exxon3 bak

no lnx

end dci group

exxon3817

aka exxon 3

5/16

post bust. see rico gw, team red and blue, corp person

A breakthrough study from Harvard unearths the extent Exxon has gone to in order to destroy the public's trust in climate change science.

Last week, Harvard University researchers Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes (of Merchants of Doubt fame) published the first peer-reviewed study comparing ExxonMobil’s internal and external communications on climate change.

The abstract of the Supran and Oreskes study shows that ExxonMobil’s own scientists and executives had a much sharper understanding of climate science than the company told the public (emphasis added):

“Accounting for expressions of reasonable doubt, 83 percent of peer-reviewed papers and 80 percent of internal documents acknowledge that climate change is real and human-caused, yet only 12 percent of advertorials do so, with 81 percent instead expressing doubt. We conclude that ExxonMobil contributed to advancing climate science — by way of its scientists’ academic publications — but promoted doubt about it in advertorials. Given this discrepancy, we conclude that ExxonMobil misled the public.”

As the Harvard authors credit, the advertorials came from a study published on PolluterWatch by our former colleague at Greenpeace, Cindy Baxter.

Cindy republished many of ExxonMobil’s New York Times advertorials back in 2015. This was right as investigative reporters at InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times revealed the extent of knowledge among Exxon’s own scientists that burning fossil fuels caused unnatural global warming.

With these revelations in mind, Cindy recalled a peer-reviewed study in the journal Public Relations Review on “advertorials” or “op-ads” that Mobil Oil paid to have published in the New York Times. The authors of that study, Clyde Brown and Herbert Waltzer, reviewed 819 New York Times advertorials that Mobil placed “every Thursday” from 1985 to 2000.

Using a subscription database called ProQuest, Greenpeace found that Exxon and Mobil’s op-ads went back at least as far as 1974, and continued until at least 2004. This was years after Exxon and Mobil merged to form the world’s largest non-government oil corporation in 1999. Combined with evidence published by reporters showing the degree to which Exxon and Mobil’s own scientists understood the global warming phenomenon and its root in human fossil fuel combustion, the advertorials take on new meaning.

These oil companies were not as naive or uncertain as they long pretended to be, up until the point that denying the science was no longer possible. It turns out, they knew the entire time, and they appear to have intentionally deceived the public.

Here are some of the ExxonMobil advertorials that Greenpeace published in 2015:

TOMORROW'S ENERGY NEEDS (FIRST EXXONMOBIL ADVERTORIAL AFTER CORPORATE MERGER) (p. 1)

Selected portion of a source document hosted by DocumentCloud

This was the first New York Times advertorial placed by ExxonMobil the week after Exxon and Mobil merged to form one corporation.

View the entire document with DocumentCloud

“Unsettled Science” – From 2000, this advertorial clearly downplays ExxonMobil’s internal understanding of climate change science:

UNSETTLED SCIENCE - EXXONMOBIL AD - 2000 (p. 1)

Selected portion of a source document hosted by DocumentCloud

View the entire document with DocumentCloud

“Directions for Climate Research” – From 2004, Exxon used the classic “we need more research” delay tactic. This was eight years after thousands of scientists in the scientifically-conservative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released findings from its Second Assessment Report in 1995, which warned policymakers that humans pushed the climate beyond so far beyond its natural boundaries that we may not be able to reverse the trend. As the IPCC reports became more dire, Exxon engaged front groups, lobbyists, and politicians to attack the science itself.

DIRECTIONS FOR CLIMATE RESEARCH - EXXONMOBIL AD - 2004 (p. 1)

Selected portion of a source document hosted by DocumentCloud

View the entire document with DocumentCloud

More examples are available in our archive of ExxonMobil advertorials on PolluterWatch.

https://www.ecowatch.com/exxon-climate-science-2476585995.html

A new study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters by Dr. Geoffrey Supran and Dr. Naomi Oreskes of Harvard University marks an important advance in the examination of fossil fuel companies' responsibility for climate change. What makes this paper noteworthy is that it's the first peer-reviewed content analysis of ExxonMobil's climate change communications—and it concludes that the company misled the public. "In short, Exxon Mobil contributed quietly to climate science and loudly to raising doubts about it," the authors wrote in a New York Times op-ed.

ExxonMobil has already dismissed the study's conclusions and questioned the authors' motives. Under the leadership of CEO Darren Woods, the company is attempting to cover the sun with one finger. By insisting that it does not cover up climate science, ExxonMobil misrepresents the real issue: its failure to act on scientific knowledge of the devastating climate impacts of its product.

...

The Supran-Oreskes study builds on a wealth of research into ExxonMobil's climate change communications. Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) documented the company's deceptive tactics in our 2007 report Smoke, Mirrors, and Hot Air: How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco's Tactics to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science, followed by our 2015 exposé The Climate Deception Dossiers: Internal Fossil Fuel Industry Memos Reveal Decades of Corporate Disinformation and last year's The Climate Accountability Scorecard: Ranking Major Fossil Fuel Companies on Climate Deception, Disclosure, and Action.

Many others have contributed to this research:

Exxon: The Road Not Taken, a series by InsideClimate News, was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

Columbia University's Energy & Environmental Reporting Project and the Los Angeles Times also investigated the gaps between ExxonMobil's public position and its internal planning on the issue of climate change.

The Center for International Environmental Law's Smoke and Fumes investigation uncovered hundreds of documents revealing that the oil industry knew of climate risks decades earlier than previously suspected.

In 2016, the Climate Investigations Center compiled Top Ten Documents Every Reporter Covering ExxonMobil Should Know.

ExxonMobil challenged the public to "Read all of these documents and make up your own mind." The study's authors took up that challenge.

Turning Over a New Leaf?

The Supran-Oreskes study covers the period 1977-2014—prior to the tenure of current CEO Woods. Woods, who took over from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in January, has expressed support for the Paris climate agreement and for a carbon tax. The company's current stated position is that "the risk of climate change is clear and the risk warrants action."

As Supran and Oreskes highlight, ExxonMobil has several webpages dedicated to backing up its rebuttal of "allegations that ExxonMobil suppressed climate change research," including a "10-page document listing the over 50 peer-reviewed articles on climate research and related policy analysis from ExxonMobil scientists from 1983 to the present." The company claims that the list "undercuts the allegation…that ExxonMobil sought to hide our research."

ExxonMobil's present-day denial that it suppresses climate science is itself a misrepresentation and a diversion.

The Risk of Stranded Assets

In its internal deliberations ExxonMobil has, evidently, long recognized the reality of a global "carbon budget" that cannot be exceeded if global average temperature increases are to be kept to safe levels. However, the company pretends to its own shareholders that business-as-usual levels of fossil fuel production will continue.

Supran and Oreskes (2017:12) find that in its less public-facing communications ExxonMobil addressed "carbon budgets" consistent with stabilization of emissions of heat-trapping gases, but ignored the risks of stranded fossil fuel assets in its New York Times advertorials.

[Five] ExxonMobil studies—one internal, three peer-reviewed, and one non-peer reviewed—include data…that indicate 2015-2100 CO2 budgets consistent with limiting warming to 2 °C and/or stabilizing CO2concentrations below 550 ppm in the range of 251–716 GtC [81, 83, 127–129]. These budgets are within a factor of two of contemporary estimates of roughly 442–651 GtC [130].

ExxonMobil's 2016 Energy and Carbon Summary, published in 2017, states firmly that "We expect all hydrocarbons in our proved reserves to ultimately be produced and not be 'stranded.'" And as my colleague Peter Frumhoff has written, ExxonMobil maintains a business model that aggressively invests in developing future reserves and assumes a heavy long-term reliance on fossil fuels.

In line with this expectation, ExxonMobil fought a 2017 shareholder proposal calling for the company to report annually on how it will ensure that its business remains resilient in the face of climate change policies and technological advances designed to limit global temperature increase to well below 2°C. Recommending a vote against the proposal, ExxonMobil's board wrote:

Many third party scenarios that represent a 2-degree Celsius pathway, including IEA's 450 Scenario, show natural gas demand continuing to grow and oil playing a prominent role in meeting the world's energy demand through 2040. Even under the 450 and the New Policies scenarios, substantial upstream oil and gas investment of $11 to $18 trillion will be needed through 2040 to meet global demand, largely due to natural field decline. While ExxonMobil currently contributes less than 3 percent of global production, we are well positioned to support additional development required to meet demand as a result of our diverse resource base, superior project execution capabilities and industry-leading returns on capital employed.

In a stunning and decisive rebuke to ExxonMobil's leadership, 62 percent of shareholders voted in favor of the proposal at the company's annual meeting in May. The ball is now in Darren Woods's court to address growing shareholder concern about climate risk.

And the onus is also on CEO Woods to provide convincing evidence that ExxonMobil will put a stop to the contradictory and deceptive communications practices documented by Supran and Oreskes in this study.

With rising questions about ExxonMobil's responsibility for climate change—investigations by the New York and Massachusetts attorneys general, lawsuits by California communities affected by sea level rise, shareholder pressure—the company is on the defensive. This analysis is an important contribution to efforts by investors, public prosecutors, and others seeking to hold ExxonMobil accountable for its climate deception and inaction.

Kathy Mulvey is the accountability campaign manager and advocate for the climate and energy team at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

ref

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/fight-misinformation/exxonmobil-report-smoke.html#.WaCcXLKGOM8

https://www.ecowatch.com/exxon-harvard-study-2476138068.html

Groundbreaking Harvard Study Confirms #ExxonKnew

ExxonMobil misled the public on what it knew about climate change and its link to fossil fuels, according to a groundbreaking new analysis of the company's internal and external communications.

In a study published Tuesday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, Harvard postdoctoral fellow Geoffrey Supran and professor Naomi Oreskes reviewed nearly 200 communications on climate change from the oil giant, including scientific research, internal company memos and paid editorial features in the New York Times.

The analysis showed a "quantifiable discrepancy" between internal and external communications, with 81 percent of external advertisements casting doubt on the link between human activity and climate change despite 80 percent of internal communications acknowledging climate science.

"Even while Exxon Mobil scientists were contributing to climate science and writing reports that explained it to their bosses, the company was paying for advertisements that told a very different tale," Supran and Oreskes wrote in a New York Times op-ed on the study.

As reported by the Los Angeles Times:

"The study may be especially timely now, because a coalition of state attorneys general and the Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating whether the company lied to the public and investors about what it knew about the dangers of climate change ...

The study also involves research and public statements issued by the company while Rex Tillerson, the current secretary of state, was a senior executive. Tillerson isn't mentioned in the paper, but he became a production general manager in 1999, president and a director in 2004, and chairman and chief executive in 2006."

Greenpeace USA climate liability campaigner Naomi Ages said that "Exxon has officially run out of excuses."

She explained how "this peer-reviewed study from Harvard is just the latest piece of evidence indicating that the largest oil company in the world knew about the risks of climate change, but concealed them from the public and shareholders."

"State attorneys general dedicated to protecting people and the environment from recent assaults should act now to hold polluters accountable for the biggest crisis facing humanity," Ages continued.

"The pressure on the parties most responsible for climate change will continue, from investors who recognize the economic risks, to attorneys general in Massachusetts and New York, to the majority of the people in this country who know we need action on climate change."

For a deeper dive:

InsideClimate News, Mother Jones, Climate Liability News. Commentary: New York Times, Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes op-ed, LA Times, Michael Hiltzik column

2x?

https://www.alternet.org/environment/exxon-using-tobaccos-failed-free-speech-defense-decades-deception-climate-change

https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/06/04/court-papers-claim-rex-tillerson-approved-misleading-carbon-accounting-scheme-while-exxonmobil-boss

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/8/18/headlines/exxonmobil_escapes_responsibility_for_role_in_massive_tar_sands_oil_pipeline_spill

ExxonMobil has won a major court case over its role in a 2013 pipeline spill in Arkansas when more than 200,000 gallons of tar sands oil flowed through a residential neighborhood of Mayflower, Arkansas, and nearby waterways. U.S. pipeline regulators had fined Exxon $2.6 million and ordered the company to revise its pipeline safety procedures. But now a federal appeals court has sided with Exxon, overturning much of the regulator’s decision.

Does Exxon Have a Constitutional Right to Deny Climate Change?

That’s the subject of a massive legal battle.

