The opening of an investigation of Exxon Mobil by the New York attorney general’s office into the company’s record on climate change may well spur legal inquiries into other oil companies, according to legal and climate experts, although successful prosecutions are far from assured.
Advertisement
Exxon Mobil spokesman Ken Cohen said the company “unequivocally” rejects assertions that it suppressed climate change research concerning whether reducing fossil fuel use was needed to combat global warming.
Oil giant Exxon Mobil (XOM) is being probed by a New York state official on whether the company lied about the effect of climate change on its profit.
Eric Schneiderman, the attorney general, subpoenaed the oil company Wednesday seeking e-mails, financial records, and other materials like communications with trade and industry groups.
“Despite Exxon’s wealth and power, people were eager to sign on to this statement”, said Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org. “Anyone who’s lived through 25 years of phony climate debate or who’s seen the toll climate change is already taking on the most vulnerable communities, has been seething at these revelations”.
British Petroleum and Shell Oil left the coalition early on, setting a pattern in which European oil companies took a very different course on climate and other environmental issues than most of their USA competitors.
This video includes images from Getty Images.
More recently, Inside Climate News and The Los Angeles Times have reported that Exxon Mobil was well aware of the risks of climate change from its own scientific research, and used that research in its long-term planning for activities like drilling in the Arctic, even as it funded groups from the 1990s to the mid-2000s that denied serious climate risks.
The company Thursday held a media call on the subpoena and has a blog which provides information about ExxonMobil’s climate research.
“We were active in discussions about whether the Kyoto Protocol was an appropriate policy response”, Cohen said.
What evidence is available to support or refute the claim that Exxon Mobil misled the public? Later, company researchers confirmed that burning fossil fuels and doubling carbon dioxide emissions would warm the Earth, the documents show.
Advertisement
Last September, five major European, Asian and Latin American oil and gas companies signed on to a voluntary U.N.-backed program to monitor and disclose methane emissions, as well as invest in technologies to control greenhouse gases from their operations. “It’s a negative, though how much damage there will be to reputation or performance is very hard to say”.
