Thanks for your very reasonable reply. You say, "Exxon-Mobil could, by making just a few carefully calculated decisions, reduce the total carbon footprint of o

Thanks for your very reasonable reply. You say, "Exxon-Mobil could, by making just a few carefully calculated decisions, reduce the total carbon footprint of our society by an appreciable fraction". What decisions are you referring to? If you are referring to extracting oil as efficiently and environmentally friendly as possible, then my answer is I'm sure they are trying (due to consumer demand by the way) but operation efficiency is a drop in the bucket to the consumer burning the end product. Now discussing oil consumption, you say "Consumers support the fossil fuel industry because there's effectively no choice" and "it would be deeply personally irresponsible of them to make the expenditures necessary to minimize their personal carbon footprints, because they would then be in vastly worse financial state". My response is: crushing the companies that produce the goods that consumers rely on just hurts consumers. Look at what trying to cut of Russian oil is doing to gasoline prices at the pump. How can you demand oil companies to stop producing oil, when you also want oil companies to produce more oil to help consumers. The solution is, as you alluded to, is to provide consumers with more choice, more alternatives... and that is at the consumer level. Consumers have to make the change. It's consumer demand that companies are trying to fulfill.