This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

by Naomi Klein

And even as the demand for renewables increases, the percentage the fossil fuel companies spend on them keeps shrinking—by 2011, most of the majors were spending less than 1 percent of their overall expenditures on alternative energy, with Chevron and Shell spending a deeply unimpressive 2.5 percent. In 2014, Chevron pulled back even further. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the staff of a renewables division that had almost doubled its target profits was told “that funding for the effort would dry up” and was urged “to find jobs elsewhere.” Chevron also moved to sell off businesses that had developed green projects for governments and school districts. As oil industry watcher Antonia Juhasz has observed, “You wouldn’t know it from their advertising, but the world’s major oil companies have either entirely divested from alternative energy or significantly reduced their investments in favor of doubling down on ever-more risky and destructive sources of oil and natural gas.”