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    Exxon CEO accused of lying about climate science to congressional panel

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    Climate crimesEnvironmentExxon CEO accused of lying about climate science to congressional panelCongresswoman Carolyn Maloney likens oil company bosses’ responses to those of tobacco industry at historic hearing Supported byAbout this contentChris McGrealThu 28 Oct 2021 17.05 EDTFirst published on Thu 28 Oct 2021 16.33 EDTThe chief executive of ExxonMobil, Darren Woods, was accused of lying to Congress on Thursday after he denied that the company covered up its own research about oil’s contribution to the climate crisis.For the first time, Woods and the heads of three other major petroleum companies were questioned under oath at a congressional hearing into the industry’s long campaign to discredit and deny the evidence that burning fossil fuels drove global heating. When pressed to make specific pledges or to stop lobbying against climate initiatives, all four executives declined.Joe Manchin leads opposition to Biden’s climate bill, backed by support from oil, gas and coalRead moreThe chair of the House oversight committee, Representative Carolyn Maloney, pressed Woods about statements by his predecessor, Exxon CEO Lee Raymond, who in the 1990s said the scientific evidence for climate change was “inconclusive” and that “the case for global warming is far from air tight”. In 2002, Exxon ran advertisements in the New York Times calling climate science “unsettled”.Malone put it to Woods that Exxon’s own scientists had repeatedly warned the company about the threat from burning fossil fuels as far back as the 1970s.“There is a clear conflict between what Exxon CEO told the public and what Exxon scientists were warning privately for years,” she said.Woods denied that Raymond or Exxon misled anyone.“I do not agree that there was an inconsistency,” he said.Maloney said the response reminded her of “another hearing that we had with the tobacco industry”.“They said they did not believe that nicotine was addictive. Well, it came out that they lied. Tobacco nicotine was very addictive. And now I’m hearing from you that the science that was reported publicly, where your executives were denying climate change, we know that your scientists internally were saying that it’s a reality,” she said.“So I was hoping that you would not be like the tobacco industry was and lie about this.”The heads of the American operations of the other oil companies – Shell, Chevron and BP – were also firm in resisting pressure to admit they misrepresented climate science or deceived the public.They each said that they recognised global heating was a reality and a major challenge. But the executives did not accept that their companies had failed to take it seriously or that they were undermining attempts to cut greenhouse gases by funding trade groups pouring millions of dollars into lobbying Congress against tighter environmental laws.“We accept the scientific consensus,” said Michael Wirth, the CEO of Chevron. “Climate change is real. Any suggestion that Chevron is engaged in disinformation and to mislead the public on these complex issues is simply wrong.”But Maloney accused the oil companies of continuing the cover-up, including by hiding documents. She said she would take the unusual step of issuing subpoenas to force the firms to reveal what they knew.“We need to get to the bottom of the oil industry’s disinformation campaign and with these subpoenas we will,” she said.The oil and gas industry, which spent about $100m on political lobbying last year, was strongly backed by a number of Republicans on the committee who sought to distract by denouncing Joe Biden’s energy policies.Republicans called their own witness, Neal Crabtree, who said he lost his job as a welder within three hours of Biden being sworn in as president because the Keystone pipeline was cancelled. Crabtree was used to portray Biden as colluding with China and Russia against America’s oil industry.The highest-ranking Republican on the committee, Representative James Comer, questioned the legitimacy of the investigation. He said the committee would be better off spending its time investigating the White House’s handling of inflation, illegal immigration and the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan.In a hearing meant to focus on climate misinformation, several Republican members openly questioned the urgency of the climate crisis. Representative Clay Higgins called the hearing “a threat from within” because the American way of life was built on oil.Another Republican member said Maloney owed the oil executives an apology for intruding on their right to free speech by pressing them to make a commitment that their firms will “no longer spend any money, either directly or indirectly, to oppose efforts to reduce emissions and address climate change”.None of the executives would make a direct commitment.Maloney showed the hearing a video secretly recorded by Greenpeace earlier this year of an Exxon lobbyist describing the oil giant’s backing for a carbon tax as a public relations ploy intended to stall more serious measures to combat the climate crisis.