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Exxon, the United States’ oil giant, issued an internal memo in 1977 stating that carbon emissions from its products were causing climate change. But not only that – time was running out to act.
“CO2 release most likely source of inadvertent climate modification,” said the shorthand document. “5-10 yr time window to get necessary information.”
Exxon and other oil companies chose a different route over the next few years. The industry orchestrated a systematic Campaign of disinformationTo deceive public, impede political action, protect profits.
“Emphasize the uncertainty in scientific conclusions regarding the potential enhanced Greenhouse effect,” said an Exxon paper in 1988, one of many published in the America Misled report on the fossil fuel industry.
“Stress environmentally sound adaptive efforts,” said another internal memo the following year. “Victory will be achieved when average citizens ‘understand’ (recognize) uncertainties in climate science,” added one more in 1998.
Two years later, Exxon – styled by then as ExxonMobil after a multibillion-dollar merger – secured AdvertisementAs part of a media campaign to promote climate denial, it was published in The New York Times. Under the headline “Unsettled Science”, it argued that scientists faced “fundamental gaps in knowledge”, despite the overwhelming and ever-increasing consensus that fossil fuels were causing the planet to heat.
Humanity’s worst threat
This is a decades-long battle The backdrop of deception, denial, oil industry insiders will appear before the US Congress as some of the most powerful energy companies in the world face a reckoning for their role in creating – and attempting to cover up – the climate crisis.
The Board members of Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Chevron will be Under oath, questionedA House panel will discuss the issue on Tuesday. The aim is to illuminate the industry’s contribution to humanity’s worst existential threat – and how, at the same time, it spread disinformation to cast doubt over the catastrophic impact of burning its products.
Experts believe that the hearings can not lead to criminal prosecutions but they are a key tool for shifting public opinion. This could encourage consumers to avoid carbon-based fuels, and encourage investors to remove big polluters from capital. It could also empower environmental activists and lawyers to fight powerful industrial interests.
“This could be a watershed moment,” said Richard J Rogers, executive director of Climate Counsel, a non-profit law firm specialising in environmental destruction and crimes against humanity. “This whole story is about the greed of a tiny number of men who were prepared to threaten the stability of their own, and our own, civilisation in order to get very rich.”
Current commitments to reduce global emission put the world on a path for a devastating 2.4C increase in global temperatures by this century’s end. [File: AP]The stakes are higher than ever. Following the disappointing United Nations Climate Change Conference, (COP26), where key new targets were stymied in the face of oil- and coal-producing nations, the current commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions put the world back on track. Global temperatures rise by 2.4C, which is a disastrous increaseBy the end of this century.
Major sea-level rises from melting ice will result in the destruction of coastal cities and islands. Ecosystems are at risk of collapse as storms, droughts and floods increase in frequency and intensity, leading to famine, fighting and the displacement and displacement of millions. Regions become unlivableUnprecedented heatwaves inflict northern latitudes.
And that’s if current pledges are even met. Each degree higher increases the risk of cataclysm. “We need an avalanche of action,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last month.
Casey Norton, spokesperson for ExxonMobil, told Al Jazeera that the company has long recognized that climate change is real.
“In addition to our substantial investments in next-generation technologies, ExxonMobil also advocates for responsible climate-related policies. Our public statements about climate change are, and have been, truthful, fact-based, transparent, and consistent with the views of the broader, mainstream scientific community at the time,” said Norton.
“ExxonMobil has contributed to the development of climate science for decades and has made its work publicly available. And as the scientific community’s understanding of climate change developed, ExxonMobil responded accordingly.”
‘Setting the future on fire’
This week’s high-profile hearings in Washington, DC will target board members who were elected to galvanise change at oil companies. It is the second phase of an ongoing investigation of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. The first saw the leaders of the four largest oil and gas companies being grilled by lawmakers last Oct.
“Some of us actually have to live the future that you are all setting on fire for us,” Democrat Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told them.
The congressional panel has issued subpoenas for company documents to expose what oil firms have known about the harm caused by fossil fuels – and how they failed to act.
The next appearances will be scheduled amid an Unprecedented number of court casesAll across the US, communities are suing oil companies for causing and exacerbating environment destruction by suppressing warnings from scientists.
