Taking climate change seriously would mean drastically reducing fossil fuel use and extraction, hopefully fairly quickly to the point of near zero use.

If that were to happen, the oil industry would experience something called 'stranded assets', which is their calculation of how much money they would be leaving in the ground, and it amounts to trillions.

To the psychopaths in charge of the oil companies, that number gnaws at them relentlessly. The mere idea of not obtaining those riches because the government says you can't is maddening to their dragon-like mind, and so they instead choose to use their existing wealth to bribe our feeble minded government to save those stranded assets, in disregard to our long term destruction, all so they can impress their 'friends' with a bigger yacht at the Monaco port.

That is ultimately why they do it.

There's money to be made in the meantime.

In particular, fossil fuels are Russia's main (nearly only) source of income from foreign trade. And Trump is Putin's stooge.

It would appear we’re being held hostage by a death cult

Take that brand of Christofascism, combine it with narcissism, wealth and greed and you get exactly where we are today.

These people wholeheartedly believe they are personally better than everyone so they don't care what happens to anyone else.

Because they think if they burn down society they'll be the ones that get to rule over the ashes.

Best guess I have is that it's similar to the kid at the playground who doesn't get their way, so they take their ball home so no one else can play.

Only these worthless fucks have decided they own the world, and since we won't willingly lick the shit out of their asses, they're gonna try and kill the entire ecosystem.

WTaF

The devils on their shoulders, probably.