Last week at his State of the Union address, President Biden took time to call out the excessive profits the oil industry has been posting: BP had just announced a $27.7 billion profit for 2022, more than doubling last year’s earnings. This announcement comes at the tail end of a record-shattering fourth quarter and 2022 for Big Oil. ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and ConocoPhillips all reported similar 2022 profits as the fossil-fueled Russian invasion of Ukraine continues.
But instead of demanding accountability and clawing back the windfall profits tax of these giant, greedy corporations, President Biden instead bemoaned that they aren’t investing more of their money into frilling for oil, instead of stock buybacks and Executive bonuses.
Enough. Big oil will not do the right thing, even if President Biden asks them to. We need to enact a windfall profits tax and force these greedy, polluting corporations to pay for the clean energy transition our planet and workers need. SIGN NOW to demand Congress take action.
The fact is, Big Oil’s greed knows no bounds and this shameless price-gouging will continue until our leaders decide to act. For the past year, we’ve been pushing Congress to introduce a Windfall Profits Tax to provide direct relief to consumers that have been subjected to Big Oil’s greed.
And over the last few days, the campaign has only gotten more clear, urgent, and infuriating.
- Clear because last year, the six biggest oil companies made more money than in any year in history: more than $200 billion dollars.
- Urgent because the science remains clear that the climate criss is here, now, and as Greta Thunberg argued in a persuasive LA Times Oped today, we need to invest trillions of dollars in the transition from fossil fuels to 100% clean energy – a transition that President Biden, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, and leaders at every level agree must happen in the next two decades.
- And Infuriating because at the same time they’re making record profits, those same Big Oil companies are walking away from their proevious commitments on climate change: BP backed off its plan to reduce emissions, and Exxon abandoned the “algea based biofuels” program that they’d spent more money advertising than researching.