Worth noting: the Fortune 500—a list of America’s 500 highest-grossing corporations—had their worst year ever last year. Total profits for the nation’s 500 largest corporations fell from $645 billion in 2007 to just $99 billion in 2008. That’s a decline of nearly 85 percent, if you’re counting.
But the company in the number one slot—Exxon Mobil—did astonishingly well, with total profits surpassing $45 billion last year. In other words, a single oil company got over 45 percent of the net profts of the entire Fortune 500.
To be fair, a lot of Fortune 500 companies posted net losses—so the 45 percent figure is a bit contrived. Still, it’s no surprise that Exxon has had so much money to throw at global warming denialism—they’ve got a whole lot of money to throw!
Photo courtesy of Flickr user TheTruthAbout… under a Creative Commons license.