NATALIE SCHREYERJUN. 30, 2016 3:28 PM

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/06/exxon-ken-paxton-first-amendment/

Update: 3/17 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/maine-climate-change-denier-discrimination-bill_us_58d2e718e4b0b22b0d199944

https://www.ecowatch.com/exxon-russia-sanctions-2464619894.html

Exxon Sues Feds Over $2 Million Fine

ExxonMobil filed suit against the federal government last week, claiming that a $2 million fine levied against the company by the Treasury Department is "unlawful" and "capricious."

The Treasury Department fined Exxon Thursday morning, alleging that the oil giant displayed "reckless disregard" of U.S.-Russian sanctions in its dealings with Russian company Rosneft in 2014 under CEO Rex Tillerson.

The Treasury Department's suit highlights particularly problematic deals with Rosneft in 2014, when Exxon was under now-Sec. of State Tillerson's guidance. The suit comes as the House prepares to pass new sanctions legislation targeting Russia, Iran and North Korea. The compromise bill gives energy companies some wiggle room to participate in energy projects with Russian stakeholders.

As reported by the New York Times:

"The rationale for the lawsuit appears to go beyond the financial impact of the fine. Exxon feels that its reputation is at stake and that the threat of more sanctions, potentially costlier, is looming.

Treasury and Exxon have been sparring for years over the company's ability to do business with Russia. The Trump administration has recently been trying to show its mettle with a flurry of sanctions announcements amid concerns that Mr. Trump may soften those already enacted. At the same time, a Republican-controlled Congress is threatening to increase Russia sanctions, which could cost the energy industry billions of dollars."

"It's a fascinating dynamic playing itself out," Peter Kucik, a former official in Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, told the Times. "It would be difficult to script this."

For a deeper dive:

Exxon suit: New York Times, The Hill, NPR, CNBC, AP. Sanctions & energy companies: Politico Morning Energy

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05122016/exxon-agu-conference-climate-change-denial

no link pix

ENVIRONMENT

http://www.alternet.org/environment/why-exxon-investigation-more-urgent-and-more-justified-ever

Why the Exxon Investigation Is More Urgent and More Justified Than Ever

"Exxon may still be in the midst of perpetrating an ongoing fraudulent scheme on investors and the public."

By Carroll Muffett / AlterNet July 19, 2017, 11:30 PM GMT

Over the last two years, reporting by theLos Angeles Times, theCenter for International Environmental Law and others has exposed that Exxon and other oil companies have known about climate change and its potentially catastrophic impacts for at least sixty years.

Instead of sounding the alarm and reducing those risks in their products and practices, oil companies spent decades sowing doubt and denial about climate science—deploying the same tools and tactics that saw Big Tobacco indicted on federal racketeering charges. There is now mounting evidence that Exxon misled not only consumers but also its own investors about the risk of climate change—through advertisements, studies, op-eds, conferences and corporate disclosures.

CIEL @ciel_tweets

#Fossilfuel companies funded #climate skepticism DECADES earlier than previously thought https://vimeo.com/user50953561/smokeandfumes … #SmokeAndFumes #ExxonKnew

9:15 AM - 13 Apr 2016

Photo published for Smoke And Fumes: An Introduction to the Deep History of Oil and Climate Change

Smoke And Fumes: An Introduction to the Deep History of Oil and Climate Change

This is a story about how the world’s most powerful industry used science, communications, and consumer psychology to shape the public debate over climate…

vimeo.com

As part of his ongoing investigation into Exxon’s climate deception, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman recently warned of the "urgent" need for further disclosures due to evidence that "Exxon may still be in the midst of perpetrating an ongoing fraudulent scheme on investors and the public." Evidence from more than two million pages of internal Exxon documents indicates that Exxon intentionally underestimated the costs of climate change regulations for years, even as it assured investors it was carefully accounting for climate risks. By publicly proclaiming a higher cost of carbon while actually using a much lower one—or in some instances none at all—the company released valuations and profit projections that made it more attractive to investors than its own calculations justified.

In one noteworthy example cited by the New York AG, Exxon executives pressured staff to apply a far lower cost of carbon to the company's Canadian tar sands assets than it publicly reported. Internal documents acknowledged that Exxon's tar sands investments would not be profitable if the higher cost were applied. This misstatement takes on even greater significance in light of Exxon's multibillion dollar write-down of those same assets in February.

Exxon has a long history of putting profits first and using concealment, deception and intimidation to get away with it. The true breakthrough of recent revelations lies in evidence that this pattern of misleading investors was recognized and approved at the highest levels of the company—all the way up to the then-CEO, our Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

This isn't smoke. This is a smoking gun.

More attorneys general are taking notice. The new California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said last week at a town hall in Pasadena that he is "very aware" of the "concern that Exxon along with other petroleum companies have been misrepresenting how much they've known about climate change for quite some time." He went on to say that when companies like Exxon "present one face to the public and one face to their investors," then "they may be committing certain crimes."

#ExxonKnew @Exxon_Knew

NEW VIDEO: @AGBecerra answered a town hall question last night about a possible #ExxonKnew investigation in California. It's...intriguing!

9:58 AM - 14 Jul 2017

It is increasingly clear why Exxon and its allies have gone to unprecedented lengths to stop the investigations by state attorneys general. New York AG Schneiderman's investigations shed even more light when it revealted that Exxon’s attorneys knew about Tillerson's so called "Wayne Tracker" email alias more than a year ago but intentionally hid this information from investigators.

In an interview filed with the court on June 2, Exxon information technology security and consulting manager Connie Feinstein testified about the company practices that resulted in the destruction of seven months of emails sent under then-CEO Rex Tillerson's secret email alias "Wayne Tracker." The 301-page transcript of her testimony offers a glimpse of the gravity of this situation for Exxon.

By design, Tillerson's Wayne Tracker account and similar accounts set up for other members of ExxonMobil's Management Committee were completely de-linked from the executives themselves, creating an almost untraceable communications network within the company's top management. Within that network Exxon's leadership discussed not only the company's climate policies but other highly sensitive matters.

This goes beyond creating a simple email alias for an account. For at least nine years, Rex Tillerson had an email account that was effectively invisible to all but a select handful of Exxon executives and support staff and which was not directly associated with his name even within Exxon's internal servers. According to Feinstein, Tillerson's Wayne Tracker alias was registered to Ramona Helble, a senior IT manager at Exxon. Helble was the account holder but had no password; Tillerson had the password, but no other visible link to the account.

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The legal discovery consequences are immense. It means that no ordinary discovery request referencing Tillerson (or any other member of Exxon's Management Committee) would turn up these emails unless the person implementing the search was aware of the Wayne Tracker identity. To give a sense for how small that group seems to have been, Feinstein, who described herself as responsible for monitoring audit compliance and electronic discovery for the company, was not aware of the Wayne Tracker emails until 2017, more than a year into the NY AG’s discovery process and after having participated in many other discovery efforts over the years.

As a result of this invisibility, the Wayne Tracker account wasn't frozen and protected by the company's electronic discovery software after the AG's original subpoena should have triggered a litigation hold on messages to and from Tillerson and other senior executives to keep probative evidence from being deleted. Because they were not protected from Exxon's automated deletion system, several years' worth of evidence from Tillerson and other key executives have reportedly been destroyed.

(image: ExxonKnew)

If this were just an example of gross corporate incompetence and reckless mismanagement of vital records, it would rightly cause serious concern for shareholders and investors.

But there are at least two compelling pieces of evidence that the concealment and destruction of the Wayne Tracker emails was more than simple oversight:

Feinstein acknowleged that several Exxon executives responsible for answering the subpoena were aware of the Wayne Tracker account, and indicated that at least one of those executives, Bob Lauck, was directly involved in producing the documents subpoenaed from Tillerson and other senior managers. Despite this, the Wayne Tracker emails were not released to the NY AG until the AG discovered the account name on its own.

Even more disturbingly, Exxon outside counsel Michele Hirshman testified that she was aware of the Wayne Tracker email account in early 2016—more than a year ago—but intentionally refused to disclose its existence to the AGs office. Her rationale was that it "would be an interesting test of whether the Attorney General's office is reading the documents." If Feinstein’s testimony is accurate, Exxon’s "test" led to the irreversible destruction of highly relevant evidence.

Exxon's intentional refusal to disclose the existence of this account and its ultimate destruction of relevant records from Tillerson and other executives hints at the significance of this investigation even beyond the climate context. Those accounts have been in place for many years—in Tillerson’s case, since 2007. During that time, Exxon has faced litigation, investigations, and inquiries on a number of fronts. Yet Exxon's witness could not answer whether the Wayne Tracker or similar emails had ever been acknowledged or produced in prior litigation.

The AG's interview of Feinstein hints at the implications of this: were the Wayne Tracker emails produced in the Kivalina case or in Comer v. Murphy? Were they produced to the SEC? Or in any suit against Exxon in the last seven years? The obvious answer to that question is the most likely: The world is just learning about Wayne Tracker because he's been completely hidden before now.

What began as an investigation about climate change is starting to raise fundamental and far reaching questions about the company and its practices. Exxon has fought furiously and using unprecedented legal tactics and political pressure to stop this and similar investigations from going forward. With each new discovery revealing whole new categories of secrets, it begs the obvious question: just how much more is this company hiding?

Such conduct should outrage not just climate advocates, but everyone. If you’re a consumer or concerned citizen, you should be outraged by proof of Exxon and Tillerson deceiving the public about the climate risks of their products

If you’re an investor—in fossil fuels or in clean energy—you should be outraged that a company that misleads investors about the material risks it faces or the value of its assets. Exxon’s climate denial and misdirection are already troubling to the overwhelming majority of ExxonMobil shareholders who voted in May that the company must come clean about its role and response to climate change.

And if you are a state attorney general charged with protecting the public from fraud, then this revelation should convince you that it is time to join the investigation into Exxon, its practices and its secrets.

For nearly two years, the Attorneys General of New York and Massachusetts have stood up to Exxon’s legal roadblocks, vast war chest and political allies to ensure that their laws are enforced and their citizens protected—from climate change and from common fraud. Despite Exxon’s challenges, these AGs are winning in court—and proving that both the facts and the law support further investigations.

I am encouraged by signs and statements in California that more states are considering launching their own investigations to protect their constituents and be watchdogs. Standing up to companies like Exxon is daunting, however ,and these attorneys general now need shows of public support from citizens in their home states and from enforcement officials elsewhere.

Like Big Tobacco before them, Exxon has misled the public for too long. Six decades of deception is six decades too many. It is time to hold the oil industry accountable before they cause even more damage.

Carroll Muffett is the President and CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law

https://www.ecowatch.com/california-sue-big-oil-2461364159.html

California Counties Sue Big Oil for Sea Level Rise Damages

Three California municipalities filed lawsuits Monday against 37 of the world's biggest fossil fuel companies, including Chevron, Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell. The legal challenges, brought by Marin and San Mateo counties and the city of Imperial Beach, allege that the companies knew about the harm of burning fossil fuels and therefore should pay for current and future damages to the municipalities due to climate change.

The suit also alleges the fossil fuel companies launched a "coordinated, multi-front effort" to discredit climate science and spread doubt.

"Sea level rise is here and we're experiencing it first hand in Marin, as roadways continually flood with king tides and storms," Marin County Supervisor Kate Sears said in a statement.

As reported by the Marin Independent Journal, Sears was asked if the lawsuits were inspired by litigation against the tobacco industry that state attorneys general initiated in the 1990s:

"You could certainly think of it that way, because a lot of what these fossil fuel companies did was modeled after what the tobacco companies did."

"Instead of taking steps to actually do something about the impact of their product," Sears said, "they launched this multimillion dollar lobbying campaign to discredit scientific evidence about climate change."

For a deeper dive:

AP, Marin Independent Journal, SF Gate, CBS SF, SF Weekly, San Diego Union Tribune. Commentary: Sabin Center, Michael Burger analysis

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/06/exxon-ken-paxton-first-amendment/

right to lie?

http://www.alternet.org/environment/exxonmobil-talks-good-game-its-still-funding-climate-science-deniers

xxonMobil executives repeatedly claim their company supports a federal carbon tax and the Paris climate agreement. The company’s checkbook ledger, however, tells a far different story.

Yesterday, the company released its annual list of its “public information and policy research” grantees, which shows that it spent $1.65 million in 2016 on a dozen think tanks, advocacy groups and associations that contest climate science and oppose both the Paris accord and a carbon tax—the very policies the company professes to endorse. Last year’s outlay boosted the total of the company’s expenditures on climate disinformation over the last two decades to $34.6 million.

