I get junk mail. I get LOTS of junk mail.
My mailbox is regularly stuffed with catalogs offering me $400 blouses, which makes me wonder in what zip code the retailers think I live. Don’t they know we live within a mile of dairy farms?
I get coupons from hardware stores and pet stores offering me $5 off if I spend more than $50, which would not quite pay the sales tax.
We have gotten glossy, colorful catalogs for 20 years from a very high-end nursery 100 miles away from which I swear we have never, ever ordered so much as a tulip bulb. Hell, we probably couldn’t afford to order more than five tulips from that place even if I thought the neighborhood mice, chipmunks, moles, voles and squirrels wouldn’t stampede to my waiting garden to gorge themselves. (Question: Why do critters eat tulip bulbs but leave daffodil bulbs alone?)
But the junk mail I got last week from ExxonMobil, the global fossil fuels behemoth that turns billions in profit while choking the planet, made me think.
I’ve had a company gas card for 20 years, mainly for convenience and for my kids when they were commuting to college. I don’t own a hybrid or electric vehicle yet, although I have in the past and would like to again. So far we hope recycling, the solar panels we have had for 10 years and Pete’s carbon-reduction farming practices will make up for the fact that we still drive gasoline-fueled cars.
ExxonMobil scientists predicted the extent of global warming in the 1970s, but the company continued to sow doubt and lie to the public.
The envelope arrived almost incognito, with an address in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. When I pulled out the letter, the correspondence unfolded on…and on… and on. It was a new cardmember agreement, typed, single-spaced, on both sides and two of its three pages were nearly two feet long – 24 1/4 inches, to be exact, or 61.5 in centimeters for you lovellies using sensible metric measures.
From years of laying out newspapers and estimating copy length, I quickly figured that the “agreement” was between 6,000 and 7,000 words long.
Now, there are some things approaching that word length that are worth reading over and over again. Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” comes to mind.
Yet the missive spread out on my kitchen table was no such communication championing justice and conveying brotherly love. Mostly, it was a celebration of corporate greed.
This was a letter telling me that the variable interest rate on purchases will climb to 34.24 percent (wasn’t usury once against the law?), that late fees will be $29 and could go up to $40, that disagreements will be subject to the laws of South Dakota, a state which more than 40 years ago eliminated caps on interest and fees, creating a haven for credit card companies. The letter was replete with legalese.
I get it. Credit card companies send out letters like this all the time. But this seemed just a bit over the top. Particularly for an industry which knew back in the 1950s that its product was contributing to global warming that could eventually be catastrophic, according to the brilliant book, “Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World,” by John Vaillant.
ExxonMobil scientists began to predict in the 1970s with stunning accuracy just how high the temperatures would start to rise even as the company denied climate science, sowed doubt, lied to the public and hastened to make more money. And make money it has, earning $36 billion in America alone last year. Fossil fuel tax breaks, called “the zombies of the tax code,” provided $14 billion to the oil and gas industry here in 2022. A few tax breaks are a century old.
I know this rant is pretty far afield from this too-long, “cardmember agreement” that could only gladden the hearts of lawyers. But it was worth unfurling from the mailbox if only because it made me consider the interest rate on my credit card a whole lot less than the shoddy business that the oil companies have engaged in for years.
So, no, Exxon, I don’t agree, and you can keep your credit card along with my puny contribution to your largess. And thank you for the fuel, and I don’t mean gasoline. Nights are still chilly here in New England and your agreement looks just dandy to use for lighting a fire.
Daffodil bulbs and flowers contain the bitter and poisonous substance Lycorine. Rodents and deer will not eat that.
So interesting that you took time to read it! Bravo…and thanks for opening our eyes! Bye bye to these kind of jumps in fees and interest rates…isn’t this what President Biden wants to get rid of? Appreciate your post, Casey… I will be much more aware now! 😊🩷