“The Risk of Climate Change Is Clear," Exxon Says

From: Motherboard 

by Brian Merchant 

Image: Steve Snodgrass/Flickr

“The risk of climate change is clear and the risk warrants action,” William Colton, a vice president of the largest publicly-traded oil company in the world, said in a statement yesterday. ExxonMobil, which has in the past pursued and funded efforts to propagate the view that climate change isn't occurring at all, has taken the unusual step of publishing an entire report affirming its existence. The aim may be to assuage shareholders about the IPCC's dire climate findings, also released this week. That synthesis of the last six years' worth of climate research found that global warming threatens to do no less than destabilize human civilization as we know it.

Exxon's response is fairly bizarre, and brimming with curious falsehoods and contradictions. Just take a peek at Colton's next statement: “ExxonMobil is taking action by reducing greenhouse gas emissions in its operations, helping consumers reduce their emissions, supporting research that leads to technology breakthroughs and participating in constructive dialogue on policy options." 

When legislation that sought to reduce carbon emissions threatened to pass Congress in 2009, Exxon spent more money lobbying against it than the entire clean energy industry spent lobbying in favor. Before that, it funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to organizations that published scientifically-debunked materials claiming climate change wasn't real, or wasn't a problem. As recent as 2012, its CEO was still downplaying the threats posed by a warming world. That isn't exactly what most would consider to be "constructive dialogue."   MORE