Chamber of horrors

Most of ExxonMobil’s spending on denier groups last year—87 percent—went to four organizations: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, American Enterprise Institute, Manhattan Institute and American Legislative Exchange Council.

ExxonMobil gave more than half of last year’s kitty, a cool $1 million, to the Chamber, which provided President Trump with a key, but fraudulent, rationale for pulling out of the Paris agreement. Parroting a recent report funded by the Chamber and the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF)?which received $1.78 million from ExxonMobil between 2000 and 2015?Trump claimed that over the next several decades the accord would cost the U.S. economy nearly $3 trillion and, by 2040, eliminate 6.5 million industrial sector jobs.

The Associated Press, Politifact and the Washington Post fact-checked the speech and arrived at similar conclusions: The Chamber and ACCF cooked the books.

“The study makes worst-case assumptions that may inflate the cost of meeting U.S. targets under the Paris accord while largely ignoring the economic benefits to U.S. businesses from building and operating renewable energy projects,” AP reporters Michael Biescker and Paul Wiseman pointed out. “Academic studies have found that increased environmental regulation doesn’t actually have much impact on employment. Jobs lost at polluting companies tend to be offset by new jobs in green technology.”

The Chamber, which has a long history of denying climate science, made similar dire warnings about job losses in a 2014 report analyzing the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. That report used flawed assumptions to magnify the carbon rule’s cost and exaggerate job losses and, like its recent report on the Paris agreement, didn’t factor in the carbon rule’s considerable benefits.

The market will take care of it

The next biggest ExxonMobil grant last year, $235,000, went to the American Enterprise Institute, which had already received $4.1 million from the company between 1998 and 2015. AEI economist Benjamin Zycher addresses climate issues more than anyone else these days at the free-market think tank, and his views are diametrically opposed to ExxonMobil’s professed positions. He disputes the conclusions of mainstream climate science, insists a carbon tax would be “ineffective,” and calls the Paris agreement an “absurdity.”

Zycher’s colleague Mark Thiessen, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, is also no fan of the international accord. In a June 2 essay, he cited numbers from the Chamber’s discredited report and maintained that “our emissions will arguably decline faster because of Trump’s withdrawal—because our free market economy will be stronger and more innovative without it.”

Wind energy blows

The Manhattan Institute, which received $705,000 from ExxonMobil between 2006 and 2015, pulled in another $135,000 from the company last year. Staffers there aren’t too keen on the carbon tax or the Paris agreement, either. Senior Fellow Oren Cass, who previously worked at Mitt Romney’s old firm Bain & Company, calls the accord a “fraud” and argues that a carbon tax would be “bad for the country” and “bad for the economy.”

Another senior fellow at the libertarian think tank, Robert Bryce, previously worked as a newspaper reporter and for the Institute for Energy Research, a former ExxonMobil grantee that is largely underwritten by the Koch brothers. A self-styled agnostic about climate change, Bryce regularly attacks renewable energy. He especially loves to bash wind, carping about the industry’s temporary federal tax breaks over the last 20 years and its threat to birds. Never mind that the oil and gas industry received an average of $4.86 billion a year (in 2010 dollars) in permanent federal subsidies between 1918 and 2009 (that continue to today), or that oil and gas industry fluid waste pits kill roughly three times more birds a year than wind turbines. Bryce never mentions either of those salient facts.

Not-so-smart ALEC

Between 2006 and 2015, ExxonMobil gave $600,000 to the American Legislative Council, a secretive lobby group that drafts sample corporate-friendly legislation for state lawmakers. Last year, the oil company gave ALEC another $76,500.

Does ALEC also oppose a carbon tax and the Paris accord? You bet.

In 2013, ALEC drafted a sample resolution for state legislators to reject “all federal and state efforts to establish a carbon tax on fuels for electricity and transportation.” More recently, the director of ALEC’s Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force slammed the Paris agreement as a “bad deal” for America. “The Paris agreement is little more than an effort by the previous president to lend some international legitimacy to his destructive regulatory campaign against affordable domestic energy,” Kenneth Stein, a former legislative aide to Sen. Ted Cruz, wrote in May 25 essay on ALEC’s website. “As has been seen in any number of U.S. industries, regulation and rulemaking stifle progress and innovation—much more so when the regulations become part of an international treaty regime.”

Why bother with a carbon tax or an international carbon-reduction agreement if, as ALEC erroneously maintains, scientists haven’t determined the role human activity plays in global warming? “Climate change is a historical phenomenon,” its website states, “and the debate will continue on the significance of natural and anthropogenic contributions.”

More than 100 corporations have quit ALEC for a number of reasons, notably its scientifically indefensible position on climate change. Those companies include a number of energy sector heavyweights, including American Electric Power, BP, ConocoPhillips and Shell. But not ExxonMobil.

Meet the new boss...

The fact that ExxonMobil’s grantees contradict the company’s avowed positions on climate science and policy should come as no surprise. Its funding pattern in Congress is analogous. Over the years, the company has consistently rewarded legislators who reject mainstream climate science and vote against carbon tax resolutions by funding their reelection campaigns. Half of the nearly $1.45 million it spent on candidates in the 2016 election cycle, for example, went to 81 climate science deniers in the House and 24 in the Senate. And 18 of the 22 senators who sent a letter to President Trump urging him to abandon the Paris agreement collectively received $371,000 in campaign contributions from ExxonMobil between 2011 and 2016.

Rex Tillerson began playing this game soon after he became the company’s CEO in 2006. In January 2007, the Union of Concerned Scientists published a report documenting that between 1998 and 2005, ExxonMobil had spent at least $16 million on a network of more than 40 anti-regulation groups to manufacture doubt about climate science. A week after its release, Tillerson acknowledged that his company had a PR problem. “We recognize that we need to soften our public image,” he said, according to a January 10 story in Greenwire, a trade publication. “It is something we are working on.”

Ten years later, ExxonMobil’s PR offensive continues. Publicly, company officials repeatedly assure the news media and the general public they have seen the light. Climate change is indeed real and we need to address it. At the same time, however, ExxonMobil is still bankrolling climate disinformation groups and deniers in Congress to stymie government action.

In January, Darren Woods, who has been working for ExxonMobil since 1992, replaced Tillerson as CEO. So far, he’s the same as the old boss. His inaugural blog post, which champions natural gas as “powerful tool” to reduce carbon emissions and stresses the challenge of “managing the risks of climate change” while meeting growing worldwide energy demand, could have easily been written by Tillerson. And, like his predecessor, Woods dutifully reiterated ExxonMobil’s nominal support for a revenue-neutral carbon tax and the Paris agreement. But until the company stops funding climate science denier groups and the members of Congress standing in the way, it will remain a major obstacle to saving the planet from the worst consequences of climate change.

Elliott Negin is a senior writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/06/08/window-dressing-exxon-reluctantly-crosses-climate-threshold

The day before President Trump made his decision to pull the U.S. out of the landmark Paris climate accord, ExxonMobil reluctantly crossed a climate threshold.

A majority of shareholders, over 62 percent, voted in favor of America’s biggest oil company releasing detailed analyses of the risks that climate change poses to its business.

Having previously argued that sufficient information is already being provided, CEO Darren Woods relented far enough to say that Exxon would “take the vote seriously [and] will respond to that feedback and look for opportunities” to communicate. Woods did not, however, agree to produce a requested report.

STILL FUNDING DENIAL 2015:

https://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/sites/default/files/resources/insidejobcai.pdf

downloaded

...

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce represents 3 million American businesses, making it the largest business organization in the world.48 The Chamber is funded by major corporate polluters and is currently receiving millions of dollars from Exxon Mobil. Even when directly asked, its executives have not admitted that human activity is the cause of climate change. The Chamber has criticized both the targets set out in the Paris Agreement as well as the measures proposed to meet them, and yet it is still granted a seat at the table at the UNFCCC. Further, it does nothing to promote the cutting of emissions and has aggressively sought to stop domestic climate policies in their tracks.

Links to the fossil fuel industry

In 2015 Exxon Mobil gave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation US$1,000,000 for “public information and policy research,” pledging a total of US$5,000,000 between 2014-2018.49 It has also received funding from other big polluters, like Chevron 50 and Peabody Energy.51-52 Executives from Peabody Energy, ConocoPhillips, and Sempra Energy also sit on its board of directors.53 What it says about climate change and its causes The Chamber publicly claims it “strongly supports continued environmental improvements, including sensible approaches to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”54 In March 2014, for example, Karen Alderman Harbert, president and CEO of the Chamber’s Institute for 21st Century Energy, insisted that the Chamber has “been a proponent on research and development, on advanced technologies, [and] the biggest supporter on energy efficiency legislation.”55

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23052017/exxon-climate-fraud-investigation-new-york-attorney-general-pwc-auditor-appeal

ExxonMobil lost its appeal on Tuesday to keep records held by its auditors away from the New York attorney general's climate fraud probe.

The documents could afford a candid—and perhaps damaging—glimpse into Exxon's private calculations of the business risks posed by climate change. They could contain anything from a smoking gun email to plodding, yet revealing, discussions related to Exxon's posture on global warming, including whether the company was adequately calculating climate change risks for investors. Exxon still has another opportunity to appeal.

Investigators for state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman subpoenaed PricewaterhouseCoopers records pertaining to Exxon's assessment of climate change as part of an investigation into Exxon that was opened in 2015.

Exxon fought to have the subpoena voided, arguing the records were privileged communications with its auditor and should be kept from the eyes of investigators. The oil giant, headquartered in Dallas, based its argument on a Texas law that grants a privilege to auditors and clients much like that between a lawyer and client.

A state court judge agreed with Schneiderman's office that there was no such protection afforded Exxon under New York law and ordered the documents handed over last year. Exxon appealed that decision.

The appeals court, which had been considering the case since a hearing in March, rejected Exxon's argument.

"In light of our conclusion that New York law applies, we need not decide how this issue would be decided under Texas law," the two-page decision said.

Exxon did not respond to a request for comment.

Caroline Nolan, a spokeswoman for PwC, said the company had no comment.

The accounting firm, which has expertise in climate-related risks faced by fossil fuel companies, has remained neutral in the legal fight but has honored Exxon's request not to turn over documents pending the outcome of the litigation.

Exxon has been fighting investigations by Schneiderman and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey both in federal court and state courts.

Schneiderman opened his financial fraud investigation of Exxon in November 2015 by subpoenaing decades of records related to Exxon's history of research into and knowledge of climate change. The investigation revolves around whether the company misled shareholders and the public about the risks of climate change.

The attorney general followed up with a subpoena to PwC nine months later seeking documents related to the auditors' work for the oil giant. Records sought under the subpoena include documents about accounting and reporting of oil and gas reserves, evaluation of assets for potential impairment charges or write-downs, energy price projections and projected cost estimates of complying with carbon regulations.

Attorneys for Exxon argued that the judge's ruling in October to force PwC to surrender documents "eviscerates" the accountant-client privilege afforded by the laws of Texas, where Exxon is headquartered.

New York investigators disagreed and argued that PwC should feel a moral obligation to cooperate. "As a certified public accountant, PwC 'owes ultimate allegiance to [a] corporation's creditors and stockholders, as well as to the investing public,'" the attorney general's office responded.

Exxon could file additional appeals up to the New York Supreme Court or allow PwC to comply with the subpoena.

While it is unclear what Exxon's next move may be related to the PwC documents, the company is also asking a judge to seal five subpoenas issued by Schneiderman's office in connection with its investigation, which has grown to include missing emails from former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, now U.S. secretary of state.

The attorney general's office disclosed last week that it has expanded its probe to determine whether Exxon may have destroyed emails from Tillerson's "Wayne Tracker" email alias. Investigators are trying to determine why several weeks of emails from that account are now missing. As part of that widening investigation, the attorney general's office revealed that it has subpoenaed a number of Exxon officials.

Exxon offered few clues in its request to the New York judge overseeing the case as to why the documents and the arguments by company lawyers justifying the sealing must remain secret.

PUBLISHED UNDER:

OIL/TAR SANDS

EXXON CLIMATE CLIMATE CHANGE

ecowatch

Trump Fires FBI Director James Comey: What's Exxon Got to Do With It?

By Andy Rowell

Washington, DC is still reeling Wednesday with the news that Donald Trump sacked FBI director James Comey.

Ostensibly, the White House is saying that Comey's firing is all about his botched investigation into Clinton's emails. But everyone knows that is not the truth.

