Is Greed Stupid?

You seem to assume that you understand the motivations of the involved individuals based on a post that criticises them. That's a bad strategy.

If you don't understand someone's actions based on such analysis, most often it's a bad idea to conclude that they are stupid. It's more likely that you simply don't have relevant understanding of their positions.

Not everyone believes in global warming. If you want to understand other people you have to make it part of your model that they might not believe in it, even if you think the model for global warming is overwhelming.

An executive of General Motors might think that it's bad if General Motors goes bankrupt and has to lay of thousands of workers in Detroit. As a result GM fights against US government regulations that it thinks will reduce it's bottom line.

I've read that "Wait but Why" post before, the author has a clear agenda, and you should take it with a big grain of salt. In one of the notes, the author uncritically reproduces the spurious conspiracy theory put forward in Who Killed the Electric Car without acknowledging that the claims in it have been thoroughly rebuffed (and frankly were never sensible to begin with).

I think the worst part of that article, which should totally discredit him on the topic, is his belief that electric cars have always been a viable competitor to gas cars. Huge advances in computers, chemistry, aerodynamics, metallurgy, and materials science were needed to get us to where we are, with electric cars just now starting to become a viable alternative to ICE. He seriously makes the claim that it was just a coincidence; Henry Ford happened to like ICE, so all the other automakers in the world obeyed the will of Ford and stopped developing electric vehicles even though they were just as promising. The author shows no understanding of the underlying technology, so it isn't surprising he made this mistake.

Not get a sense of purpose out of your career.

Not get a sense of purpose from solving extremely challenging science and engineering problems to produce the fuel that keeps civilization from collapsing?

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." Let us stipulate that (1) global warming is real, (2) it is caused by human activity, (3) keeping car-drivers dependent on fossil fuels makes it worse, and (4) all of (1-3) are firmly and clearly established facts. (I should add that this is in fact approximately my opinion. But that isn't the point right now.) None the less, we should expect that senior people in companies like British Petroleum do not believe (1-4). Anyone who does is likely not to seek a career as a senior oil-industry executive; anyone in such a career will be very strongly motivated not to believe those things. Conversely, they will be strongly motivated to believe (e.g.) that electric vehicles are not ready for prime time, that their current weaknesses (e.g., limited range because of limited battery capacity) are very important, etc.

Therefore, the tradeoff they will see is not the one you describe. They will see that prolonging the dominance of fossil-fuel-based vehicles (1) makes them more money, (2) keeps their employees' jobs going, (3) keeps consumers driving vehicles that are actually better suited to their needs, but (4) exposes them to some ill-informed criticism from tree-hugging environmentalists.

In which case it's not so surprising if they do it.

(There is another possible position, which I know some people in finance hold: "Yes, my job is probably on balance harmful to the world. But it earns me a shedload of money, and I am donating a lot of it to effective charities, and the net effect is more positive than I could have achieved working in a different job." That's an uncomfortable sort of argument to make, and doubtless sometimes people make it insincerely, but I bet it's sometimes correct.)

How many of "these people" does the OP or anyone else here personally know?

ETA: This is not a rhetorical question. If there is anyone here who does move in such circles, I would be interested in their perspective.

"Because we're going to run out relatively soon" and "Because it's causing global warming" are reasons that work against one another, since if the oil runs out it will stop contributing to global warming.

Auto and Oil industries are trying to delay the introduction of Electric Vehicles (EVs)

How so? Sorry, I would usually read the article, but its very long and with a high rhetoric to content ratio.

The actors you should worry about are not human.

Maybe they just believe there's nothing seriously bad about global warming. There's decentevidence that human agriculture and civilization is in fact staving off an Ice Age through the output of greenhouse gasses. Maybe they believe that cars cause global warming, but that global warming is totally fine.

I tried to engage with the title question, but something in my mind was rebelling against receiving the discussion already framed in these terms.

What's the larger point here? Once you know whether it is or is not stupid, what does that say about greed?

1. Because we're going to run out relatively soon.

This is pretty clearly false, especially when one considers things like Shale gas. Also environmentalists having been panicking about how we're going to run out of oil any day now for the past ~40 years and yet the supply of oil has held more or less steady.

People who work in oil & gas probably chose to go in to that career because they weren't especially worried about global warming. Those who become worried will quit their jobs and get replaced by people who aren't worried.

Was this downvoted because of the topic, or because of my thoughts on it? If the latter, perhaps I should have just posted the discussion topic on its own, because it is something I'd like to have/see a real discussion about.

I believe what motivates the types of people who gun for CEO jobs in the first place is addiction to power and status. Addictive behaviour is not rationally directed, by defintion.