"Mad Money" Host Jim Cramer Says Fossil Fuels Are "Done"

You may have missed one of the most tense exchanges on cable news Friday morning, because it had nothing to do with impeachment.

On CNBC’s pre-market morning show Squawk Box, after both Exxon Mobil and Chevron announced poor Q4 earnings, Mad Money host Jim Cramer pulled no punches with the oil and gas industry. “I’m done with fossil fuels,” he said. “They’re done.” His main reasoning? Divestment is sending the industry into a death spiral.

Anchor Rebecca Quick was quick to rebut: Is it really divestment, or is it poor oil production in the U.S.? (After all, an Alaskan oil and gas boom could be on the horizon.) Isn’t this just a bad sign for stocks, but not fossil fuels as an industry? He’s not seriously saying fossil fuels are done done, right?

Cramer doubled down. “I think they’re tobacco,” he said. “We’re in a new world.”

In other words, the influential host thinks that, while the stocks make sense in a financial vacuum, the public is moving away from fossil-fuel companies because of their outsized impact in creating the climate crisis (and the bad will generated by the companies hiding that fact). In turn, that makes them financially unsound.

CNBC posted the full exchange on Twitter:

“I’m done with fossil fuels. They’re done,” @MadMoneyOnCNBC's @JimCramer says after oil giants Exxon Mobil and Chevron reported Q4 earnings this morning. “We’re in the death knell phase.” https://t.co/rdcmoeRGMB pic.twitter.com/yl8iP7hpMi

— CNBC (@CNBC) January 31, 2020

While many environmental groups and activists rightly say political and business powers aren’t moving fast enough to thwart climate change, Cramer notes that the shift in public opinion of fossil fuels is actually “happening very quickly.”

As it turns out, when you look at the big picture — poor earnings from fossil fuel companies, divestment from those companies and leading asset managers like BlackRock sounding the alarm about climate change — it may be the financial sector that, however unlikely, ends up taking a leading position in the climate movement.

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