As Politico reported, behind the sacking is an "an enraged Trump, fuming about Russia." Two Trump advisors told Politico that Trump was angry about the ongoing investigation by the FBI into links between the Russians and the Trump campaign.

The Trump line that the FBI Russian investigation has nothing to do with it is being ridiculed in the papers this morning.

As David Leonhardt stated bluntly in the New York Times, "The president of the United States is lying again … First, it's important to remember just how often Trump lies. Virtually whenever he finds it more convenient to tell a falsehood than to tell a truth, he chooses the falsehood."

So why fire Comey? A blistering editorial in the paper argued, "The president of the United States, who is no more above the law than any other citizen, has now decisively crippled the FBI's ability to carry out an investigation of him and his associates."

The paper added, "By firing the FBI director, James Comey, late Tuesday afternoon, President Trump has cast grave doubt on the viability of any further investigation into what could be one of the biggest political scandals in the country's history."

The investigation could have had "potentially ruinous consequences for the administration." So Trump fired the man who could have been about to impeach him.

The timing is certainly interesting. As the Hill pointed out too, many people are questioning the timing of Comey's dismissal.

There may be other factors at play worth mentioning. Who is Trump meeting today in the White House? The president only has one publicly scheduled item later today and that is a meeting with Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia.

As the British Independent newspaper noted, "It will be impossible to separate the meeting from the unfolding political drama in Washington."

Before Lavrov meets Trump, he will hold a meeting with ex-Exxon boss and now Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson.

On the agenda are Ukraine, Syria and "bilateral issues," according to the State Department. It is the highest level meeting between Trump and the Russians since he took office.

Also co-incidentally or not, tomorrow Lavrov and Tillerson will travel to Alaska to attend the 10th Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting in Fairbanks.

The Arctic Council is an international forum that promotes cooperation among Arctic states and includes Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the U.S. Under President Obama's administration, the U.S. position focussed on climate change.

Working together on the Arctic is ideal to help thaw U.S.-Russian relations, according to some.

Indeed, according to the Council, the meeting "will convene to review and approve work completed under the two-year U.S. Chairmanship to improve sustainable development and environmental protection in the Arctic."

But those two years have passed. Obama may have championed environmental protection, but Trump does not. Obama wanted to preserve the Arctic. Trump does not. As the U.S. hands over the baton of responsibility at the Council to Finland, the old order is no more.

Trump wants better ties with Russia. In turn, Russia wants Exxon to help explore for oil. There is no doubt Exxon wants Russian oil. Exxon's old boss is now central to the Trump Administration. And by removing Comey at such a crucial time, Tillerson and Lavrov can work on some smoke-filled backroom deals, without the threat of the FBI looking at U.S.-Russian relations.

Of course, much of this is speculation and analysis of an unfolding political situation. The Arctic meeting may not have been on Trump's mind, but Russia certainly was. And we all need to keep a watching brief on this fast-moving story, because no one knows where it will end.

http://www.ecowatch.com/exxon-clean-air-act-baytown-2383090378.html

ExxonMobil must pay $20 million for violating the Clean Air Act more than 16,000 times at a Texas plant, a district judge ruled this week.

The ruling against Exxon in a suit brought by Environment Texas and the Sierra Club found that the oil giant failed to update emissions-reductions technology at its Baytown, Texas refining and chemical plant.

In their suit, the groups alleged the plant illegally released more than 10 million pounds of pollutants between 2005 and 2013, while Exxon gained more than $14 million in economic benefits.

...

KOS 4/17

his is the one of two actions Schneiderman has taken this week to protect our planet. The other was dismissing Exxon/Mobil’s attempt to block a climate change fraud case. It’s no surprise big oil companies also love Trump’s executive order rolling back environmental protections and taking advantage in every way they can.

Schnedierman’s move is what some might call “judiciary resistance”—and we can’t get enough of it. Thank you, all the individuals and organizations that have joined in on this and other legal actions against a despicable man and his government ilk (which includes every Republican that supports him).

NY Judge dismisses Exxon/Mobil’s attempt to block climate change fraud case

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/04/04/1650072/-New-York-judge-dismisses-ExxonMobil-s-attempt-to-block-climate-change-fraud-case

ExxonMobil has just received more bad news concerning its ongoing climate change fraud cause with attorney generals from New York, Massachusetts and the U.S. Virgin Islands. A couple of days ago, the oil giant’s attempts to get the trial moved to their considerably more friendly home territory of Texas was denied, and before that ExxonMobil’s ace-in-the-hole former CEO Rex Tillerson’s “shadow” emails were ordered released by a New York Judge. Today, even more good news.

A lawsuit by ExxonMobil seeking to block climate change fraud investigations by the attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York has been dismissed—at least for now. The ruling came from the New York federal judge who took over the case last week after a judge in Texas transferred it to her jurisdiction.

Although the order by U.S. District Court Judge Valerie Caproni puts an end to the lawsuit filed by Exxon in Texas last year, the case may be refiled in as little as a month.

The ongoing case concerns what ExxonMobil knew about climate change and fossil fuel’s part in global warming—and for how long. New York and Massachusetts Attorney Generals Eric Schneiderman and Maura Healey have been investigating ExxonMobil for fraud in their history of climate change denials to the public. In turn, ExxonMobil has been suing these attorney generals saying that their attacks are politically motivated. Unsurprisingly, ExxonMobil has used the full weight of Republican fossil-fuel shills, like Texas Rep. Lamar Smith and our Republican White House, to drum up support.

http://www.ecowatch.com/exxon-climate-lawsuit-new-york-2336366166.html

Exxon Dealt Big Blow as Texas Judge Kicks Climate Lawsuit to New York Court

In a decision released Wednesday, ExxonMobil lost its bid to have their complaint against Attorneys General Eric Schneiderman and Maura Healey heard by a sympathetic Texas judge.

"The decision is a major blow to Exxon's efforts to distract from the valid investigations into whether the company lied to the public and its investors about the dangers of global warming," Jamie Henn, 350.org strategic communications director, said.

"Instead of coming up with more bogus legal maneuvers, Exxon should comply with the Attorneys General requests, including handing over Tillerson's secret 'Wayne Tracker' emails."

In an effort to distract from the Attorneys General investigation into if the company lied to its shareholders and the public about its knowledge of global warming, ExxonMobil had filed a complaint asserting that the investigation against it was a politically motivated conspiracy designed to "silence" it.

Despite his obvious sympathy to the oil giant, U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade was forced to admit in a decision this afternoon that Exxon's complaints against the Attorneys General should be transferred out of Texas to the Southern District of New York because "a substantial part of the events or omissions giving rise to the claim occurred" in New York City.

As part of its complaint, ExxonMobil had issued a subpoena to 350.org in December in an attempt to gain access to the organization's emails. 350.org promptly filed a motion to quash the subpoena and issued a statement asserting our First Amendment rights to speak out and advocate for the public interest. That motion is currently pending in the Southern District.

Wednesday's decision is a blow for Exxon, who had obviously hoped to fight the Attorneys General on their home turf in Texas rather than comply with the investigation. The announcement comes just days after the embarrassing revelation that while CEO of the company Rex Tillerson used a secret email alias "Wayne Tracker" to discuss climate change and other sensitive issues.

[img]

"The public deserves the truth about what Exxon Knew," Henn said. "The company is arguing we want to silence them, but it's just the opposite: We want them to speak clearly and honestly about their track record of climate denial so we can get to work solving the problem. Instead of continuing to follow the Big Tobacco playbook of deceit and deception, Exxon should come clean and own up to the damage it's caused."

350.org will keep up pressure on ExxonMobil to comply with the existing investigations, as well as advocate for more Attorneys General to launch their own inquiries into what Exxon knew.

"With Rex Tillerson now guiding our international climate policy as Secretary of State, this case is more important than ever," Henn continued. "If Tillerson used a secret email to discuss Exxon's climate coverup, that would turn out to be an absolute bombshell. We could be on the verge of seeing an acting Secretary of State getting pulled into a fraud investigation. And this isn't just any old fraud: Exxon's crimes are on a planetary scale."

Scott Pruitt got in trouble in 2014 when the New York Times revealed that he had passed off a letter from an energy company and financial backer as his own work. Apparently, Pruitt is quickly rubbing off on the rest of the Trump administration.

On Monday, the White House issued a press release congratulating Exxon for making investments in American jobs. Not only did the statement cite investments announced long, long before Trump became president, but the White House press release copied an entire paragraph from Exxon's own statement without acknowledgement. Yes, folks, the White House has now outsourced its communications work to Exxon. Could they at least pretend to be separate entities?

http://www.ecowatch.com/white-house-plagiarizes-exxon-2304764485.html

As if the ties between the Trump administration and oil and gas behemoth ExxonMobil weren't apparent enough, the White House on Monday issued a press release that lifted text wholesale from an Exxon press release published earlier that same day.

The Exxon release touted plans for expanded fossil fuel projects in the Gulf of Mexico, which the company itself described as "11 major chemical, refining, lubricant and liquefied natural gas projects at proposed new and existing facilities along the Texas and Louisiana coasts." (Despite repeated accidents and spills in the Gulf of Mexico—including the catastrophic BP oil spill in 2010—fossil fuel companies have continued to exploit the Gulf).

In fact, Exxon's new investments began in 2013, but that didn't stop the White House from giving credit to President Trump for what Trump himself described as "JOBS, JOBS, JOBS" on Twitter. In doing so, the White House simply copied most of the Exxon release verbatim.

Below are nearly identical excerpts from the two releases:

The Exxon press release was published Monday at 3:10 p.m. EST.

And the White House press release was published Monday at 3:43 p.m. EST.

Further demonstrating the cozy relationship between the White House and Exxon, former Exxon CEO and current Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met with Trump mere hours before the White House bragged about the oil company's investments, as Mother Jones' Rebecca Leber reported.

[img]"Exxon has a lot to be pleased with so far in Trump's term," Leber noted. "In addition to seeing Tillerson become the nation's top diplomat, the company scored an important victory when Trump signed a bill overturning an Obama-era rule requiring it to disclose payments to foreign governments. And last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency withdrew a rule that would require oil and gas companies to report their methane emissions."

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22022017/exxon-mobil-tar-sands-alberta-canada-climate-change-oil-prices

Exxon Relents, Wipes Oil Sands Reserves From Its Books

Low prices force the oil giant to stop counting 3.5 billion barrels as an asset, a major turnaround in its accounting

broke margin, see bak?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zNAn_OTrncoFaDZRXvL8nAsp_V1sttFl4hN5E6KPiT4/edit?usp=sharing

Does Exxon Have a Constitutional Right to Deny Climate Change ...

www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/06/exxon-ken-paxton-first-amendment

Jun 30, 2016 - Does Exxon Mobil have a constitutional right to sow doubt about climate science? ...Exxon, he wrote, had a First Amendment right to withhold the ... when the government must act toprotect the integrity of the market, even if it ...

Corporations like Exxon are using spurious free speech claims to fend ...

www.vox.com/the.../exxon-first-amendment-free-speech-citizens-global-warming

3 days ago - ... of the First Amendment — and other constitutional rights — Exxon Mobil, ... of American history with virtually no First Amendment protections.

Exxon-Mobil is abusing the first amendment - The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../exxonmobils.../2df8b29c-38c4-11e6-9ccd-d6005be...

Jun 24, 2016 - The oil giant is brazenly invoking the First Amendment to block a subpoena by state attorneys ... If ExxonMobil has committed fraud, its speech would not merit First Amendment protection. ... Lando unequivocally held that the Constitution does not preclude ordinary discovery of .... Play right from this page ...

Exxon Mimics Big Tobacco's First Amendment Plea

www.climateinvestigations.org/exxon_mimics_big_tobacco_s_first_amendment_plea

Apr 19, 2016 - ExxonMobil raised the First Amendment defense when it sued in Tarrant ... as a violation of ExxonMobil's constitutional right to participate "in ongoing public ... It held that no First Amendment protection applies to Nike's false ...

Exxon Fights Subpoena in Widening Climate Probe, Citing Violation of ...

https://insideclimatenews.org/.../exxon-virgin-islands-subpoena-climate-change-invest...

Apr 14, 2016 - ExxonMobil Corp. sued to block a subpoena issued last month by the ... and that it violates the company's constitutional rights and "constitutes an abuse of ... strikes at protected speech at the core of the First Amendment.".

