still free right

okay this i feel like this really went off the rails hey man don't

look at me you're the one trying to get people to donate to your

climate comedy patreon page and the

link is in the bio

i have not tried marijuana