Greed is America’s original sin. I used to think it was slavery and the genocide of indigenous people, but those things happened because of the underlying sin of greed.

Greed continues to be America’s most toxic sin. Corporations are legally required to be greedy (unless they’re nonprofits or “B” corporations). Exxon is a prime example. As Bill McKibben points out in an essay he published yesterday (on June 11), Exxon knew at least as far back as the 1980s that their business model would warm the planet and disrupt climates. “Given what it knew in the 1980s Exxon could have had a head start on building and owning the solutions like sun and wind,” Bill writes. “But, as one of Raymond’s successors said two years ago, that didn’t happen because ‘we don’t see the ability to generate above-average returns for our shareholders’ with clean energy.”

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