Exxon and Its Allies Invoke First Amendment to Fight Climate Fraud ...

https://insideclimatenews.org/.../exxon-competitive-enterprise-institute-cei-climate-cha...

Apr 22, 2016 - Exxon and Its Allies Invoke First Amendment to Fight Climate Fraud Probes ... the FirstAmendment rights of those who question climate science. ... at protected speech at the core of the FirstAmendment." .... Exxon Fights Subpoena in Widening Climate Probe, Citing Violation of ItsConstitutional Rights.

3 Reasons We Oppose a Congressional Move to Protect Exxon ...

www.ecowatch.com/we-oppose-a-congressional-move-to-protect-exxon-1946424984...

Jul 27, 2016 - Constitutional Rights Violations ... colleagues bombastically claim that their crusade is toprotect ExxonMobil's First Amendment rights, as well ...

Exxon Corporation v. Eagerton | Oyez

https://www.oyez.org/cases/1982/81-1020

Feb 22, 1983 - Exxon Corporation (Exxon), along with other gas and oil producers in Alabama, ... EqualProtection Clause of the 14th amendment and the Contract Clause. ... rights under the Equal ProtectionClause of the U.S. Constitution?

Exxon Tries To Bury Climate Documents By Claiming First ...

www.huffingtonpost.com/.../exxon-first-amendment_us_571662c6e4b0060ccda46d6...

Apr 19, 2016 - Exxon's invocation of the First Amendment is fairly unusual for a ... But others have tried to defend the oil company's free speech rights on this ...

First Amendment Freedoms Must Be Protected | The Daily Caller

dailycaller.com/.../texas-is-fighting-back-against-the-activist-ags-dangerous-climate-su...

Jun 2, 2016 - A view of the Exxon Mobil refinery in Baytown, Texas, in this ... Texas AG's Decision To Fight In Favor Of ExxonMobile's Constitutional Rights?

icn

Exxon's Nod to Climate Change: A Board Member Who's an Expert on It

BY: DAVID HASEMYER

Naming atmospheric scientist Susan Avery to its board of directors may signal the oil giant will begin to take climate risks seriously.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26012017/exxons-nod-climate-change-board-member-who-studied-it

ExxonMobil has elected to its board of directors a prominent expert in atmospheric science, a move that some see as a sign the company is beginning to increase climate change considerations in its business plan.

The company's announcement of the election of Susan K. Avery on Wednesday came against the backdrop of mounting shareholder pressure to seat a board member with a scientific background, as well as the recent departure of Rex Tillerson as Exxon's chief executive. It may also be an indication of how criticism of Exxon's stance on climate science is affecting the company.

But Exxon's harshest critics dismissed the move as an empty PR gesture.

Avery served as president and director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution from 2008 to 2015, and was the first woman and the first atmospheric scientist to hold the position.

"Avery's leadership experience in multiple academic and scientific organizations, coupled with her breadth of scientific and research expertise, reinforce the corporation's long-standing technical and scientific foundation," according to an Exxon news release.

Avery has served on the United Nations Secretary General's scientific advisory board, which provides advice on science, technology and innovation for sustainable development. She also had been associated with the National Research Council Global Change Research Program Advisory Committee, and advisory committees with NASA, NOAA, and the National Science Foundation.

Over the last two years, Exxon has opposed shareholder resolutions calling for a board member with a scientific and climate change background. The company had urged shareholders to reject the proposals under the leadership of Tillerson, who is poised to be confirmed as secretary of state as soon as next week.

The company argued that its directors should have a "breadth of experience" and not be limited in their scope of expertise.

Although the resolutions received support of just 21 percent of investors in 2105 and 2016, a number of large shareholder organizations have thrown their weight behind them, including CalPERS, which manages California's public employees retirement fund, and State Street Global Advisors, a worldwide investment management company. A similar resolution is up for consideration at the company's annual meeting later this year.

Rev. Mike Crosby and the Province of St. Joseph of the Capuchin Order of friars had championed the resolutions. Crosby said Avery's selection is a sign the company may be more willing to begin accepting the mainstream understanding that climate change is not only happening but will impact the world's consumption of fossil fuels.

"It looks like they (Exxon) are changing their position," he said. "This is a step in what we see as a gradual evolution by Exxon."

Crosby said the company initially refused to even talk when the friars first raised the issue several years ago.

"We weren't getting anywhere with them," he said. "But they have been evolving. The last time we brought it up with them, they seemed more willing to talk."

The election of Avery doesn't necessarily signal a wholesale embrace of climate change science, said Tim Smith, senior vice president of Boston-based Walden Asset Management, which promotes corporate responsibility on behalf of shareholders.

"This is terribly important symbolically; terribly significant for company governance," he said. "We don't know that this is a big shift."

It increases the company's competence in addressing the climate issue, he said.

"This should enrich the climate discussion by the company and hopefully make the company more accountable for the impact of climate."

But the move is being viewed with cynicism by some environmental organizations.

"This is a little late in the game considering Exxon has known about climate change since the 1970s," said Jamie Henn, spokesman for 350.org.

"It's hard to believe this is little more than a PR stunt meant to pave over the decades the company spent deceiving the public about the crisis."

PUBLISHED UNDER:

BUSINESS AND ACCOUNTABILITY

EXXON CLIMATE CLIMATE CHANGE

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11012017/exxon-shareholders-climate-change-rex-tillerson

Once again this year, dissident ExxonMobil stockholders have filed several resolutions with the company asking it to be more forthright in addressing the climate crisis.

Submitted months before Exxon's annual meeting in May, by a twist of fate it also helps set the stage for Wednesday, when Rex Tillerson, Exxon's former chief executive and Donald Trump's pick to become secretary of state, appears at a Senate confirmation hearing.

At the hearing, Tillerson's critics are likely to connect the dots between his stance on climate change as the head of the oil giant and how he would approach the problem as the nation's top diplomat, in light of the global climate treaty that Trump has opposed.

And that may mean Tillerson finds himself facing questions about the treaty's goals that shareholders have pressed him about before.

Most of the seven shareholder resolutions filed under Exxon's deadline in recent days resemble those the company vehemently opposed in recent years under Tillerson's leadership.

They ask Exxon to add a board member with environmental expertise; disclose funding of lobbyists and organizations dedicated to influencing climate policy; and to explain in detail how the company might align its business with a low-carbon economy.

Exxon is expected to oppose those resolutions, as it has consistently for more than two decades.

Dismissing one resolution last year, Tillerson told shareholders that confronting climate change had to be balanced against other objectives, like providing energy to the world's poor. It's an argument he has made repeatedly, and can be expected to be repeated in a new setting this week before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"It is a judgment of balance between future climatic events which could prove to be catastrophic but are unknown ... and the more immediate needs of humanity today," Tillerson told shareholders last year.

Over the years, the dissident shareholders have carefully built a troika of recommendations that are meant to box in the company and make it acknowledge the conflicts between business-as-usual and the Paris agreement's goals.

One resolution, offered last year and refiled in essentially the same form by New York State's pension fund managers, calls for Exxon to prepare a stress test of how the company would perform if emissions were limited to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius, a key Paris goal.

A second resolution, filed by Arjuna Capital, a company focused on sustainable investments on behalf of it clients, asks for a report summarizing how the company will adjust. "A transition toward a low carbon economy is occurring and trends to reduce global demand for carbon-based energy are accelerating," it asserts. "A failure to plan for this transition may place investor capital at substantial risk."

A third, also from Arjuna, asks the company to return capital to shareholders instead of investing in development of high-cost oil reserves that may never be exploited because of reduced demand for fossil fuels.

"In a perfect world we would see a scenario where the company admits the problem, communicates its options and then implement those options in transitioning its business models," said Natasha Lamb, Arjuna's director of equity research and shareholder engagement.

At the shareholder meeting last year in Dallas, the open floor debate was dominated by arguments over the climate resolutions. Tillerson took the lead in urging votes against the resolutions.

Exxon's opposition to the shareholder resolutions has put it in a position of dancing around the Paris treaty's goal of keeping global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and striving to limit warming to 1.5 degrees. Any warmer, scientists say, and the risks are intolerable.

However challenging the targets, there is a clear scientific consensus that achieving them means reducing net emissions of greenhouse gases to zero over the coming decades. But Exxon shies away from that conclusion.

"Even among members of the global scientific community, including leading climate change researchers and nonpartisan think tanks, there exists significant disagreement over how to define or reach a 2 degree target," said a letter from an Exxon attorney to the Securities and Exchange Commission spelling out the company's opposition to one resolution.

That attitude, some climate advocates worry, colors the worldview of the man nominated to represent the country's climate policy.

"The key difference between his role as Exxon CEO and role of Secretary of State needs to be focused on what is the best interest of the United States and its people not just on the economic interests of a global energy company," argued Shanna Cleveland, a senior manager at Ceres, a nonprofit that promotes sustainable investing.

Under Tillerson, Exxon continued to be one of the most obstructionist oil companies worldwide when considering climate change mitigation, said Richard Ferlauto, a member of the governing board of 50/50 Climate Project, a nonprofit focused on increasing the climate awareness of publicly traded corporations.

Opposition to shareholder climate resolutions exemplifies that resistance, said Ferlauto, who served four years as deputy director for the SEC's office of Investor Education and Advocacy....

http://www.ecowatch.com/exxon-climate-research-2190240911.html

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Exxon Ordered to Fork Over 40 Years of Climate Research

Lorraine Chow

ExxonMobil was dealt a major blow on Wednesday after a Massachusetts judge ordered the company to hand in more than 40 years of climate research.

On Wednesday, Suffolk Superior Court Judge Heidi E. Brieger denied the oil giant a protective order that would have blocked Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey's subpoenas for Exxon's internal research on climate change.

"This affirms our authority to investigate fraud," Healey tweeted after the decision. "ExxonMobil must come clean about what it knew about climate change."

Exxon spokesman Alan Jeffers told Reuters the company was "reviewing the decision to determine next steps."

In June, the company filed a lawsuit at a federal court in Texas to block Healey's investigation. However, a Texas judge later ruled that the court had no jurisdiction over an investigation in Massachusetts.

Exxon is cooperating with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's own subpoena and has already turned over thousands of pages of documents.

Healey and Schneiderman are among 20 state attorneys general who have launched an unprecedented investigation into whether "Exxon knew" about man-made climate change for several decades but disseminated false information to shareholders and the public in order to boost profits.

In April, DeSmog uncovered Exxon corporate documents from the late 1970s stating unequivocally "there is no doubt" that CO2 from the burning of of fossil fuels was a growing "problem" well understood within the company. Despite having this information, multiple reports have surfaced over the company's efforts to lobby the government against emissions regulations and funding of climate change denial.

The ruling is not just a huge win for Healy, it also raises significant questions over the country's next presumptive secretary of state. On the same day of the court's decision, former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson faced off with the U.S. Senate over his nomination as Donald Trump's top foreign affairs adviser.

At one point during the rocky all-day hearing, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia asked Tillerson, "Are these conclusions about ExxonMobil's history of promoting and funding climate science denial, despite its internal awareness of the reality of climate change during your tenure with the company, true or false?"

Tillerson, despite working for half of his 42 years at Exxon as an executive, said he could not answer the question since he no longer worked for the company.

Kaine, however, pressed on. "I'm not asking you on behalf of ExxonMobil. You have resigned from ExxonMobil. I'm asking you whether those allegations about ExxonMobil's knowledge of climate science and decision to fund and promote a view contrary to its awareness of its science, whether the allegations are true or false."

Tillerson again did not answer.

"Do you lack the knowledge to answer my question, or are you refusing to do so?" Kaine asked.

Tillerson finally responded, "A little of both."

Oil Change International campaigns director David Turnbull told EcoWatch that "the prospect of a sitting secretary of state becoming entangled in a lawsuit for his role in misleading the public about climate change is as real as it is alarming."

"Tillerson should stop the evasiveness and make all of the documents it provided to New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman public, so we have a full account of his role in Exxon's disinformation campaign," Turnbull added. "Anything short of that will leave questions looming that evidence suggests may only be later answered in court."

350.org co-founder Bill McKibben issued a similar statement.

"Rex Tillerson may be trying to make his getaway, but it's good to see that the courts may yet hold Exxon responsible for the damage it's done to this planet and to our democracy," McKibben said. "It was astonishing to watch Tillerson dodge and weave, almost as if he hadn't spent his entire career at ExxonMobil. Apparently, alongside the climate damage it causes, longterm exposure to Big Oil impairs your memory."

