Actually, Big Oil's record stock buybacks are exactly the climate leadership we demanded

The financial press is currently apoplectic over the state of global energy markets, and frankly, it is exhausting to witness such a profound lack of vision. The Middle East remains a geopolitical powder keg, shipping lanes are severely disrupted, and Brent crude is hovering at eye-watering levels. Consequently, the oil supermajors are reporting quarterly profit margins that rival the gross domestic product of mid-sized European nations.

Yet, the usual chorus of progressive voices and populist politicians are absolutely furious. They point out that despite this unprecedented ocean of capital, companies like ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, and Chevron are flatly refusing to ramp up their production. The rig counts remain stubbornly stagnant. The exploration budgets are entirely frozen. The drill bits are sitting quietly in their sheds. Instead of expanding operations, these corporate titans are executing massive share repurchases and showering their investors with historic dividends.

To read the op-ed pages of my supposedly forward-thinking peers, you would think this was a tragedy. They are screaming about corporate greed. They are demanding the government step in and force these companies to lower prices by flooding the market with cheap crude. It is frankly embarrassing to watch the environmental movement completely abandon its principles the moment a gallon of unleaded crosses the four-dollar mark.

For thirty years, we have had one central, unifying demand: keep it in the ground. We have marched in the streets, we have chained ourselves to heavy machinery, and we have thrown perfectly good soup at priceless works of art, all to beg the fossil fuel industry to stop extracting hydrocarbons from the earth's crust.

Now, miraculously, they are doing exactly that. Through the sheer, unadulterated pursuit of shareholder value, Big Oil has stumbled into the most effective climate action plan in human history. They have looked at the vast reserves of unburned carbon beneath the soil and decided it is vastly more profitable to simply do nothing and charge us double for the existing supply.

I was having a macrobiotic lunch with a deputy to Chevron CEO Mike Wirth in Davos last month, and the sheer exhaustion on his face was palpable. He had spent his entire morning fending off attacks from short-sighted politicians who wanted him to solve the energy crisis by fast-tracking a dozen new deepwater platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.

He is entirely correct. The profound discipline required to look at a map of highly lucrative, untapped oil fields and say, 'No, let us simply squeeze the middle class instead,' is the kind of bold, visionary leadership we have been demanding for years. They are starving their own core business model to save the biosphere, and they are being vilified for it.

This brings me to the profound hypocrisy of the modern consumer. You claim to want a net-zero future. You put the little green leaf emojis in your social media bios. You nod solemnly when documentaries tell you that we must drastically alter our way of life to survive.

But the absolute second it costs eighty-five dollars to fill up your Hyundai Tucson so you can drive to a big-box store to buy plastic lawn furniture, you are ready to burn the whole movement to the ground. We are actively watching the fossil fuel industry voluntarily dismantle its own growth narrative to enrich a tiny cartel of shareholders, but sure, let us get mad because your commute got slightly more expensive.

You cannot have it both ways. A transition away from fossil fuels was never going to be a frictionless utopia where everything stays cheap forever. It was always going to involve brutal demand destruction through unbearable cost increases. Big Oil is finally delivering the punishing economic pain necessary to force you onto public transit, and rather than thanking them, you are whining about your personal household budget.

Let us examine the alternative. Suppose the government did step in and force Shell and Exxon to reinvest those record war profits into aggressive new extraction campaigns. What would happen? We would see a renaissance of drilling. The global supply would flood. Prices at the pump would plummet to two dollars a gallon.

Do you know what working-class people do when gasoline is two dollars a gallon? They buy speedboats. They take cross-country road trips to national parks they have no business visiting. They live in sprawling exurbs and commute fifty miles each way in pickup trucks the size of Sherman tanks. Cheap energy is a moral hazard that the planet simply cannot afford to subsidize anymore.

By funneling that capital directly to Wall Street instead, we are safely sequestering that wealth away from the carbon-intensive hands of the general public. A hedge fund manager who receives a massive dividend payout is going to put that money into high-end real estate or perhaps a bespoke art collection. A billionaire's scope-three emissions are remarkably low compared to what ten thousand plumbers would do with an extra five hundred dollars a month.

At COP28 last year, I moderated a panel titled 'The Sustainable Yield: How Dividends Save the Biosphere.' The room was packed with the exact sort of forward-thinking financiers who understand this dynamic. We discussed how starving the operational side of an oil business to gorge the financial side is the most realistic path to avoiding stranded assets.

Of course, the populist left remains furious because the catalyst for these profits is a tragic geopolitical conflict. It is undeniably grim that a war in the Middle East is driving these margins. But if we are going to be serious adults about the climate crisis, we must be willing to accept the dividends of disruption wherever they originate. What is a geopolitical supply shock, if not an organic, market-driven carbon tax?

The reality is that the market has finally priced in the apocalypse, and the market has decided the best way to handle it is to aggressively harvest cash from the dying middle class before the oceans boil. This is what peak sustainability looks like in a late-stage capitalist framework, and frankly, it is the only framework we have left.

We need to stop treating oil executives like supervillains for refusing to do the very thing we told them was destroying the earth. They have laid down their drill bits. They have cancelled their exploration leases. They are sitting quietly in their boardrooms, bravely doing absolutely nothing but getting richer.

The next time you see an energy CEO purchase a third mega-yacht with the cash they squeezed out of your winter heating budget, I urge you to look past your own petty financial ruin. Do not complain. Say thank you.