“How did Exxon respond?” asked Maloney. “Did they come clean about this shocking conduct? No. Mr Woods called Mr McCoy’s comments inaccurate and then they fired him. And they are obviously lying like the tobacco executives were.”While the oil executives largely maintained a united front, Representative Ro Khanna, a leading critic of the petroleum industry on the committee, drew out testimony that showed the European companies, Shell and BP, were working to cut production while the US firms, Exxon and Chevron, intended to increase drilling in the coming years.Wirth said that his company would raise oil production while cutting carbon admissions.The hearing also questioned the leaders of two powerful lobby groups accused of acting as front organisations for big oil, the American Petroleum Institute and the US Chamber of Commerce.Khanna noted that API was heavily funded by oil company money as it resisted the expansion of infrastructure for electric vehicles and opposed a methane fee backed by Biden, including flooding Facebook with advertisements in recent months.Khanna challenged each of the oil executives in turn to resign from API over its position on electric vehicles or to tell it to stop its opposition to a methane fee. All of them declined to do so.TopicsEnvironmentClimate crimesExxonMobilBPRoyal Dutch ShellChevronOil and gas companiesOilnewsReuse this content More

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      Oil executives face ‘turning point’ US congressional hearing on climate crisis

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      Climate crimesUS CongressOil executives face ‘turning point’ US congressional hearing on climate crisisThe heads of top US oil companies will answer accusations that their firms have spent years lying about the climate crisis Supported byAbout this contentChris McGrealThu 28 Oct 2021 03.00 EDTLast modified on Thu 28 Oct 2021 03.01 EDTThe heads of major oil companies will make a historic appearance before Congress on Thursday to answer accusations that their firms have spent years lying about the climate crisis.For the first time, the top executives from the US’s largest oil company, ExxonMobil, as well as Shell, Chevron and BP will be questioned under oath about the industry’s long campaign to discredit and deny the evidence that burning fossil fuels drove global heating.The dirty dozen: meet America’s top climate villainsRead moreA leading critic of the petroleum industry behind the hearing by the House oversight committee, Representative Ro Khanna, said the executives’ testimony has the potential to be as significant as the 1994 congressional hearing at which the heads of the big tobacco companies were confronted with the question of whether they knew nicotine was addictive.They denied it and that lie opened the door to years of litigation which resulted in a $206bn settlement against the cigarette makers.Khanna told the Guardian that the oil company chiefs face a similar moment of reckoning.“They’ve got a very tricky balance. They either have to admit certain wrongdoing or they run the risk of lying under oath. If I were them, I would come in with more of a mea culpa approach and acknowledge what they’ve done wrong,” he said.“It’ll be a turning point for them. It could be the big tobacco moment. We’ve never had a situation where the big oil executives have to answer under oath for their company’s behaviour.”Khanna said that he wanted Americans to take away the message from the hearing that the oil companies “knew they lied” about the climate emergency.The CEOs, who have opted to testify by video, are Darren Woods of Exxon, David Lawler of BP American, Michael Wirth of Chevron and the president of Shell, Gretchen Watkins.The leaders of two powerful lobby groups accused of acting as front organisations for big oil, the American Petroleum Institute and the US Chamber of Commerce, will also testify.Khanna said the oil chiefs will be confronted with evidence of a persistent and coordinated cover-up, including documents that have not been made public before.“The documents confirm the misinformation and deception that they’ve engaged in in the past explicitly, and that they continue to engage in through third parties,” he said. “The record is so clear that they will be risking perjuring themselves if they deny the record.”But the hearing will also be a test for whether the oil industry’s critics can back up their claims of a sprawling conspiracy by the fossil fuel companies to block action on the climate emergency – an accusation also made in dozens of lawsuits by US states, municipalities and private organisations.Geoffrey Supran, a research associate at Harvard’s department of history of science and co-author of a groundbreaking study of Exxon’s communications on the climate crisis, said the oil executives are well-practiced at sidestepping responsibility.“This will be a challenging hearing. This is a situation where the historical record is incontrovertible but the climate denial machine has been like a sprawling, well-oiled, well-funded network for decades,” he said. “Given the range of actors and tactics involved, asking the right questions at the right time, having the right documents at your fingertips to pin them into a corner is tricky.”The hearings follow the release of a growing body of evidence that the oil industry knew about and covered up the growing threat from burning fossil fuels for decades. That includes a raft of Exxon documents held at the University of Texas, and uncovered by the Columbia Journalism School and the Los Angeles Times in 2015.In 1979, a study by Exxon’s own scientists concluded that burning fossil fuels “will cause dramatic environmental effects” in the coming decades. It called the issue “great and urgent”.Exxon’s response to that and similar warnings was to shut down research into global heating and to go on a public relations offensive to discredit climate science as no more than a theory, and to shift responsibility on to consumers.In 2019, Martin Hoffert, a professor of physics at New York University, told a congressional hearing that his climate modelling for Exxon in the 1980s showed that burning fossil fuels was “increasingly having a perceptible influence on Earth’s climate”.Meanwhile the company was pushing a different narrative.“Exxon was publicly promoting views that its own scientists knew were wrong, and we knew that because we were the major group working on this. This was immoral and has greatly set back efforts to address climate change,” said Hoffert.Other oil firms face similar accusations alongside trade groups and thinktanks they funded to deny climate science.This story is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of news outlets strengthening coverage of the climate storyTopicsUS CongressClimate crimesExxonMobilRoyal Dutch ShellChevronBPOilUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Exxon and BP called to testify on climate after ‘troubling’ new documents