Lorraine Chow

http://www.ecowatch.com/big-oil-exxon-big-trouble-2072533181.html

For years people have been warning that Big Oil's business model was fundamentally flawed and was not only putting the climate at risk, but millions of dollars of shareholders' money.

For years the industry's critics warned the industry was ignoring the risks of climate change and was just caring on drilling regardless.

But the oilmen did what the oilmen do: find oil and gas, no matter the consequences.

And the worst oil company has been Exxon which for decades has denied climate change and the impact that climate change will have on its business.

For decades it could have invested wisely in renewables but it carried on looking for oil and gas—including unconventional oil which is even more carbon intensive than conventional oil. Its critics warned this was pure folly: but the oilmen carried on drilling anyway.

Big Oil is used to doing things its own way.

The warnings have kept coming, but the boys from Exxon didn't listen. Oil Change International, 350.org, Carbon Tracker and many others in the #keepintheground movement have been saying for years that large swathes of oil reserves must stay in the ground.

They warned that fossil fuel reserves will become "stranded assets."

Exxon often dismissed its critics as irrelevant lentil-eating, sandal wearing hippies, who wanted to take humanity back to the stone age.

And it carried on drilling. And it dismissed the fact that any of its assets could become stranded.

But then came the Paris agreement on climate change last December. "With the Paris agreement on climate ratified in December 2015 … no company has more to lose than Exxon," noted the Chicago Tribune in a great article written last Friday entitled, Exxon enters no man's land.

The Chicago Tribune continued:

"Big oil companies have been solid investments for years, with a deceptively simple business model: Find at least as much new oil as you sell, book those barrels as future sales and reinvest in the hunt for new reserves. That made sense as long as oil prices went up, but it locked companies into a vicious cycle of replenishment, leading them to search for ever more extreme, and expensive, sources of crude oil in the Arctic and beneath the oceans."

And it added:

"Cheap oil has stopped that business cold and the threat of climate action raises fundamental questions about whether it'll ever be viable again."

The issue of long term viability has been raised by numerous organizations over the last eighteen months too. Last year the energy watch-dog, the International Energy Agency, argued that two thirds of known reserves would have to stay unburnt, if we are to keep climate change to the limits agreed in Paris.

But Exxon carried on drilling.

Last year Citigroup issued a report warning policies to limit climate change could render vast swaths of oil companies' reserves worthless, leading to trillions in losses.

But Exxon ignored the warnings.

In May this year, the London-based Chatham House warned in a report, entitled The Death of the Old Business Model, that the world's largest oil companies "Faced with the choice of managing a gentle decline by downsizing or risking a rapid collapse by trying to carry on business as usual."

Importantly, most of Exxon's de-booked reserves, about 3.6bn barrels, will be at the company's dirty Kearl oil sands project in Canada. The reduction would account for over three quarters of the reserves. Not only are tar sands very energy intensive, but they are expensive to produce.

In a low oil price, carbon-constrained world, they are stranded assets.

"For the oil sands, this is a tipping point," argued Andrew Logan, director of the oil and gas program at the ethical investment organization, Ceres. "Why would any company invest billions of dollars in a new oil-sands project now, given the near certainty that the world will be transitioning away from fossil fuels during the decades it will take for that project to pay back?"

Indeed, two days before Friday's announcement an article on CNN Money noted just how much trouble the oil giant was in: "Exxon's stock is down 17% from its 2014 peak amid the crash in oil prices. The oil giant's profits have plunged to 17-year lows and its once-perfect AAA credit rating has evaporated."

It quoted Tom Sanzillo, former deputy comptroller of New York State and now head of finance at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis saying the company was in the middle of an "irreversible decline."

Friday's announcement is further evidence that we are witnessing the beginning of the end of the oil age.

And the great carbon dinosaur Exxon is slowly dying before our eyes.

Reposted with permission from our media associate Oil Change International.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/29092016/exxon-mobil-change-change-investigation-oil-sands-tar-sands-alberta-canada-sec

State and federal investigators are zeroing in on ExxonMobil's accounting practices as part of two independent probes, asking whether the energy giant might have misled investors about the value of its assets.

Increasingly, those assets are made up of Canadian tar sands oil, among the world's most expensive and dirtiest forms of crude oil.

An InsideClimate News analysis of the company's financial disclosures shows that Exxon's oil sands reserves grew dramatically over the past decade. Doing so has deepened the company's dependence on an oil source that some economists say should be one of the first to be abandoned if governments decide to leave much of the world's fossil fuels in the ground to stave off global warming.

Since 2007, Exxon's tar sands reserves grew to 5.1 billion barrels from 1.4 billion barrels, nearly quadrupling. As a percentage of the company's total liquid reserves, these holdings more than doubled to 35 percent from 17 percent....

http://www.ecowatch.com/exxon-lawsuit-mystic-river-2024418598.html

ExxonMobil is facing a first-of-its-kind lawsuit for failing to account for the risks from climate change to its fuel storage terminal outside Boston. The Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) claims that sea level rise and accompanying storm surges could damage the facility and lead to further pollution of the Mystic River.

....

http://www.ecowatch.com/sec-exxon-climate-change-2011247494.html

...

The SEC requested information and documents from Exxon and the company's auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers, in August, as well as documents from New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's similar investigation of the company. Exxon has been under increasing government scrutiny since multiple reports revealed the oil giant may have misled the public about the dangers of climate change.

"This is a remarkably important development—the federal government is joining the courageous state attorneys general, and they're all following the trail of clues that began with powerful investigative journalism," Bill McKibben, 350.org co-founder, said. "Before they're done we'll understand considerably more about how the world overheated—but in the meantime, every institution that invests in Exxon should take real note of who you're keeping company with."

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"This investigation is a welcome opportunity for transparency from the fossil fuel industry,"Greenpeace Executive Director Annie Leonard said. "We know Exxon has published projections showing that demand for oil and natural gas will continue growing for decades to come—projections which are flatly incompatible with limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, as called for by the Paris climate accords. What we don't know is how Exxon's balance sheet would change if the world meets the climate challenge."

In 2015, ExxonMobil funneled millions to groups peddling climate denial. According to its publicly available 2015 Worldwide Global Giving report, over $1.6 million (20%) of ExxonMobil’s Public Information and Policy Research contributions went to the following organizations discussed during the web of denial floor statements.

American Legislative Exchange Council: $61,500

American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research: $325,000

Hoover Institution: $15,000

Hudson Institute: $15,000

Manhattan Institute: $200,000

Mercatus Center: $25,000

U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation: $1,000,000

ALEC’s climate obstructionism is particularly notorious, earning an entire website-- ALECclimatechangedenial.org—to debunk its work. When an ExxonMobil official serves on ALEC’s Private Enterprise Advisory Council, and your company is a top sponsor of ALEC’s recent annual meeting in Indianapolis, we find Ms. Fariello’s assurances less than assuring....

https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-schatz-call-out-exxonmobil-for-continuing-to-fund-effort-to-block-climate-action

olympic greenwash

https://act.climatetruth.org/sign/EnergyLiesHere_fshare?t=2&akid=4183.100725.NjIIBl

http://www.alternet.org/environment/new-evidence-suggests-big-oil-didnt-borrow-big-tobaccos-playbook-lie-public-about

Recent analysis of more than 100 industry documents conducted by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, has revealed that the oil industry knew of the risks its business posed to the global climate decades before originally suspected.

It has also long been assumed that, in its efforts to deceive investors and the public about the negative impact its business has on the environment, Big Oil borrowed Big Tobacco’s so-called tactical “playbook.” But these documents indicate that infamous playbook appears to have actually originated within the oil industry itself.

If that is true, it would be highly significant—and damning for Big Oil—because the tactics used by the tobacco industry to downplay the connection between smoking and cancer were eventually deemed to have violated federal racketeering laws by a federal court. The ruling dashed efforts by Big Tobacco to find legal cover under the First Amendment, which just happens to be the same strategy that ExxonMobil and its GOP allies are currently using to defend the company against allegations of fraud. If the playbook was in fact created by the oil and gas industry and then later used by ExxonMobil, it ruins the company’s argument of plausible deniability, making it highly likely that the company violated federal law.

This latest development is a major blow to Big Oil, which has been trying to rebuff comparisons to the tobacco industry. It also comes as a group of state attorneys general are pursuing an investigation into possible fraud committed by ExxonMobil. The probe, which could ultimately extend to include other oil and gas companies, was launched in November by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who has since been joined by 16 other state AGs in a historic national coalition seeking to find out if America’s largest oil company intentionally hid critical climate-related information about their future business from investors and the public.

Environmentalists and corporate accountability advocates have cheered the investigation, contending that ExxonMobil has engaged in a decades-long campaign of climate denial and deception, ultimately delaying action on climate change and putting the planet at risk.

“We began with three simple, related questions,” says Carroll Muffett, president of CIEL, about the recently analyzed documents, which are housed at the tobacco industry document archive at the University of California, San Francisco medical center. “What did they know? When did they know it? And what did they do about it? What we found is that they knew a great deal, and they knew it much earlier and with greater certainty than anyone has recognized or that the industry has admitted.”

Sowing seeds of doubt about climate science

“Big Oil created the organized apparatus of doubt,” Muffett said. “It used the same playbook of misinformation, obfuscation and research laundered through front groups to attack science and sow uncertainty on lead, on smog, and in the early debates on climate change. Big Tobacco used and refined that playbook for decades in its fight to keep us smoking—just as Big Oil is using it now, again, to keep us burning fossil fuels.” To wit: Exxon’s own Corporate Citizenship Report from last year revealed that the company is still funding climate denial groups.

The documents suggest that the tactics in question were developed by the Smoke and Fumes Committee, a group launched 70 years ago by the American Petroleum Institute, the national trade association that represents the U.S. fossil fuel industry, to study oil industry pollution and present its own spin to the public. If that is the case, it appears those same tactics were likely co-opted by the tobacco industry, which was later found guilty of committing fraud following a racketeering lawsuit filed in 1999 by the Department of Justice. The documents reveals that the deceptive actions taken by the oil industry so many decades ago prevented the possibility of early action on climate change—action that may have prevented potentially millions of climate-related deaths across the globe.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States alone. The World Health Organization estimates that around 6 million peopleworldwide die from tobacco-related illnesses. Between 2030 and 2050, WHO estimates that climate change will cause approximately 250,000 deaths per year, from heat stress, malnutrition, malaria and diarrhea. That number does not include the deaths caused by climate-related natural disasters, which have more than tripled since the 1960s, resulting in over 60,000 deaths each year, mainly in developing countries.

Neva Rockefeller Goodwin, co-director of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University is also the great-granddaughter of John D. Rockefeller Sr., founder of the American oil giant Standard Oil Company, out of which ExxonMobil was born. Earlier this year, Goodwin decided to divest her shares of ExxonMobil stock and use the proceeds to fight climate change and climate denial. In an interview with AlterNet, she contrasted the impact of tobacco and fossil fuel:

In the large picture ... tobacco and fossil fuel emissions are quite different. Tobacco kills people one by one. Climate change will increasingly cause events like hurricanes that will destroy large swathes of property, kill numbers of people, make many homeless. While it can be argued that smoking tobacco is a matter of individual choice, the production and use of fossil fuels is more obviously a social issue. In the long run, producers of fossil fuels will have to lose. The only question is how much the people and ecologies of the world will lose before our economies cease to make the situation worse.

U.N.: Climate change is "irreversible"

While the climate situation can certainly become worse, the actions of ExxonMobil and Big Oil have helped to put the planet on what many scientists are now saying is an unstoppable path. In 2014, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change offered a grim assessment: “Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts.” That has left environmentalists not only angry at the oil industry, but also wondering how the narrative might have been different had the industry been honest and open about its early findings.

“It’s increasingly clear that the fossil fuel industry knew a lot more about the causes of climate change—and its effects—much earlier than anyone else," said Annie Leonard, the executive director of Greenpeace USA, about CIEL’s findings. "It pains me to think how much better shape the planet and vulnerable communities could be in if the fossil fuel industry had taken positive action based on this knowledge instead of trying to profit from it."

Climate activist Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, has been a long-time critic of the oil and gas industry. “The ongoing revelations about the depth of oil industry research into—and obfuscation of—the greatest crisis humans have ever faced are hard to read; thanks to them, we wasted vital time,” he said in a press statement.

