Who Are They Kidding: Exxon Says Never Doubted Climate Change
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 06.17.07
File this under the "yeah, right" category: according to a recent news report, the oil company Exxon Mobil apparently never doubted the risk from climate change: no, as its global spokesman Kenneth Cohen would have it, it has simply "evolved" its understanding of the problem over the past few years.
Having finally bowed to reality and accepted that some form of US climate policy was now inescapable, the world's most profitable company has decided to take a seat at the table and help shape future legislation. "We're very much not a denier, very much at the table with our sleeves rolled up," Cohen told reporters. It has come out in favor of a so-called "upstream cap and trade" carbon market that would cap emissions at the level of fossil fuel suppliers instead of energy consumers like utilities.
In a move to soften its stance on climate change, Exxon withdrew funding from the global warming denying Competitive Enterprise Institute in 2005, a year before it ran its laughable ad campaign promoting carbon dioxide, "We Call it Life" (see here and here for all the gory details), and, alleging that it has been "misunderstood," pledged this past January that it would "not be providing any further funding" to similar organizations.
Now this certainly all sounds rosy and good but, once you get down to it, doesn't equate very well with the facts: indeed, a report released by GreenPeace a few weeks ago revealed that the company was still actively funding at least 14 groups "for their climate change work," including Frontiers for Freedom, which released a tract "dedicated entirely to questioning global warming science, policy and attacking Al Gore," and the Heartland Institute, which describes global warming as " prime example of the alarmism that characterizes much of the environmental movement."
Cohen tries to explain this away by arguing that Exxon only funded such groups because they were against the Kyoto Protocol (which it still firmly rejects) and not because they vehemently denied the existence of global warming. "We started funding a number of these groups because we were opposed to the Kyoto Protocol. We were slow to stop funding," he said.
That sounds especially hard to believe when you try to reconcile that view with this waffling statement made by the company's CEO, Rex Tillerson, on global warming earlier this month:
“There’s much we know and can agree on around the climate change issue, and there’s much that we just don’t believe we do know…and we want to have a debate about the things we know and understand, the things we know about that we don’t understand very well, and the things we don’t even know about around this very complex issue of climate science. So that will continue to be our position.”
We'll believe it when we see it, guys.
Via ::Exxon Says it Never Doubted Climate Change Threat, ::ExxonMobil Lied, Continues to Lavishly Fund Prominent Global Warming Deniers
See also: ::Exxon Turns Off Disinformation Tap, ::This is News? Scientists Slam Exxon for Disinformation Campaign, ::Exxon to USA: Stop Trying, Resistance is Futile, ::States, Pension Funds and Institutions Going after Exxon Mobil
Maybe we dreamed it. Did we dream the Iraq war? Please tell me we dreamed it all. Please....
I think that we can expect their views to "evolve" more over the next several years.
I believe it when they said they never doubted the reality and severity of the crisis. The difference is, they just didn't CARE.
Julia, you said it!
After 16 million dollars, over 10 years they have engineered the most massive de-eductaion in the post Soviet era. The ignorantification machinery they set in place will continue to do the work they set it up to do, so what harm is there in backing away.
Anyone see The Yes Men?
I wouldn't believe anything except that 1. they realize they have taken some bad PR with all this (makes them and their record profits more vulnerable since Democrats will be less likely to help them out) and 2. that they are "at the table" so that they can make whatever inevitable regulations as weak as possible. "Up-stream" capping will put more power in their hands than if the capping was economy wide. they truly are scum. Rich, powerful, successful scum.
hahahahahhahahhha.
This is a great post. At last sort of an admission of guilt. I posted recently about how fat people are being blamed for climate-change: http://tinyurl.com/yro92j
However, I would suggest that the energy companies are slightly more to blame!
Sounds as if Rex T. has taken a cue from that wonderful Rumsfeldt (sp?) speech about the "known unknowns"...and then got it all muddled!!
Awesome coverage. I was hoping Treehugger could put it on here. I saw the Today show about this too, and I was really interested about it.
I think Exxon is try the least to be eco-friendly, compared to the other gas companies. I used to like Exxon, but them not even trying is making me start to dislike them. I love the Today Show's coverage on that.