This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

by Naomi Klein

why would notoriously ruthless for-profit companies accept a business model that relies on them not competing with large parts of the energy sector (wind and solar), requires that they submit to a huge range of costly regulation, all with the eventual goal of putting themselves out of business? The answer is that they would not. Treating natural gas as a truly temporary transition fuel is anathema to the profit-seeking imperative that drives these corporations. After all, who is doing the fracking? It’s companies like BP and Chevron, with their long track records of safety violations and fending off tough regulation. These are companies whose business model requires that they replace the oil and gas they have in production with new reserves of fossil fuels or face a shareholder rebellion. That same growth-above-all model demands that they occupy as much of the energy market as possible—which means competing not just with coal but with every player in the energy market, including vulnerable renewables. To quote John Browne when he was chief executive of BP (he now heads the gas giant Cuadrilla): “Corporations have to be responsive to price signals. We are not public service.”15 True enough—but that was neither always the case with our energy companies, nor must it remain so. The bottom line is simple. No private company in the world wants to put itself out of business; its goal is to expand its market. Which is why, if natural gas is to serve as a short-term transition fuel...