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.

  • Spendrill
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    10 months ago

    Yeah, if there were proper consequences to them not paying up and not a toothless regulatory entity then I could go along with that, it’s not got as much schadenfreude but it’ll do.

    7000 is a lot but we’re talking about multiple countries being displaced here. If you’re old enough to remember, there was that whole Palestinians in Jordan thing where they were actually planning a coup and very possibly had a chance of pulling it off and then the King of Jordan (who turned out to be a CIA asset because of course it was the CIA) expelled them all from the country in Black September and then they ended up in the Lebanon.