Inside the viral takedown of Exxon’s Darren Woods

ExxonMobil’s CEO was about to get awarded for “STEM leadership” at a fancy New York luncheon. Then Climate Defiance showed up.

Emily Sanders is the Center for Climate Integrity’s editorial lead.

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As I was doom-scrolling through the graveyard of takes formerly known as Twitter on Friday, a video popped into my feed that caught my eye — probably because of the big banner that read “Eat Shit Darren.” 

ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods was at the Chemical Marketing & Economics (CME) gala in New York City, about to receive a “STEM leadership award” for “harnessing the transformative power of chemistry to advance humanity.” Just as his award was being announced, Woods was confronted by a group of besuited climate activists who carried a banner that told him to “eat shit.”

“Darren Woods is a climate criminal,” declared Teddy Ogborn, an organizer with the group Climate Defiance, who unfurled the banner with two colleagues. “How can scientists be honoring this man who increases production of oil and gas every year? As long as production goes up, Darren, we’re fucked. We’re fucked because of you.” 

“Exxon lies and people die,” the group chanted, before everyone cleared out of the room.

CME’s ceremony would have been the latest in a series of platforms, awards, and open doors oil executives have received this year, all politely inviting them to play the part of saviors to a crisis they’ve knowingly caused. Climate Defiance, a youth-led group that uses direct action to protest fossil fuels, engineered the disruption of the event honoring Woods. 

I spoke with Ogborn, the lead architect of Friday’s action, about the strategy and future of these actions. Our interview, edited for length and clarity, is below.

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So you all had a banner that said “Eat Shit Darren.” How did you decide on that one? 

It's kind of a funny story actually. If you look at a lot of Climate Defiance's videos, we have these beautiful banners that are made by a wonderful artist friend in D.C. They have our logo on them and they often say things like ‘business as usual is climate disaster,’ or it'll have someone's name on them specifically for that action. But this opportunity came up in almost a last minute way — so when I realized I wasn't able to get a hold of this artist in time, I sort of took matters into my own hands. We had to come up with something to go on there really quickly. And part of the logic of it is, a lot of our targets are political — people that we sincerely hope will turn a new leaf, and we’re pushing for them to. But when it comes to the CEO of ExxonMobil, his job and entire reason for being is to increase production and burning of oil and gas. So strategically, the purpose was not to sway Darren Woods. We're not going to do that, but we can certainly humiliate him in front of his rich friends and in front of now over 5 million viewers on Twitter. It does seem to be one of the contributing factors to how widespread it's gotten.

How did you get into the room? 

Well, I don't wanna give away our industry secrets if you will. But suffice it to say that it took a little bit of infiltration posing as consultants to get in. I went through with flying colors with four other ‘consultants’. We sat at a table with some folks who did belong in that space. And so there was a whole three course meal that was served beforehand and we had to either rudely ignore or briefly engage with the people at the table. It was kind of funny, my friend was asked by this man at the table where she went to school and she just made up in the moment that she went to Colombia for chemistry. So he goes, ‘Oh, that's great. I got my PhD in chemistry from Columbia.’ So she went to the bathroom to Google some facts about the chemistry department there. There's such a filter on these events where I think they're really not expecting anyone there to be like us, to be concerned about what's happening in that room. I just talked about confronting Woods himself, but part of the purpose too is to kind of pull the mask off of these spaces that the corporate elite, political elite, the oil and gas billionaires make for themselves. What I like to tell people is that we want to capture the moment, not just where we're confronting this person, but the moment that we change the vibe — it's the crassness of the banner, it's the fact that we're yelling, but it's also the fact that there's these red curtains behind us and there’s clearly the remnants of desserts on peoples’ tables and things like that. It's all kind of a part of the setting, the scenery. But also I think something that is very political is manifested in that space.

Do you consider the action a success? 

For sure. I think the purpose is that we want an environment whereby these so-called corporate leaders cannot show their faces in public without being confronted. This should be the kind of work that gets you essentially ostracized, where people recognize that you are tanking their futures, putting their children at risk, harming people, especially people of color in the global South first and worst. That's what this guy does and he was about to be handed a trophy. So it’s a tiny glimpse of what the world should look like.

When this protest happened Darren Woods had only just come back from his debut at COP28, where he was one in droves of fossil fuel interests that may have successfully prevented a phase-out of fossil fuels in spite of scientists and policymakers across the globe calling for their end. Did you have that in mind when you planned this?

Of course. I think that was something that was driving us all a little crazy, especially seeing some business publications saying, ‘oh, this maverick oil CEO is showing up to COP’ — obviously some people still think that being at COP means you have any kind of commitment to a phase out of fossil fuels. What Darren Woods is attempting to do is, in a word, greenwashing — but specifically, he's going there and saying, ‘well, we need to reduce emissions.’ But he’s talking about addressing scope one and scope two emissions from his industry [under 15% of total energy-related greenhouse gas emissions], which means it would not touch the fossil fuels that leave these refineries. It’s miniscule and it's a way for them to continue to delay. I'm really encouraged by seeing protests at COP itself, but Darren Woods doesn't get confronted like this very often and he should — there needs to be consequences for him showing up to places like that and lying. This is a through line from the company all the way back to the mid-1970s when their own scientists reported that their continued production and burning of fossil fuels would lead to planet-ending global warming — and they buried that. And while Darren Woods wasn't at the head of the company at that time, he very much carries the spirit of that kind of behavior.

The U.S. and other countries across the globe have become increasingly hostile to the right to protest — at COP, in fact, activists said there were a lot more restrictions on protestors than in previous years, even while fossil fuel lobbyists were allowed to swarm the event. Why do you think protest and direct actions are important right now? 

I think that kind of response that we're seeing means that it's working, it means that they know the power that we hold — that protest has the power to sway voters and people in power. That kind of repression tells us that we are on the cusp of something really big. I think people need to see that it's possible. When I started doing climate organizing work about two years ago, I had really no experience in any kind of campaign and organizing work. I'm always looking to bring someone into the fold. I think it's super crucial, especially with an action like this one that went so smoothly and has gotten so much attention, I think that should show people what's possible if you just get five friends together, make up a fake name, go in a room and now you're able to call out somebody who is absolutely torching your future. 

Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know?

This kind of disruption is only gonna happen more and more until we witness change. So on the micro level, I would hope that CME rethinks awarding someone like Darren Woods in the future. We've made it very clear to people in that room why we were there. And because it was a science-minded crowd, we had more sympathy at this than almost any other disruption we've done. People were coming up to us individually, both inside the room and once we were outside, saying, you know, it takes a lot of guts to do that and he should be called out, and things like that. Although of course all it takes now is to see a video of a climate disaster, if you have an advanced degree in science, you know that it's undeniable what fossil fuels and what Darren Woods is doing to the planet. So that was certainly encouraging.