Chevron Promises Shareholders It Will Double Temperatures

SAN RAMON, CA—Asked on a quarterly earnings call about the oil company’s long-term prospects, Chevron executives on Monday reportedly promised shareholders they would double temperatures. “Over the next decade, we believe we can drive temperatures up by as much as 80 to 90 degrees,” CEO Mike Wirth told dozens of shareholders on the call, directing them to an accompanying chart that showed global temperatures increasing at least 8% annually over the next decade. “We’re using cutting-edge technologies and best-in-class geospatial-mapping techniques to rapidly escalate the average heat index to a level far outstripping even what we’ve been able to achieve in the past few years—and we see sustainable temperature growth well into the future. We’re committed to continuing our world-class emissions rates in the quarters ahead, and we expect to see that pay off with abundant temperature increases for both large and small shareholders alike. While we don’t want to make wild projections, if everything goes right, we don’t think it’s out of the question that we could see yearly high temperatures reach 154 degrees by 2030.” Wirth also told shareholders that Chevron was making significant inroads in its overseas presence and that, with any luck, most of the temperature increase would be concentrated in emerging markets like India and sub-Saharan Africa.