In a CIEL video, Muffett explains how “the world's most powerful industry used science, communications and consumer psychology to shape the public debate over climate change,” noting “it begins earlier, decades earlier than anyone recognized.” He points out that in 1968, API commissioned a report titled "Sources, Abundance, and Fate of Gaseous Atmospheric Pollutants,” which revealed rising levels of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas produced by the combustion of fossil fuel, in the atmosphere. The report’s authors, Elmer Robinson and R.C. Robbins of the Stanford Research Institute, warned of significant climate risks posed by the continued use of fossil fuel. "If the earth's temperature increases significantly, a number of events might be expected to occur including the melting of the Antarctic ice cap, a rise in sea levels, warming of the oceans, and an increase in photosynthesis," they wrote, adding, “there seems to be no doubt that the potential damage to our environment could be severe."

Notably, Muffett said, is the fact that the report's authors "recognized that the most important remaining uncertainties were technological: How would we respond and how would we modify our technology to reduce emissions?" Now, nearly half a century later, the question becomes: Why did the oil industry hide this information from the public? Of course, we know the answer to that question: Profits. Instead of responding responsibly to the dire warnings that came with this information by moving the nation’s energy portfolio and infrastructure to a low-carbon future, the oil industry kept on drilling, kept businesses and consumers burning their primary retail products, which continued to pollute the environment and damage the Earth’s climate.

Seventy years of denial and deception

The question for Schneiderman and his fellow state attorneys general is, did ExxonMobil, and possibly other oil companies, intentionally mislead investors, consumer and the public, hiding the damning scientific evidence that their own industry paid to discover? With CIEL’s analysis of industry documents, it appears that Big Oil may be even guiltier than originally suspected, as the group traced the origins of the 1968 API report to a meeting of oil and gas industry executives in Los Angeles more than two decades earlier, in 1946.

That was the year API established the Smoke and Fumes Committee. "Faced with growing public concern about air pollution,” Muffett said, “the industry embarked on what would become a well-funded, carefully coordinated, multi-decade enterprise of funding scientific research and using that research to promote public skepticism of environmental regulations the industry considered hasty, costly and potentially unnecessary.”

One of the tactics used by the oil industry was to delay any climate action that might harm its business by sowing seeds of doubt. “The worst thing that can happen, in many instances, is the hasty passage of a law or laws for the control of a given air pollution situation,” wrote Vance Jenkins, executive secretary of the Smoke and Fumes Committee, in a 1954 trade journal article about smog pollution.

The ties between the oil and tobacco industries run deep. In the 1950s, Monroe J. Rathbone, the president and director of Standard Oil, sat on American Cancer Society's committee on smoking and public policy. In 1968, Esso Research and Engineering Co., an affiliate of Standard Oil, filed a patent claim for a new type of cigarette filter, made out of polypropylene, a thermoplastic polymer that was first synthesized by Phillips Petroleum, an American Oil Company. In 1979, R.G Baker, the chair of British American Tobacco, the second largest tobacco company in the world, also sat on the board of Exxon, the world's biggest publicly traded oil company. In the 1970s, R.J. Reynolds, America's second-largest tobacco company, diversified into the energy business, acquiring American Independent Oil Company, Burmah Oil and Gas Company and Burmah Oil Development, Inc.

In a CIEL video, Muffett explains the key events that reveal the oil industry didn’t just borrow the tobacco industry’s playbook, but was actually behind behind it all along:

As evidence mounts of the oil industry's decades-long campaign of climate deception and denial, Exxon and its allies assure us that oil is not the new tobacco. The 14 million documents at the Tobacco Archives prove Exxon right: Oil is not the new tobacco. But six decades ago, tobacco was the new oil. In December 1953, tobacco executives met in a New York hotel room to hatch a plan to confront the rising tide of science linking smoking with cancer. To help craft that plan, tobacco turned to PR firm Hill and Knowlton. Hill and Knowlton, in turn, drew on its long expertise supporting the oil industry. Richard Darrow, the principal architect of tobacco's strategy, also represented Hill and Knowlton's biggest oil company clients.

In the years that followed, the tobacco conspirators looked repeatedly to oil industry campaigns on smog, lead and other air pollutants for models, for resources and for people. They turned to Stanford Research Institute, a key player in the oil industry's “Smoke and Fumes” effort to develop a suitcase-sized testing kit that would sample smoke without attracting attention. They turned to Truesdail Laboratories, which in 1958 was doing the earliest documented climate research for the American Petroleum Institute, and to a former Standard Oil executive who recommended an array of scientists for the tobacco industry's scientific advisory board, nearly all with proven links to the oil industry and many of whom would go on to work for tobacco.

Suffice it to say, CIEL’s analysis has uncovered the deep and complex relationship between the oil and tobacco industries that goes back many decades, and continues to this day. From advertising campaigns and marketing tactics to PR firms and scientists, the two industries have shared a wealth of information, strategies and human resources. The relationship was formed on mutual dependence, which consistently placed profits above public and environmental health. As Muffett points out, "For Big Tobacco, gas stations were vital retail outlets. For Big Oil, cigarettes were their biggest retail product after gasoline."

“These documents are the tip of an evidentiary iceberg that demands further investigation,” said Muffett. “Oil companies had an early opportunity to acknowledge climate science and climate risks, and to enable consumers to make informed choices. They chose a different path. The public deserves to know why.”

The investigation continues

ExxonMobil and its allies on Capitol Hill—a coterie of GOP legislators who have received political contributions from the oil industry—have attempted to stop the AGs' fraud probe by claiming the investigation is a violation of the company's First Amendment rights.

In June, ExxonMobil filed a complaint in federal district court in Fort Worth, Texas, against Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, who had subpoenaed the company under consumer and securities fraud statutes, in an effort to secure company records going back 40 years. In its lawsuit, which is seeking an injunction to stop Healey's probe, ExxonMobil said Healey's investigation is "nothing more than a weak pretext for an unlawful exercise of government power to further political objectives," adding that the attorney general is "abusing the power of government [and] … has deprived and will continue to deprive ExxonMobil of its rights under the United States Constitution.”

Unfortunately for ExxonMobil, the First Amendment claim has already been discredited. In United States vs Philip Morris Inc., a federal appeals court found that the First Amendment does not protect fraudulent statements. Likewise, Healey’s office has dismissed ExxonMobil’s claims.

"For many months, ExxonMobil has engaged in an unprecedented effort to limit the ability of state attorneys general to investigate fraud and unfair business practices," said Cyndi Roy Gonzalez, Healey's communications director.

"Our investigation is based not on speculation but on inconsistencies about climate change in Exxon documents which have been made public," Gonzalez said, and echoing the tobacco lawsuit, added that "the First Amendment does not protect false and misleading statements in the marketplace. Exxon's assertion that we cannot investigate it because the company has not engaged in business here in Massachusetts is completely preposterous."

However, a similar battle between ExxonMobil and U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker ended in a ceasefire, as Walker agreed to withdraw a similar subpoena in exchange for ExxonMobil’s withdrawal of its lawsuit against him. Walker’s withdrawal hasn’t been viewed as a setback for the ongoing probe, as legal experts contend that the primary battlefields will be Massachusetts and New York. So far, Exxon is cooperating with New York's investigation and has already relinquished more than 700,000 pages of documents to Schneiderman's office.

But 100 or so recently analyzed documents may reveal the true origin of Big Tobacco's infamous playbook.

Watch CIEL’s “Smoke and Fumes” videos to learn more about its analysis of those documents

negin ucs

8/16

carbon tax support BS

Recent press accounts report that ExxonMobil is now actively promoting a carbon tax. If true, that’s big news. It would mean that, after nearly 20 years of blocking action on climate change, the world’s biggest energy company has finally come to its senses.

But wait a minute. If something sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. So one might well ask: Is this anything more than a PR ploy?

Let’s take a closer look.

As I reported earlier this year, ExxonMobil has paid lip service to the idea of a carbon tax since 2009 but, all the while, has continued to fund federal lawmakers who resolutely oppose it. In March 2015, for example, the Senate voted 58 to 42 to pass a budget amendment prohibiting a carbon tax. Thirty of the 40 senators who had received ExxonMobil campaign contributions since 2010 voted in favor of the prohibition. Meanwhile, in March 2013, 156 House members cosponsored a nonbinding resolution stating that “a carbon tax would be detrimental to American families and businesses and is not in the best interest of the United States.” Ninety-three percent of the cosponsors were funded by — you guessed it — ExxonMobil.

OK, but that was then, and things can change, right? After all, last December, Ken Cohen, the company’s outgoing vice president of public and government affairs, blogged about ExxonMobil’s strong support for a carbon tax, noting that the company has been holding “countless private briefings with members of Congress on carbon tax policy options.”

So how have the company’s friends on Capitol Hill responded?

In June, the House passed a resolution stating “a carbon tax would be detrimental to the United States economy” on a 237 to 163 vote. Eighty-five percent of the House members who voted for the resolution received ExxonMobil political donations since 2013; 82 of them are documented climate science deniers. By contrast, only 26 of the representatives who voted against the resolution — a measly 16 percent — received ExxonMobil money.

The numbers are unambiguous: When it comes to a carbon tax, there’s no escaping the fact that ExxonMobil still funds legislators who don’t favor it and, by the same token, doesn’t support many who do.

Disingenuous Origins

In his December blog post, Cohen traced ExxonMobil’s support for a carbon tax back to January 2009, when company CEO Rex Tillerson endorsed it in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. Cohen, however, neglected to explain the context for this pronounced break with ExxonMobil’s long-held position against any policy that would curb carbon emissions: Tillerson was trying to derail momentum on Capitol Hill for a different approach.

Back then, Congress was seriously considering instituting a cap-and-trade system, modeled after the George H. W. Bush administration’s successful plan to reduce acid rain, which would have set a cap on overall carbon emissions and established a regulated marketplace where polluters could buy and sell emissions allowances. The less carbon they emitted, the less they would pay.

The European Union had instituted such a system in 2005 and, although there were disagreements over the details, the idea of a U.S. cap-and-trade system had the support of a number of environmental organizations, including the Environmental Defense Fund and Natural Resources Defense Council, and more than two dozen companies, including oil giants BP America, ConocoPhillips and Shell. Perhaps most important, the plan had the backing of President-elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats, who then controlled both houses of Congress.

Tillerson was having none of it. “A carbon tax strikes us as a more direct, transparent and effective approach” than a cap-and-trade system, he said in that January 2009 speech. “It is the most efficient means of reflecting the cost of carbon in all economic decisions, from investments made by companies to fuel and product choices made by consumers.” Any carbon tax, he added, should be revenue-neutral, meaning it should be offset by reductions in income and corporate taxes.

But there was a major obstacle in the way of Tillerson’s preferred solution: It had no political support. When California Rep. Pete Stark proposed a carbon tax just the year before, it attracted only three cosponsors.

Tillerson, who surely knew Congress wasn’t about to pass a carbon tax, publicly conceded it faced long odds. “Right now, any talk of imposing new taxes would rattle the markets and individuals,” he told E&E News, a trade publication, the same day he spoke at the Woodrow Wilson Center. “...But probably later this year, I think they’re going to get around to want to further investigate what their alternatives are.”

As it turned out, the House narrowly passed a cap-and-trade bill on a 219 to 212 vote in June 2009. In the Senate, however, it was a different story. The legislation never made it out of committee for a number of complicated reasons, but the fact that fossil fuel interests had plenty of friends in the upper chamber — many of them longtime recipients of ExxonMobil political donations — no doubt played a significant role. The bottom line? ExxonMobil ultimately got what it wanted by plugging a carbon tax: gridlock.

Beyond the Rhetoric

There has been some speculation about what motivated ExxonMobil to recently ramp up its pro-carbon tax rhetoric. First, with multiple investigations underway by state attorneys general of the company for misleading its shareholders and the general public about climate risks, it likely feels the need to polish its tarnished image. Second, the company knows that last December’s historic U.N. climate meeting in Paris, where 195 countries committed to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, means that it will be harder to maintain the status quo. Third, if and when Congress does seriously consider a carbon tax, ExxonMobil wants to position itself to influence the debate. And finally, ExxonMobil would likely benefit more than its competitors from a carbon tax, because such a tax would favor the cleaner-burning natural gas over coal and ExxonMobil has the largest natural gas reserves of any U.S. company.

These are all plausible reasons, except for one thing: The evidence suggests that the company is still doing what it can to obstruct policies to combat climate change.

