What's it Like to Work at Exxon – and Then Quit?

Alex Blumberg (0:03)

Welcome to How to Save a Planet, I'm Alex Blumberg. This is the show about what we need to do to address climate change and how to make those things happen.

Thank The 90s, a magical time.

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America Online, a new way to use your computer to communicate, have fun, and get instant news and information.

Alex Blumberg (0:33)

We dialed up, we browsed the world wide web, we asked Jeeves all our burning questions, and we watched the NASDAQ stock exchange rise fivefold as new internet companies like Amazon and eBay formed. But then, in 2000, all that changed.

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It's described as nothing short of breathtaking, a points drop never before seen on the US markets.

Alex Blumberg (0:58)

the.com bubble burst and the NASDAQ dropped almost 77%.

This led to many things, the instantly iconic collapse of pets.com, a recession, and to today's guest taking a job at ExxonMobil. His name is Dar-Lon Chang, and in 2003, he had just graduated from the University of Illinois with his PhD in mechanical engineering with plans to work in the automotive industry.

Dar-Lon Chang (1:26)

But it didn't work out because of the.com financial crash that affected the automotive industry much more than the energy industry.

And there weren't a lot of jobs for automotive industry people. So it ended up that people that would have normally gone to Ford or normally gone to Michigan, they ended up going to Texas.

Alex Blumberg (1:48)

Got you.

Dar-Lon Chang (1:49)

And I ended up working there my entire career from 2003 to 2019

Alex Blumberg (1:56)

2019, when he quit working at Exxon.

And that 16-year career is what we're talking to Dar-Lon Chang about on today's episode. Because during that 16-year career, he got to see inside the workings of one of the largest and most prominent fossil fuel companies in the world through the fracking boom and extreme weather events. And during those 16 years, more and more people were waking up to the threat of climate change and to Exxon's role in escalating it. One of those people was Dar-Lon himself, who over time was finding it harder and harder to reconcile what he was seeing happening to the Earth and his job inside a fossil fuel giant. Oil companies in general and Exxon perhaps even in particular are seen somewhat as like the death star, sort of the enemy, the villain in the story.

What do you think the popular stereotype of like the big bad oil company gets right? What do you think it gets wrong?

Dar-Lon Chang (2:53)

I think it does get right that it is a bit like working for the Empire.

I did feel like a stormtrooper at the end. And I did feel like I was seeing atrocity so bad that I could no longer stand to be with the Empire.

Alex Blumberg (3:09)

Today, Dar-Lon Chang's story. What brought him to work for Exxon in the first place? What it was like to spend 16 years there while his concerns about climate change grew? And what finally compelled him to leave?

That's coming up after the break.

Dar-Lon Chang (3:23)

Thanks for watching.

Alex Blumberg (3:33)

Welcome back, we're talking to Dar-Lon Chang, a former Exxon engineer. And back in 2002, when Exxon was recruiting Dar-Lon, climate change was on his radar, but it wasn't necessarily his top priority.

Dar-Lon Chang (3:45)

My top priority at the time was my concern about fossil fuels being a limited resource.

SPEAKER_4 (3:50)

Gotcha.

Dar-Lon Chang (3:51)

And that we needed to transition away from it before it started to really run out. And we'd have huge price spikes that would cause people not to be able to afford to run a society.

Alex Blumberg (4:05)

In other words, he was concerned about something called peak oil. This was an idea you heard a lot back then, that the total global supply of oil and gas was about to peak. And as that supply started to dwindle, oil and gas prices would start to rise, eventually going through the roof and causing economic chaos and societal unrest.

To Dar-Lon and his other engineering school friends, it seemed clear that society needed to invest in other sources of energy right now to get ready for peak oil. And he had his favorite.

Dar-Lon Chang (4:36)

We had a lot of nuclear engineers on campus and the nuclear engineers were really optimistic that fusion was just around the corner, just 10 to 15 years away. And I kind of bought into that talk as well.

Alex Blumberg (4:49)

The techno utopian dream.

Dar-Lon Chang (4:51)

Yes.

Alex Blumberg (4:52)

And at that time in 2003, your nuclear engineering friends were saying like, no, this is close, we're close.