> This seems to be incorrect. Given my estimation of the current political climate, if you sacrifice yourself to save the world, you will be dead and then someone else will destroy the world anyway while you're not there to stop them.
Probably, but look at it from the 1970s. The environmental movement was at its greatest legislative power, the major federal environmental legislation passed at the time was often bipartisan since environmental issues weren't nearly so neatly ideologically coded as they are now, and you had a bunch of high-profile environmental disasters that kept the issue at the forefront of politics. You also had energy crises throughout the 70s. All of that severely undermined public trust in the industry.
Despite their horrible public image since then, the fossil fuel industry has accomplished a great deal politically. They managed to convince an entire political party that climate change doesn't exist despite decades of research and ever-increasing amounts of evidence. They've fended off greater legislative and regulatory oversight repeatedly since then. And while we may not be paying them to "save the world," we're still giving them a great deal of subsidies in the form of tax benefits, consumer incentives that end up increasing the usage of their products, and the massive gift of not taxing their significant negative externalities. So we are, at least, paying them.
Put simply, their lobbyists have always been skilled, as evident by their accomplishments despite the decades-long reality that the majority of Americans don't much like or trust them. So is it really that much of a stretch to expect that they could have gotten significant federal support for a clean energy transition that started back in the 1970s and was gradual enough that it didn't shock markets and the consumers? Or that, if they were able to secure subsidies and preferential tax treatment to extract fossil fuels, that they couldn't do the same for not extracting them?
Anyhow, if I didn't make it clear enough, the sacrifice would have been entirely symbolic. Exxon, for example, would have always survived the transition. It's just that their brand would have undergone a sort of phoenix-esque rebirth: Exxon the oil company would have gradually faded out of existence, while Exxon the renewable energy company came into existence at the same time. It would have been a marketing and PR message, but unlike with the attempts at greenwashing, the fossil fuel side of the company would have actually faded away. The message would have even been truthful in a way: it would have been a serious sacrifice of sorts on their part.
It's just that it could have been a sacrifice that didn't actually cost them much--and had they played their cards right, it might have been one that let them come out ahead in the end.