not alone in its demonic subterfuge. Exxon is being investigated for criminal
wrongdoings and some other fossil fuel companies are also coming under legal
scrutiny.
low can you go
The extent to which these oil giants will go to protect
their interests should not be underestimated. In recent months, Exxon has
embarked on a campaign of bullying. They have attempted to intimidate
scientists, journalists and most recently, Columbia University. The school is
being targeted in retaliation for the investigative work done by Columbia
graduate students who contributed to the Exxon expose. This prompted David Turnbull, campaign director for Oil
Change International, to share the following:
“Exxon’s outrageous move to intimidate journalists and
academics from doing their jobs is more of the same from a company that has been
bullying the public and our elected officials for decades. We’ve often wondered
if Exxon actually hates our children because they so consistently stand in the
way of safeguarding their future; it turns out they apparently hate good
journalism as well. What’s worse is that our government is still handing
billions of dollars each year to the oil industry by way of subsidies. This is
an industry that is out of control, wreaking havoc on our climate and public
discourse and it’s time for our public support of them to end.”
Their efforts to control the message and misinform the
public is hardly new. On the same day that the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) released its report in 2014, Exxon issued its own report
touting the importance of oil and gas to the economy and smugly predicting that
governments would not dare to impose limits on fossil fuel emissions.
are dealing with. They bring their immense resources to bear as they are flush
with cash after decades of raping and pillaging the earth.
Modern
day lepers
In 2012, the fossil fuel industry was already the most hated industry in the US. Recent
revelations are not likely to improve their standing. The shift in the public’s
perception of fossil fuels is fundamentally irretrievable, nonetheless,
ExxonMobil is doing what it can to crush the controversy.
God’s-not-so-green-Earth-anymore would anyone want to be Exxon’s partner?”
in their right mind would want to be associated with. Even the architects of
these clever misinformation campaigns are realizing that such associations are
an existential threat. As reported by The Guardian, last summer, Edelman, the
world’s biggest public relations company, divorced itself from coal producers
the American Petroleum Institute (API), Alec, the Keystone XL pipeline, fake
front groups and climate change deniers. This has nothing to do with conscience,
as the firm explained, such clients pose a direct threat to their bottom
line.
not just Exxon
press, there are a host of other fossil fuel companies that are complicit in the
subterfuge. Shell also knew that their core business activities were the leading
cause of climate change and there is evidence to support this contention. As
reviewed by Fuel Fix, in 1989, Shell was talking about
designing oil drilling platforms that can deal with rising seas and increasingly
virulent storms. This was among the messages delivered to Attorney General
Loretta Lynch in February by three Democratic Congressmen (Ted Lieu, Matt
Cartwright and Peter Welch). Together they are calling for an investigation into
Shell.
“The apparent tactics employed by Shell and Exxon are
reminiscent of the actions employed by big tobacco companies to deceive the
American people about the known risks of tobacco,” the letter
read.
BP’s own reports predict that we will see warming that
is far worse than the 1.5 – 2 degrees Celsius upper threshold limit agreed upon
at the recent COP21 meeting. BP’s annual Energy Outlook report predicts that
fossil fuel use will increase and cause warming that is between 2.5 and 6
degrees Celsius.
for fossil fuel companies to monitor and share climate research between 1979 and
1983. They also indicate that new investigative reporting by Neela Banerjee with
Inside Climate News suggests that the whole fossil fuel industry has known about
the impacts of carbon emissions on the climate for decades. Together they
successfully conspired to kill the Kyoto Protocol and their deceitful climate
denying lobbying efforts continue to this day.
This
is about today
As explained by Bill McKibben, the horrible malfeasance
of the fossil fuel industry is not just about what they have done in the past,
it is about what they continue to do today:
“As bad as Exxon has been in the past, what it’s doing
now — entirely legally — is helping push the planet over the edge and into the
biggest crisis in the entire span of the human story. It’s wildly irresponsible
for a company to be leading the world in oil exploration when, as scientists
have carefully explained, we already have access to four or five times as much
carbon in the earth as we can safely burn.”
Despite the fact that they know their industry is
responsible for the climate crisis, the fossil fuel industry continues to deny the veracity of climate science and invest
massive sums of money to find and exploit new reserves. As reported by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a recent
study indicates that the world’s 42 largest investor-owned fossil fuel companies
(including ExxonMobil, BP and Shell) continue to spend $700 billion per year to
identify and develop new fossil fuel reserves.
temperature increases within acceptable limits if the ongoing exploitation of
new fossil fuels are allowed to continue.
by Big Oil. If fossil fuel companies are charged and found guilty of fraud it
will earn them little more than a slap on the wrist. Even if all the senior
executives were to get their due and be hanged in a public square it would not
offset the disastrous reality they have caused. The only thing that comes close
to any semblance of justice is the death of the industry as a whole.