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      Climate crimesExxonMobilExxon and BP called to testify on climate after ‘troubling’ new documentsCongressman calls documents related to the fossil fuel industry’s efforts to discredit climate science ‘very concerning’ Supported byAbout this contentChris McGrealThu 16 Sep 2021 11.13 EDTLast modified on Thu 16 Sep 2021 14.59 EDTUS congressional investigators say they have uncovered “very concerning” new documents about ExxonMobil’s disinformation campaign to discredit climate science.Representative Ro Khanna, a leading critic of the petroleum industry on the House oversight committee, said the documents came to light ahead of a hearing next month to question the heads of large oil companies about their industry’s long history of undermining the evidence that burning fossil fuels drove global heating.Khanna declined to discuss the information beyond describing it as “very troubling facts and some very concerning documents”.On Thursday, the House oversight committee sent out letters summoning the heads of four firms – Exxon, Chevron, Shell and BP – to testify on 28 October.The letter to Darren Woods, Exxon’s chief executive, said the “fossil fuel industry has reaped massive profits” while devastating communities, ravaging the natural world and costing taxpayers billions of dollars.“We are also concerned that to protect those profits, the industry has reportedly led a coordinated effort to spread disinformation to mislead the public and prevent crucial action to address climate change,” the letter said.The hearings follow a secret recording of an Exxon lobbyist earlier this year describing the oil giant’s backing for a carbon tax as a public relations ploy intended to stall more serious measures to combat the climate crisis.“The big oil companies owe the American people an explanation,” said Khanna, a California Democrat who chairs the environmental subcommittee. “They need to admit what they’ve done on climate misinformation in the past, they need to acknowledge what they’re currently doing in terms of spending dark money, and they need to commit 100% that they’re going to stop any climate disinformation campaign.”The congressman said it was “unbelievable” that oil industry leaders have yet to face questioning by Congress about the climate crisis. He likened the hearings to the groundbreaking appearance of seven tobacco company chiefs before Congress in 1994 to expose what the cigarette companies knew about the hazards of smoking. He said the oversight committee is currently being advised by some of those involved in those hearings.Khanna said he wants to hear from the leaders of the oil giants not only about past actions but their continued funding of front groups and thinktanks spreading disinformation about climate science, the covert funding of denialist advertising and the use of lobby groups to oppose green legislation.“The magnifying glass is particularly important now so that they don’t interfere with the Congress’s agenda to get all kinds of legislation. We will not tackle the climate crisis successfully if we don’t first put an end to climate disinformation,” he said.The committee is also requesting that the heads of two major trade groups closely aligned with the oil industry, the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the US Chamber of Commerce, answer questions about their role in the coverup.Minnesota’s attorney general, Keith Ellison, is suing API, alleging that it “engaged in a public-relations campaign that was not only false, but also highly effective” to undermine climate science.Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse told the Guardian earlier this year that API was acting as a front for the industry by allowing oil firms to claim they were committed to addressing climate change while API lobbied against green policies in Congress. Whitehouse accused API of “lying on a massive industrial scale”.In 1998, after countries signed the Kyoto Protocol to help curb carbon emissions, API drew up a multimillion-dollar disinformation campaign to ensure that “climate change becomes a non-issue”. The plan said “victory will be achieved” when “recognition of uncertainties become part of the ‘conventional wisdom’”.Similarly, the US Chamber of Commerce has helped downplay the climate crisis and oppose legislation to curb greenhouse emissions.In 2015, the Columbia Journalism School and the Los Angeles Times uncovered a raft of Exxon documents held at the University of Texas that showed the company worked to undermine climate science by promoting denialism.Exxon’s chairman and chief executive, Lee Raymond, told industry executives in 1996 that “scientific evidence remains inconclusive as to whether human activities affect global climate”.This story is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of news outlets strengthening coverage of the climate storyTopicsExxonMobilClimate crimesBPRoyal Dutch ShellChevronOilUS CongressUS politicsnewsReuse this content More