We saw the value of coal companies collapse a few years ago, and it doesn’t seem like they are coming back. Could oil be next?

The big picture: Today,ExxonMobil is not even in the top 40 most valuable companies in America. It’s losing money, cutting staff, and stretching to maintain an unsustainable dividend…

Exxon has lost 54% of its value this year alone. That’s some $163 billion. By contrast, Chevron is down 42%, or $95 billion, while NextEra is up 23%, or $26 billion.

Felix Salmon, The Week

This drop in value could be a result of the Covid recession, if you ask me, and oil could come roaring back in the medium term, if you ask me. But the longer term story is one of renewables slowly but surely taking over.

Oil is a product that our civilization wants and needs to function. I don’t really blame companies for producing that product. Governments should have put an appropriate tax on the negative social and environmental consequences of it a long time ago. But there is a special level in hell for Exxon and some of its past leaders, because they knew the reality of global warming decades ago, and their decades of propaganda war against the American public have a lot to do with what many people believe about climate change today, and the failure of our political system to prepare and meet the challenge for at least 20 years, if not 50 years.