On June 6, 1978—more than 44 years ago—an internal report entitled “The Greenhouse Effect” was delivered to the vice president the Exxon Research and Engineering Company. The report itself was the written version of the presentation by the author, J.F. Black, to the Exxon board the previous July (1977). It details then-current (1978) science on global warming, and is positively damning of the petroleum producer’s deliberate fraud in concealing, refusing to act on, and actively hindering action on global warming. Exxon’s internal report is the clearest example we have of a major oil producer knowingly putting profits above all consideration of global welfare.
A few choice quotes from the 1978 report. “Present [1978] thinking holds that man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical.” (P. 2) That is to say, between 1982 and 1987 governments and consumers should have been preparing to decarbonize the economy. Models, though primitive, were more optimistic, but not wildly different from our present understanding: “[w]hat is considered the best presently available climate model for treating the Greenhouse Effect predicts that a doubling of the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere would produce a mean temperature increase of about 2ºC to 3ºC over most of the earth. The model also predicts that the temperature increase near the poles may be two to three times this value.” (P. 1. Mauna Loa, Hawaii CO2 concentration annual mean: 1977, 335.41 ppm; 2021, 416.45 ppm) They even predicted Arctic amplification!
To be fair, consensus was only being built in the 1ate 1970’s, but the evidence was steadily accumulating: “[a]lthough carbon dioxide increase is predominantly attributed to fossil fuel combustion, most scientists agree that more research ls needed to definitely establish this relationship. The possibility that the increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is due to a change in the natural balance has not yet been eliminated.” (P. 5) Even so, though opinions on global warming were not yet entirely firm, scientists had detected the major outlines: “...biologists have been claiming that deforestation and associated biogenic effects on the continents represent an important input of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.” (P. 7) Most of the report is a copy of the visual presentation given to the Exxon board in July 1977.
Exxon’s response through the years has varied. In the early 80’s, the corporation focused its research efforts on climate modeling. By the late 80’s, when scientific consensus was becoming clear, Exxon’s focus shifted to its bottom line, and their public strategy was to question the science by, according to recent research, funding opposing viewpoints and pseudo-research organizations like the Heartland Institute. In the early 2000’s Exxon funded both studies which supported the concept of global warming, and which misrepresented existing findings and questioned it. In 2005, 39 out of 54 of the company’s environmental research grant awards went to denial-based reports.
At the same time, Exxon aggressively lobbied in Washington and elsewhere against global warming regulation, led by CEO Lee Raymond. Exxon might even have had a hand in the 2001 replacement of Robert Watson as chairperson of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) with the more industry-friendly Rajendra K. Pachauri (though this also coincided with the beginning of the George W. Bush presidency). In a perfect example of the revolving door of corruption between government and industry, in 2005 Exxon hired Philip Cooney, recently disgraced ex-chief of the US Council on Environmental Quality (found to have been doctoring scientific reports to minimize evidence of warming), to an executive position. Prior to his time on the Council, Cooney had served as an oil industry lobbyist. From the oil industry to government, and then back to the oil industry.
In 2007, Exxon’s position began to soften, and in 2009 they publicly disavowed climate change denial efforts, but it was not until 2014 that the company explicitly acknowledged climate change as a threat to society. Since that time Exxon has endorsed a carbon tax as the best means of carbon regulation.
Tomorrow: introduction to Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs).
Be brave, be steadfast, and be well.
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