It's all about the money/rev XXX

A flame burns at an oil facility run by Saudi Aramco in the Rub al Khali desert. McKinsey has advised the energy company for decades.Credit...Simon Dawson/Bloomberg

It's all about the money. This time, McKinsey and their blue chip polluter clientele.

As world leaders prepare to meet in Glasgow next week to address the devastating impact of wildfires, floods and extreme weather caused by rising greenhouse gases, a revolt has been brewing inside the world’s most influential consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, over its support of the planet’s biggest polluters.

An excerpt from a letter McKinsey employees sent to the firm's top partners.

More than 1,100 employees and counting have signed an open letter to the firm’s top partners, urging them to disclose how much carbon their clients spew into the atmosphere. “The climate crisis is the defining issue of our generation,” wrote the letter’s authors, nearly a dozen McKinsey consultants. “Our positive impact in other realms will mean nothing if we do not act as our clients alter the earth irrevocably.”

A coal-burning power plant in South Africa run by Eskom, which McKinsey has advised.

Credit...Joao Silva/The New York Times

Ah, but's the money's too good to resist ...

Among the 100 biggest corporate polluters over the past half-century, McKinsey has advised at least 43 in recent years, including BP, Exxon Mobil, Gazprom and Saudi Aramco, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in fees for the firm.

Across the world, from China to the United States, McKinsey’s work with these companies is often not focused on reducing their environmental impact, but rather on cutting costs, boosting productivity and increasing profits

Yet it is McKinsey, with its 95-year history and its position at the apex of the consulting world, that stands out. Its corps of consultants, peppered with Rhodes scholars and Harvard Business School standouts, could focus their talents on helping the firm’s oil, gas and coal clients cut their emissions. But these well-funded clients, such as Chevron, Shell and Canada’s Teck Resources, hire McKinsey to further business goals that often have little connection with the global push to limit greenhouse gases.

It's all about the money ...