The Exxon FIles: The Denial Continues
by Sami Grover, Carrboro, NC, USA on 09.28.07
Earlier this year, Exxon announced that it would cease funding the Competitive Enterprise Institute (of CO2: We Call it Life, and Send Your Underwear to the Undersecretary fame), as well as “five or six” other groups that have been vocal deniers of climate change and opponents of government action to curb it. They even recently said that they’d never doubted the existence of climate change in the first place. All this should mean that environmental groups like Friends of the Earth should be pleased, right? Wrong. Friends of the Earth Europe have just released the above video, Exxon Files, in which agents Deny Fully and Rex Tiller set out to bury the bad news about climate change. The video is FOE Europe’s attempt to highlight Exxon’s continued funding of climate sceptic organizations, especially in the EU where they are not obliged to reveal which groups and organizations they are supporting. An article in The Guardian gives more background on the campaign:
“Christine Phol, a campaigner for FoE Europe, said: "ExxonMobil invests millions of euros funding thinktanks and lobbyists committed to blocking internationally agreed policies to combat climate change whilst at the same time spending major sums on advertising designed to present itself as an environmentally responsible company."The group wants viewers of the video to register their support online for a planned complaint to Belgian authorities over Exxon adverts at Brussels airport. In the ads, Exxon claims to be reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. But FoE Europe said data from the company's corporate citizenship report showed Exxon's CO2 emissions increased by 8.7m metric tons from 2003 and 2006.”
For more fun animation on the darker side of the modern economy, be sure to check out our posts on Freerange Productions’ ‘The Meatrix’, ‘The Meatrix II’ and ‘Store Wars’. ::The Exxon Files::via The Guardian::
I haven't bought a drop from them since Valdez, not that they haven't done, and continue to do, worse things. You can't have a green oil company. Any suggestion on their part to the contrary is a lie to get some of your money. You can't sell bombs and claim you are saving lives.