Oil Executives Privately Contradicted Public Statements on Climate, Files Show [nytimes.com]

Assuming fossil fuel industry CEOs are not foolish enough to actually believe that their descendants will somehow always evade the health repercussions related to their industry’s environmentally reckless decisions, I wonder whether the unlimited-profit objective/nature is somehow irresistible to those businesspeople, including the willingness to simultaneously allow an already threatened consumer base to continue so, if not be threatened even further?

It's the allegorical fox stung by the instinct-abiding scorpion while ferrying it across the river, leaving both to drown.  

Still, there must be a point at which the status quo — be it bone-dry-vegetation areas uncontrollably burning, unbreathable city air, or unprecedented high-death-toll weather events — will end up hurting even Big Fossil Fuel's own bottom-line interests.

Meantime, if something notably conflicts with long-held and deeply entrenched corporate interests, even very progressive motions are greatly resisted, often enough successfully. And, of course, there will be those who will rebut the renewable-energy type/concept altogether, perhaps solely on the illogic that if it was possible, it would have been patented already and made a few people superfluously rich.