Cities and states that are at risk from rising sea levels and extreme weather are asking these powerful conglomerates to stop their destructive operations and to pay compensation for the costs of rebuilding or repairing damage.
Claimsants have to be creative, however, as much of environmental law remains underdeveloped and rarely carries a penal penalty.
From Hawaii to California to Rhode Island, some have accused oil companies of creating a “public nuisance”. Deploying that legal term has proven successful elsewhere, for example in lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies that fuelled the US’s Opioid crisisPrescription painkillers that are powerful.
Others have sued on fraud grounds. Blighted by blistering temperatures and devastating floods, Minnesota’s attorney general has accused ExxonMobil and others of breaching state law through false advertising and deceptive trade practices as part of a campaign to deny climate change.
The legacy of these lawsuits may depend less on the final rulings and more on damaging information that emerges in the process.
“If the plaintiffs are successful in forcing the secrets and conduct of the oil companies into the public eye, they will potentially create a tide of negative publicity that could permanently weaken these companies, similar to what happened with the tobacco industry,” Daniel Farber, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
The tide of lawsuits is a serious threat to the oil industry, even though the oil giants have vast resources to fight these legal battles.
“Unless the oil companies can get these cases dismissed quickly, they will have the sword of Damocles hanging over them for years,” added Farber. “[They] cannot afford to lose.”
Their scientists are ignored
A mounting body of evidence shows that scientists working for the fossil fuel industry knew about CO2’s warming effects as early as the 1950s. Charles Jones, a Shell executive was one example. Write a paper in 1958 showing the industry was already concerned about levels of carbon emissions in car exhaust amid worries “the oil industry would continue to be blamed for the bulk of air pollution”.
In 1979, an Exxon study described the “dramatic environmental effects” caused by burning fossil fuels. Another study, done in the tenth decade, accurately predicted the trajectory for rising temperatures and increasing atmospheric CO2 levels. This report was also buried.
Despite all the warnings, oil executives ignored them year after year. Instead, they spun a dangerous counternarrative. The disingenuous ploy of “greenwashing”This helped them to create an illusion of environmental credibility that distracts away from the reality of drilling for oil and burning it.
The techniques used by fossil fuel interest groups, whether cherry-picking factual information or relying only on fake experts, are straight out of the tobacco industry’s playbookTo impede control on cigarettes, they also use similar tactics to the asbestos and lead industries.
Billions of dollars have been invested in political lobbying, to either derail stricter legislation or fund aggressive front organisations. Last July There was shocking footage of a senior ExxonMobil lobbyist saying the energy giant had fought climate science through “shadow groups” and had targeted senators to weaken President Joe Biden’s climate agenda, all to maximise shareholder profit.
“There’s nothing illegal about that,” said Keith McCoy, the lobbyist. “We were looking out for our investments.”
‘Flawed academic reports’
Back on Capitol Hill, those due to appear at Tuesday’s hearing include two figures on ExxonMobil’s board: Alexander Karsner, a renewable energy proponent and a strategist at Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc who won a seat at the Texan crude colossus for an activist hedge fund; and Susan Avery, an atmospheric scientist and former president of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.
Other board members scheduled to testify include Shell’s Jane Holl Lute, a UN special envoy; BP’s Melody Meyer, an oil industry veteran; and Chevron’s Enrique Hernandez, a lawyer and business executive who also runs a multinational security company.
Exxon’s spokesperson Norton said the company had handed over more than 200,000 pages of documents, “including board materials and internal communications”.
ExxonMobil Claim it is the victim of “a coordinated campaign perpetuated by activist groups”, and accuses their backers of releasing “flawed academic reports” and coordinating with public officials to launch investigations and litigation, creating “the false appearance that ExxonMobil has misrepresented its company research and investor disclosures on climate change to the public”.
BP, Chevron and Shell did not respond to requests for comment.
Whatever testimony is given this week, one fact is certain – Big Oil’s cover-up of the climate crisis has brought Earth to the brink.
“With their power and resources, these companies could have changed the trajectory of our planet’s health,” said Rogers. “They simply needed to be honest.”
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