From the ‘Well, duh!’ files: The energy sector lied about its climate change efforts

The New York Times writes: 

Oil Executives Privately Contradicted Public Statements on Climate, Files Show

The documents, subpoenaed in a House investigation of climate disinformation, show company leaders contravening industry commitments.

Documents obtained by congressional investigators show that oil industry executives privately downplayed their companies’ own public messages about efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and weakened industry-wide commitments to push for climate policies.

Internal Exxon documents show that the oil giant pressed an industry group, the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, to remove language from a 2019 policy statement that “could create a potential commitment to advocate on the Paris Agreement goals.” The Paris Agreement is the landmark 2015 pact among nations of the world to avert catastrophic global warming. The statement’s final version didn’t mention Paris.

At Royal Dutch Shell, an October 2020 email sent by an employee, discussing talking points for Shell’s president for the United States, said that the company’s announcement of a pathway to “net zero” emissions — the point at which the world would no longer be pumping planet-warming gases into the atmosphere — “has nothing to do with our business plans.”

These and other documents, reviewed by The New York Times, come from a cache of hundreds of thousands of pages of corporate emails, memos and other files obtained under subpoena as part of an examination by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform into the fossil fuel industry’s efforts over the decades to mislead the public about its role in climate change, dismissing evidence that the burning of fossil fuels was driving an increase in global temperatures even as their own scientists warned of a clear link.  

On Thursday, the House committee is expected to discuss some of its early findings. “It’s well established that these companies actively misled the American public for decades about the risks of climate change,” said Representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California who spearheaded the investigation with Carolyn B. Maloney, the New York Democrat who leads the House committee. “The problem is that they continue to mislead,” Mr. Khanna said.

Well, duh! Exxon lied. What’s new? As usual, there are no legal ramifications for the lies and no mechanism for the public to receive reparations for the avoidable environmental damage and extinct species that carbon pollution caused. The NYT article includes emails indicating that oil executives treated climate change and heat waves as a joke. The oil industry just oozes callous arrogance about climate change damages and deaths. 

“Misled” is too weak a descriptor for what Exxon-Mobile and the others did to us. Like most or all other prominent Democrats, Mr. Khanna needs to up his rhetorical game to meets the needs of the moment.

America desperately needs meaningful regime change. Meaningful regime change definitely does not include the morally and legally corrupt and staunchly pro-pollution Republican Party.

Republican climate change deniers