Climate 'realism' normalizes systemic evil, former BlackRock exec warns
A former financial executive argues that framing the climate crisis as a matter of markets and security downplays its moral dimension.
Framing the climate crisis as a matter of markets and security instead of morality normalizes a systemic form of evil, according to a former financial executive.
Peter McKillop, publisher of Green Central Banking and a former senior executive with BlackRock and JPMorgan, writes that the language of climate "realism" has smothered moral outrage and hands the fossil fuel industry a new buzzword for business as usual.
"Climate realism,' the reader wrote, hands the fossil fuel industry a new buzzword for business as usual," McKillop said, recounting feedback on a previous column.
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He credits philosopher Susan Neiman's new book, Call It Evil, with clarifying the problem, noting that society sets an impossibly high bar for defining evil as spectacular acts by figures like Hitler, rather than bland, systemic assaults.
"Great acts of evil, perhaps the worst evils, are often bland, systemic assaults on civilization, and usually done with no identifiable malice," McKillop writes, summarizing Neiman's argument.
He argues that downplaying the harm of burning fossil fuels while hyping "realism" helps normalize this evil, as to "be realistic" is "to expect less of the world."
McKillop points to energy "realists" like historian Daniel Yergin, who frames energy as a matter of history, markets and security and calls defossilizing the economy "magical thinking."
"That is why many mainstream companies and institutions accept his climate realism as gospel," McKillop writes.
He also cites the World Bank under Ajay Banga abandoning its climate targets in favour of "smart development" as an example of conceding to realism.
"Yergin and Banga are not evil in the traditional sense," McKillop writes. "They are just small players in a vast web of banal evil, whose job is to justify the escalating use of fossil fuels despite overwhelming scientific evidence of the extinction-level threat their continued use poses."
He highlights fossil fuel producers netting more than US$93 billion in profits in the first three months of the US-Iran war, or $530,000 per minute, according to the Guardian.
Those profits, he notes, have no ledger entry for planetary losses, citing at least US$32 billion in U.S. extreme weather damage this year, about £4.4 billion in lost output in Britain, and $2.6 to $4 billion in losses for Nepal and China from one glacial meltdown.
"Canada’s wildfire bill has yet to be tallied," he adds.
The human toll includes at least 1,403 killed in Nepal, with thousands missing, and at least 35,000 extra deaths from European summer heatwaves.
McKillop references an April 2025 study in the journal Nature where researchers Christopher Callahan and Justin Mankin estimated emissions from 111 companies cost the world $28 trillion in losses from extreme heat between 1991 and 2020, with more than $9 trillion traced to the five biggest emitters.
"The scientific case for climate liability, they conclude, 'is closed,'" he writes.
He asks if Chevron CEO Mike Wirth or BP CEO Meg O'Neill are evil, noting O'Neill doubled down on fossil fuel production and slashed billions from renewable projects, a shift an analyst said makes BP look set "to have made its money being a very good refinery."
"While this may be great for BP shareholders, it is terrible for the planet, and a perfect example of banal evil that puts shareholder self-interest ahead of the greater public good," McKillop writes.
He argues that admitting everyone is complicit for living in a fossil-fuelled world lets the real culprits off the hook, an industry defence.
Drawing a parallel to abolitionists who called slavery evil and went after its profiteers, he says it does not give a free pass to consume fossil fuels without responsibility.
"It is our responsibility, Neiman says, to 'keep one eye on the world as it is, and the other on the world as it ought to be, confusing neither and abandoning neither,'" McKillop writes.
He concludes that accepting climate "realism" with a hefty pinch of salt is necessary, as it may offer short-term solutions but "also normalizes a systemic, malice-free form of evil by encouraging society to accept fossil fuel inevitability and lower its expectations of alternatives."
Your Space Hamilton reported in October that fifteen young people are suing the federal government, arguing its inaction on emissions violates their constitutional rights.
With files from The Energy Mix Weekender