Executives privately sought to downplay link between fossil fuels and climate change despite public pronouncements, WSJ reports
ExxonMobil executives privately sought to undermine climate science even after the oil and gas giant publicly acknowledged the link between fossil fuel emissions and climate change, according to previously unreported documents revealed by the Wall Street Journal.
The new revelations are based on previously unreported documents subpoenaed by New York’s attorney general as part of an investigation into the company announced in 2015. They add to a slew of documents that record a decades-long misinformation campaign waged by Exxon, which are cited in a growing number of state and municipal lawsuits against big oil.
Many of the newly released documents date back to the 2006-16 tenure of former chief executive Rex Tillerson, who oversaw a major shift in the company’s climate messaging. In 2006, Exxon publicly accepted that the climate crisis posed risks, and it went on to support the Paris agreement. Yet behind closed doors, the company behaved differently, the documents show.
It may be true that they’ll be dead before the worst of it comes, but as you say, it’s already here. Bigger and more frequent storms; more drastic, frequent, and longer heatwaves and droughts; bigger floods; colder and colder winters. They’re all symptoms of climate change, and they aren’t going away.
It’s as though the generations after WWII forgot that they’re supposed to leave a world for the next generation to live in, not sell them out for a buck.