The fossil fuel industry’s decades-long campaign to mislead the public about the impact of their products on climate change has been laid bare in a comprehensive congressional report.
The 65-page report is the result of a three-year probe into the industry’s practices, prompted by initial reporting and now corroborated by internal documents, revealing that these companies were fully aware of the environmental toll of burning fossil fuels since at least the 1960s. Instead of taking action to mitigate the harm, the industry engaged in a coordinated effort to obscure the truth.
“They could’ve been the environmental Paul Revere but, instead, they were more like Rip Van Winkle, wanting everyone to go to sleep,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said about fossil fuel companies’ efforts to mislead and distract the American public for more than 60 years. “The thing that gets me the most is thinking back to the decades when ‘Big Oil and Gas’ understood the problem in a way almost no one in the country or the world did.”
The industry’s shift from overt denialism to a more insidious form of disinformation and “greenwashing” is evident in the report. Associate Professor Geoffrey Supran, a researcher of climate disinformation, characterizes oil and gas companies’ current claims of decarbonization as merely the latest ploy in a series of tactics to delay meaningful climate action. “Putting spin before science continues at oil companies to this day,” “This is greenwashing 101, talk green, act dirty.”
Senate Republicans have dismissed the report and subsequent hearing as partisan and have sought to redirect the conversation to the economic implications of transitioning away from oil and gas. Sen. John Kennedy argued that “We spend all this money, and we don’t lower global temperatures one scintilla of a degree.” Meanwhile, the American Petroleum Institute (API), identified as a key player in the industry’s efforts to obscure the truth, maintains a narrative about the necessity of American energy and the ongoing development of low-carbon technologies, despite evidence to the contrary.
Legal accountability remains a pertinent question, as Sen. Bernie Sanders inquired that “If we have an industry that knowingly, and that’s the point … knowingly understood that climate change would bring devastating destruction to the lives of billions of people, what are the legal grounds we can hold them accountable for?”
Relevant articles:
– Democrats say Big Oil misled public for decades about climate change, nbcnews.com, 05/02/2024
– Here’s how Big Oil repeatedly misled the public over their private downplaying of climate crisis, Euronews, 05/01/2024
– U.S. Senate Committee On The Budget, Senate Budget Committee, 04/30/2024
– Big Oil has been lying about its role in climate change for decades, a congressional report says, Quartz, 05/01/2024