Photo: Javier Sierra / Courtesy
Since I was a father for the first time, it has been impossible for me to explain to my daughter what drives the causes of the climate emergency in which we find ourselves. What level of greed and moral corruption prevents fossil fuel industry executives from looking their children in the eye and saying: I’m sorry, but you were born a generation too late?
Dirty laundry from the dirty energy industry continues to spill out into the open. A new study published in the journal Science reveals what we already knew, that since the 1970s, Exxon knew that its products were destroying the atmosphere on which we all depend. But this new report provides extraordinary detail on the enormous accuracy with which Exxon scientists predicted the climate emergency we find ourselves in today.
The authors stated that Exxon was “extraordinarily accurate in its climate predictions” from 45 years ago. Their projections of a warming of +/- 0.04 degrees Celsius per decade matched others issued in 2007, almost 30 years later. Exxon covered up this crucial knowledge for the future of our species on the planet with a powerful campaign of deceit and lies, attacking and ridiculing independent scientists who later came to the same conclusions.
Another in-depth investigation that environmental lawyer Carroll Muffett began in 2008 finally revealed that the American Petroleum Institute (API), the umbrella group for the oil sector, for decades hid a study that also predicted the climate emergency with stunning accuracy.
“There seems to be no doubt that the potential damage to our environment could be severe,” concluded the report issued in 1968 (!). “It is likely that notable increases in temperature will occur. The future consequences have to be of great concern.”
This and other discoveries about the industry’s disinformation campaign are being used as evidence in a long list of lawsuits around the world holding oil companies accountable for the disasters of the climate crisis. Experts point out that these complaints are fundamentally based on the fact that the industry cannot deny the existence of its own studies or their extraordinary accuracy in predicting the climate crisis.
But they don’t learn. In Ohio, his affinity groups succeeded in redefining fossil gas as “clean energy.” The head of the United Arab Emirates oil company has won the presidency of the next UN climate meeting, COP28. And the oil companies do not give up their plans to expand their operations around the world.
We are in a planetary fight to force the dirty energy industry to look in the mirror and renounce the greed and corruption that threaten the future of our species.
Javier Sierra is a columnist for the Sierra Club. Follow him on Twitter @javier_SC