Two separate investigations have found ExxonMobil internal documents discussing the fact of anthropogenic climate change and how best to profit from it.
These documents date from the 1970s at the earliest. Exxon then embarked on a campaign of disinformation so as to guarantee access to profitable regions that were likely to undergo ice loss and general disruption, while preventing effective management of climate change.
[Link]
TLDR: ExxonMobil may have sent Earth's ability to support human civilization into terminal decline because they wanted more profits, and they can't plead ignorance.
Edited to add a skit from The Newsroom, which I somehow hadn't seen before today. [link]
These documents date from the 1970s at the earliest. Exxon then embarked on a campaign of disinformation so as to guarantee access to profitable regions that were likely to undergo ice loss and general disruption, while preventing effective management of climate change.
[Link]
To be specific:
By 1978 Exxon’s senior scientists were telling top management that climate change was real, caused by man, and would raise global temperatures by 2-3C this century, which was pretty much spot-on.
By the early 1980s they’d validated these findings with shipborne measurements of CO2 (they outfitted a giant tanker with carbon sensors for a research voyage) and with computer models that showed precisely what was coming. As the head of one key lab at Exxon Research wrote to his superiors, there was “unanimous agreement in the scientific community that a temperature increase of this magnitude would bring about significant changes in the earth’s climate, including rainfall distribution and alterations in the biosphere”.
And by the early 1990s their researchers studying the possibility for new exploration in the Arctic were well aware that human-induced climate change was melting the poles. Indeed, they used that knowledge to plan their strategy, reporting that soon the Beaufort Sea would be ice-free as much as five months a year instead of the historic two. Greenhouse gases are rising “due to the burning of fossil fuels,” a key Exxon researcher told an audience of engineers at a conference in 1991. “Nobody disputes this fact.”
TLDR: ExxonMobil may have sent Earth's ability to support human civilization into terminal decline because they wanted more profits, and they can't plead ignorance.
Edited to add a skit from The Newsroom, which I somehow hadn't seen before today. [link]