http://www.hindustantimes.com/opinion/will-climate-change-get-sidelined-under-trump-s-key-aide-tillerson/story-lXSKsvgttAD1D4FU0cde1H.html
Will climate change get
sidelined under Trump’s key aide Tillerson?
Darryl D’Monte
A supreme irony in United States president-elect
Donald Trump’s Cabinet appointments is that he is choosing the very kind of
corporate honchos whom he accused Hillary Clinton of supporting during the
campaign. He called for “draining the swamp”.
In October he said: “We’ve seen this first-hand in
the WikiLeaks documents in which Hillary Clinton meets in secret with
international banks to plot the destruction of US sovereignty in order to
enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends and her
donors.”
In choosing Rex Tillerson to be his secretary of
state, Trump couldn’t have chosen someone who better represents a “special
interest”. As CEO of ExxonMobil, he headed the biggest oil and gas company in
the world, the fifth-largest publicly traded company by market capitalisation.
In 2014, Forbes listed it as the second most profitable company in the world
out of 500.
His net worth of $150 million is overshadowed by
that of his cabinet colleague, Betsy DeVos, who is worth $5.1 billion. The
combined net worth of the Cabinet is estimated to be around $14.5 billion, most
of whom have no experience in government. Trump has brandished as hubris what
was camouflaged in Washington: Every US government is beholden to corporate
interests, who also fund their campaigns, but he has gone much further by
putting plutocrats directly in power.
There are two concerns regarding Tillerson. First,
will he be able to divorce his business dealings from his diplomacy? Trump
referred to his “deep understanding of geopolitics” as a qualification for his
key post. ExxonMobil operates in 50 countries and is in many ways a State in
its own right. It is economically larger than many countries and has its own
foreign policy and contracted security forces. Can what is good for
corporations be good for the US?
Second, Tillerson has been far too close to Russia
President Vladimir Putin and his company has extensive dealings with Russia. In
2011, he brokered a deal whereby ExxonMobil gained access to the enormous
resources beneath the Russian Arctic, in exchange for which Russia’s
State-owned oil company, Rosneft, was able to invest in the US goliath’s
operations overseas. Tillerson is not only friendly with Putin but also counts
Igor Sechin, Rosneft’s executive chairman and a former deputy prime minister
who has been described the second-most important man in Russia, as a personal
buddy.
Potentially, Tillerson faces a direct conflict of
interest. The 2011 Exxon-Rosneft deal was frozen by the US in 2014 when it
imposed sanctions on Russia following its annexation of Crimea and military incursion
into Ukraine. This had cost the company $1 billion and Tillerson asserted that
decision-makers should be aware of the “collateral damage” in imposing
sanctions. Since he has to formulate foreign policy, will he turn a blind eye
to the depredations of countries, some of which have a dubious record in their
oil and gas industries?
At the best of times, business and diplomacy make
strange bedfellows. In Tillerson’s case, the situation in even more complicated
by the fact that the CIA has accused Russia of hacking emails to embarrass
Hillary Clinton before the election and US President Barack Obama has ordered
an enquiry into this extraordinary allegation. This is a true-life plot that
belittles any fiction conjured up by scriptwriters of American political TV
serials.
Tillerson’s appointment has to be gauged against
one vital yardstick: How he deals with climate change issues at home and in
international negotiations. It is undoubtedly the single-most vital issue that
confronts the world, since it threatens every nation. Unlike his president, he
is not an agnostic. He has referred to the “catastrophic” consequences if left
unchecked. He is obviously in favour of continuing to use fossil fuels, which
cause global warming, but isn’t necessarily against a carbon tax.
However, this may well be instance of double-speak,
since Exxon has earlier lobbied against the scientific acceptance of climate
change. And deeds speak louder than words: It dragged its feet in cleaning up
the spillage in Alaska in 1989 from its oil tanker, Exxon Valdez, considered
one of the worst in history. While courts originally slapped damages of $5
billion, this was substantially reduced later.
As secretary of state, Tillerson will determine US
policy in implementing the UN’s 2015 Paris agreement, which it has ratified.
His president and several Cabinet colleagues will be less than enthusiastic in
doing so. The US has only voluntarily agreed to reduce its emissions by 26-28%
from 2005 levels by 2025 and “make best efforts” to reduce them by 28%. This is
extremely modest and pales by comparison with the EU, which sets reductions on
1990 levels, as well as China.
He will be abetted by Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma’s
former attorney-general, who now heads the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA). Pruitt has the dubious distinction of unsuccessfully suing the EPA
several times. Obama had to bypass the Republican-controlled Congress by
introducing the Clean Power Act through an EPA promulgation. While Trump
declared the law a “war on coal”, Pruitt has challenged it in 27 states,
arguing that it violates states’ rights. He is also alleged to have close ties
to coal and gas companies.
Make no mistake. The US is undergoing a fundamental
change, with corporate interests openly gaining ascendancy and short-term
objectives overruling strategic national and international interests. Will it
begin to resemble Russia, a country with unscrupulous oligarchs, and forfeit
its claim to being a leading democracy?
Darryl D’Monte is chairperson, Forum of
Environmental Journalists of India
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