Five years ago Shell was ready to fight global warming. Now it’s rooting for it.

How Big Oil Gave Up On the Climate

By Will Oremus
Slate

Big oil companies believe in climate change. How could they not? Already, the melting Arctic is opening up new shipping lanes that could allow them to tap into vast deposits of oil and natural gas. Despite a string of setbacks, Royal Dutch Shell has poured $6 billion into Arctic drilling and still calls it the company’s “most attractive single opportunity for the future.”

Coverage of climate change tends to focus on the losers, of whom there are likely to be very many. The world’s poor, especially, are apt to find themselves starved, swamped, or parched as seas inundate cities and droughts turn farmland into desert. But this is not the primary subject of McKenzie Funk’s fascinating and troubling new book, Windfall. Instead, Funk travels the world to meet the winners—the entrepreneurs, charlatans, and multinational corporations that are devising ingenious ways to make a buck amid the coming chaos.

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