Exxon had its annual shareholders meeting yesterday in the oil-soaked region of Dallas (there was a reason JR Ewing’s ranch was outside the city), and it did some reprehensible things. Most remarkably, its CEO, a man named Tillerson, responded to suggestions from environmental activists that the company set targets for reducing carbon emissions from its products and operations by saying this: “”What good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers?”

Well, Mr. Tillerson, let’s think. If we don’t save the planet it’s a pretty sure bet that humanity will suffer too, unless Exxon’s got a super-secret plan for evacuating 8 billion people to some other hospitable planet in the galaxy. It probably doesn’t. Even if it did, I’m pretty sure it would want to recover its R&D costs like Big Pharma does, by charging each customer/rider exorbitant amounts of money to ride away from poor old decaying Earth. That would probably limit the number of people who could ride on the relatively small number of rocket ships to New Home or whatever the healthy planet would be named.

Nah. This is sounding like the plot of at least a dozen science-fiction books I’ve read (When Worlds Collide, for one) and there are probably another 100 with similar plots that I haven’t gotten around to yet.

No, I’m afraid Mr. Tillerson is too busy aiming for fat profits to keep him in the style he’s become accustomed to enjoying to worry about the long term health of the planet or its inhabitants. It’s a tough life, after all, trying to get buy on $40.3 million in 2012.

People like this will drive me back to drink.