ExxonMobil chief executive Darren Woods has urged president-elect Donald Trump to not take the US out of the Paris agreement on climate change. “We need a global system for managing emissions”, he said in an interview at the annual UN climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Though Woods’ words were unusually high profile and direct, some of his equivalents at rival fossil fuel firms have expressed similar sentiments.

On the face of it, big oil and gas firms – and ExxonMobil is one of the very biggest – are a surprise proponent of the Paris agreement, which seeks to defend ambitious targets on climate change. After all, these are the very organisations that have financially benefited from contributing to the crisis, and that fought for decades to kill the climate agenda. It’s hard to believe they’re now working for its survival.

One obvious explanation is greenwashing. When oil and gas firms claim to offset their emissions, for example, many people will intuitively recognise an obvious attempt to improve their reputation that has little credibility in practice. These firms of course continue to intensively extract and supply fossil fuels that directly exacerbate global warming.

But there is more to it than simple greenwashing or chasing a positive headline. There are sound strategic (if not........

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