Darren Woods, the new chief executive who took over at the start of the year [when former C.E.O. Rex Tillerson became secretary of state], said in his first blog post that “climate risks warrant action” from businesses, governments, and consumers, and described the pledges made at Paris as “an effective framework for all countries to address rising emissions.”

Although Trump’s Tuesday executive order directing the Environmental Protection Agency to dismantle Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan—or as Trump calls it, a “war on coal”—did not touch on the Paris agreement, experts note that “by rolling back the policies needed to meet American commitments, the United States essentially announced that it would not comply, whether the nation remains a signatory or not.” Trump said repeatedly on the campaign trail that he would “cancel” the agreement, while his new E.P.A chief, Scott Pruitt, said over the weekend that it was “a bad deal.” Within the White House, Ivanka Trump is said to be in favor of the U.S. not pulling out of the accord—though that may have just been an excuse to meet with environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio—while dark lord Stephen Bannon has, to nobody’s surprise, reportedly “press[ed] the president to officially pull the United States from the landmark accord.” In Bannon’s mind, Trump made a campaign promise to his supporters to bring back planet-destroying jobs and he needs to stick to it, whether or not sticking to it means there won’t be a planet in several hundred years, or if there is, its inhabitants have extra fingers growing where the sun don’t shine.

Of course, Exxon is not pushing to stick with the Paris agreement and promoting a carbon tax out of the goodness of its socialist bleeding heart. Darren Woods, the oil giant’s new C.E.O., is hardly preparing to chain himself to a coal mine until Trump agrees to back down. Supporting a decrease in carbon emissions is ultimately good business for Exxon, which had a not-inconsequential public relations disaster on its hands. A carbon tax would create a more stabile regulatory environment, polls show most people support the idea, and Exxon would be more than willing to pay a little more—with the expectation that other corporate tax rates would come down in exchange, of course—to buy some good P.R.

Most importantly, Obama’s climate rules were actually pretty beneficial to Exxon in the long run. The Texas-based multinational is investing heavily in natural gas, a cleaner, cheaper alternative to coal that Obama touted as a bridge to building more renewable energy capacity. Since the domestic shale gas boom was already driving the nails into coal’s coffin, Exxon might as well extract some good press at Trump’s expense. The president might not give a baker’s damn about the planet he’s leaving behind to his grandchildren, but as a so-called businessman, surely Trump can understand where Woods is coming from. Then again, as fellow New York billionaire Mike Bloomberg has pointed out, before he was C.E.O.-in-Chief, Trump was actually a terrible businessman.