Exxon Mobil Needs a Longer View

John D. Rockefeller has been described in many different ways: as greedy and cutthroat; as munificent and caring; as “solitary, taciturn, remote, and ascetic,” in the words of author Daniel Yergin. But as a manager, perhaps Rockefeller’s most indispensable quality was this: He was uncompromisingly forward-looking.

It was Rockefeller, more than any single figure, who helped revolutionize the way people in the nineteenth century illuminated their homes, hastening the shift from costly whale oil to kerosene—a fuel that was, as he put it, “cheap and good.”

Rockefeller’s heirs recently evoked that history as they went public with their criticism of Exxon Mobil, charging the company with concentrating too much on short-term gains and not doing enough to cultivate cleaner, renewable forms of energy for the long haul. “They are fighting the last war, and they’re not seeing they’re facing a new war,” griped Peter O’Neill, Rockefeller’s great-great-grandson.