Previously on Dread.

And so I think what happens is they started to realize that this can actually affect our

business.

I was very naive.

I thought that if they realized that climate change was real, they would start making big

investments in renewable energy.

It's a huge company.

They had a huge amount of profits.

Why couldn't they think some of their profits into a new area which is going to be new business?

In the early 1980s, Reagan replaced Carter in the White House and promptly ripped out

anything solar, dismantling subsidies for alternative energy shortly after.

But that did not mark the immediate end of research into either climate change or alternatives

to fossil fuel.

Republicans at the time were still approaching global warming as a science and innovation

problem, a business opportunity more than an economic threat.

Ed Garvey's tanker project was still underway at Exxon, the company was still funding climate

research, and climate science was continuing at various government agencies too.

The nation was on track to tackle this global warming thing.

Or so it seemed.

It seems to me that the fundamental thing that underlies it is this change in what I

call the political power within the corporation.

I think what happened is they started to realize that this can actually affect our business.

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