Last fall, for example, California Rep. Ted Lieu — who has not received any ExxonMobil campaign contributions — met with the company’s lobbyists in what was presumably one of the “countless private briefings” Cohen cited in his December blog. Lieu asked the lobbyists what they would do if he drafted carbon tax legislation. They replied that “they would take a look at it,” Lieu told InsideClimate News. “They didn’t say they wouldn’t support it and they didn’t say they would,” he added. “It’s clear that they are not going around championing their position. If they actually believe this internally, then they ought to do so in a much louder way than just quietly sticking it on a website.”

In the Senate, meanwhile, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Brian Schatz of Hawaii have introduced a carbon tax bill, the “American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act.” Has ExxonMobil endorsed it or lobbied on its behalf? According to Whitehouse and Schatz, no.

“Regarding ExxonMobil’s alleged seven years of support for a carbon fee, we’ve seen no meaningful evidence of that,” the senators said in a letter they sent to the company Tuesday. “None of the top executives that make up ExxonMobil’s management team has expressed interest in meeting with any of us to discuss the Whitehouse-Schatz proposal or any carbon fee legislation.”

Conversely, House Committee on Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, a climate science denier, explained to Fox News host Steve Doocy in December 2012 that he told ExxonMobil lobbyists a carbon tax was a “bad idea.” “I sat down with the Exxon folks a couple of months ago,” Upton said, “and let it be known that this is not a proposal that ... is going to be coming through in the House.” Nevertheless, ExxonMobil donated more to Upton during the current election cycle than it did in either the 2012 or 2014 cycles.

Besides its political donations and lobbying, the company is still spending millions of dollars a year on think tanks, advocacy groups and trade associations that dispute climate science and disparage climate policies, including a carbon tax. Just last month, ExxonMobil was a lead sponsor of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) annual conference, which featured Oren Cass, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a self-described free-market think tank ExxonMobil has been funding since 1998. According to one conference participant, Cass “absolutely eviscerated the case for conservatives adopting a carbon tax.” Conference organizers also provided ALEC state legislator members with a sample resolution against the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to curb power plant carbon emissions.

ExxonMobil doesn’t just rely on paid surrogates, however, to spread disinformation and block government action. Company executives may sing the praises of a carbon tax, but they still find time to misrepresent climate science and question the necessity of taking any action at all.

Climate Science Denial Starts at the Top

In March 2013 — the same month 146 ExxonMobil-funded House members cosponsored a resolution against a carbon tax — Tillerson appeared on on PBS’sCharlie Rose, ostensibly to promote one. The CEO told Rose he preferred a carbon tax to a cap-and-trade system, but then he doubted whether scientists knew enough to warrant one. “The facts remain there are uncertainties around climate change, why it’s changing, [and] what the principal drivers of climate change are,” Tillerson claimed, repudiating the consensus among climate scientists worldwide. He also falsely claimed there is no scientific evidence of a link between global warming and extreme weather events.

Two years later, at ExxonMobil’s 2015 annual shareholder meeting, Tillerson again argued that climate models are not accurate enough to justify a dramatic shift away from fossil fuels. “What if everything we do,” he asked, “it turns out our models are lousy and we don’t get the effects we predict?” He recommended continuing to burn fossil fuels and adapting to whatever happens, be it sea level rise or crop failures. “Mankind has this enormous capacity to deal with adversity,” he said, “and those solutions will present themselves as the realities become clear.”

Contrary to Tillerson’s assertions, climate models have proven to be extremely accurate. A March 2013 peer-reviewed paper in the journal Nature Geoscience, for example, found that the models accurately predicted the rise in global temperatures over the previous 15 years to within a few hundredths of a degree. No matter. When given the chance to set the record straight at this year’s shareholder meeting in late May, Tillerson would not back down. “My view on the competencies of the models,” he said, “has really not changed.”

Perhaps the most revealing statement demonstrating the depth of ExxonMobil’s support for a carbon tax, however, came the day before the House resolution vote in June — the one where nearly 90 percent of the ExxonMobil-funded House members casting a ballot voted yes, a carbon tax would hurt the U.S. economy. AHuffington Post reporter contacted ExxonMobil Media Relations Manager Alan Jeffers to find out what the company had to say. Given the company’s supposedly heightened interest in persuading Congress to pass a carbon tax, one would have expected Jeffers to register the company’s opposition. Certainly he would explain why the resolution was misguided and tell House members to vote no. It was what some would call a teachable moment.

So how did Jeffers respond?

“We’re not commenting on the resolution.”

http://www.alternet.org/environment/exxonmobils-latest-campaign-stonewall-federal-climate-action

http://www.ecowatch.com/climate-denier-groups-exxon-is-funding-1919648161.html

ExxonMobil officials may hem and haw when reporters ask them if the company still funds climate science denier organizations, but the numbers don't lie.

The company says it acknowledges the reality of global warming and claims it supports a carbon tax, but its recently disclosed list of 2015 "public information and policy research" grantees shows it spent nearly $2 million last year on more than a dozen think tanks, advocacy groups and associations that dispute climate science and disparage renewable energy.

That's significant from both a legal and political perspective.

There are legal implications because ExxonMobil is currently under investigation for allegedly misleading investors and the general public about climate risks. Its scientists, who were conducting cutting-edge climate research as far back as the 1970s, cautioned top management that continuing to burn vast quantities of fossil fuels could be catastrophic. Instead of heeding those warnings, the company stressed scientific uncertainty to protect its long-term profitability and bankrolled denier groups to spread disinformation.

Likewise, it is politically significant because, by sowing doubt about climate science and the potential of carbon-free energy sources, denier groups provide cover for elected officials to stand in the way of progress.

Two Decades of Duplicity

Shortly after the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol international climate treaty, Exxon went on a spending spree to block federal efforts to address global warming. The company, which was outed by a 2007 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), spent $18.62 million from 1998—a year before it merged with Mobil—through 2005 on a network of more than 40 groups. From 2006 through last year, it spent another $14.35 million, for a total of $33 million.

That's just what can be gleaned from the company's tax filings and statements, however. Corporations are not required to disclose all of their political spending and there is reason to suspect ExxonMobil has spent quite a bit more on its climate disinformation campaign. A former ExxonMobil executive who wishes to remain anonymous told UCS that the company secretly allocated as much as $10 million annually for what insiders called climate "black ops" from 1998 through 2005.

In any case, according to its own figures posted last week, ExxonMobil spent $1.96 million on 16 denier and obstructionist groups last year. Ten of them, including the American Enterprise Institute, American Legislative Exchange Council, Federalist Society and Hoover Institution, were among those listed in the 2007 UCS report.

So what is ExxonMobil getting for its money? Let's take a look at a handful of last year's grantees to find out.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce:

Half of ExxonMobil's 2015 denier donations—$1 million—went to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the same amount it gave the Chamber in 2014.

The chamber acknowledges that climate change is happening, but discounts the prevailing scientific consensus that it is largely due to human activity, mainly burning fossil fuels. When pressed about the Chamber's position during a March 2014 Senate hearing, Karen Harbert, head of the Chamber's Institute for 21st Century Energy, replied that there is a "robust debate" over what is causing climate change. "It is caused by a lot of things," she insisted.[tobacco scam]

Harbert's scientifically indefensible comment was not surprising. The Chamber has a long history of disputing climate science and that has alienated some of its members. In 2009, Apple, Exelon, Nike, PNM Resources and PG&E, for example, cancelled their memberships after Chamber Vice President William Kovacs demanded that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) convene a "Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century" on climate science with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge ruling on the reality of global warming. "It would be evolution versus creationism," Kovacs explained. "It will be climate change science on trial."

Those high-profile defections apparently had little impact on the Chamber's position. In May 2014, just days before the EPA announced its draft Clean Power Plan to reduce power plant carbon pollution, the Chamber released a grossly misleading report attacking the proposed rule. The report, which was also sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute, was denounced not only by the EPA, but also by PolitiFact.com and the Washington Post. Among its many faults, the report wildly inflated the cost of the rule and failed to consider the benefits of cutting carbon emissions.

Last October, the Chamber and 14 other business associations filed a lawsuit against the EPA, arguing that the Clean Power Plan exceeds the agency's authority to regulate the energy sector and the Chamber's priorities for 2016 include opposing EPA efforts to curb carbon emissions as well as the agency's science-based finding that global warming endangers public health and the environment.

Manhattan Institute:

ExxonMobil gave the Manhattan Institute $200,000 in 2015, boosting the company's total donations to the self-described free-market think tank to $1 million since 1998. In turn, the institute has been cranking out papers and articles denouncing efforts to cut carbon and maligning renewable energy technologies.

Last summer, for example, Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Oren Cass dismissed the idea of a carbon tax—ExxonMobil's supposed preferred policy—as a "shell game" in an article he wrote for National Affairs. He followed up that essay in October with a white paper calling the impending UN climate negotiations in Paris a "farce." What did Cass propose as a better solution? He urged policymakers to "abandon fruitless negotiations and focus instead on the realistic option of promoting innovation and preparing for any future adaptation that may be necessary."

The institute's longtime point man on energy, Robert Bryce—who previously worked for the ExxonMobil-funded Institute for Energy Research—says he's "agnostic" about climate change. Over the years he has written numerous columns for the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other publications praising oil, natural gas and coal and disparaging wind and solar. A recent Bryce column in the National Review, for instance, denounced tax breaks and subsidies for the wind industry but ignored the fact that, since 1918, federal oil and gas industry subsidies have averaged $4.85 billion a year in today's dollars.

American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC):

ALEC, a secretive lobby group that drafts sample corporate-friendly legislation for state lawmakers, has received $1.79 million from ExxonMobil since 1998 and that investment is still paying dividends. At ALEC's annual meeting last July, for example, corporate and legislator members collaborated on bills and resolutions that would inhibit state implementation of the Clean Power Plan, hamper the solar industry from selling electricity directly to homes and businesses and undermine state renewable energy standards by restricting investment in wind and solar.

One of the keynote speakers at that meeting, Stephen Moore—founder of the Club for Growth and a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation—declared at a plenary session that the "biggest scam of the last 100 years is global warming." ALEC's official position on climate change is only slightly more nuanced, leaving open the question of the role human activity plays. "Climate change is a historical phenomenon," its website states "and the debate will continue on the significance of natural and anthropogenic contributions."

With that scientifically challenged position, it's no wonder ALEC invites speakers for its conferences from such notorious climate science denier groups as the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, the Heartland Institute and, of course, the Heritage Foundation—all former ExxonMobil grantees.

While ExxonMobil and other major carbon producers Chevron and Peabody Energy remain steadfast ALEC members, more than 100 corporations have severed ties with the organization for a variety of reasons, including its stance on climate change. Those companies include a number of heavy hitters in the energy sector, including American Electric Power, BP, ConocoPhillips and Shell.

National Black Chamber of Commerce:

From 2002 through last year, the National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC) received $1.1 million from ExxonMobil and the organization's president, Harry C. Alford, is unapologetic about taking fossil fuel industry money. "Of course we do and it is only natural," Alford states on the NBCC website. "The legacy of Blacks in this nation has been tied to the miraculous history of fossil fuel ... [F]ossil fuels have been our economic friend."

Last summer, NBCC published a report that falsely claimed the Clean Power Plan would pose "economic hardship" on poor and minority Americans. A UCS analysis found that the report was based on fraudulent claims from previously published studies, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's anti-Clean Power Plan report from 2014. In fact, unchecked climate change would likely hurt poor and minority communities most.

More recently, Alford wrote an opinion piece attacking the Clean Power Plan for The Hill, a Washington political trade publication. Like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's bogus 2014 report, Alford's June 29 column vastly exaggerated the cost of the proposed rule and did not factor in the billions of dollars in health and economic benefits that would result from cutting carbon pollution.

ExxonMobil's Pretzel Logic

Last fall, UCS and reporters at InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times revealed that Exxon's own scientists had warned the company decades ago about the potential for climate catastrophe. The new revelations also showed that the company responded to that bad news by downplaying climate risks and helping establish the climate science denial network.

A number of journalists did follow-up stories, pressing ExxonMobil officials about the company's longtime support for denier groups. They didn't always get the same answer.

During an interview last September with Richard Keil, ExxonMobil's senior media relations advisor, WNYC's On the Media host Bob Garfield pushed Keil for an explanation. "Please clarify this for me: Are not funding or did not fund them?" Garfield asked. Keil's response was unequivocal. "We are not funding," he said.

When asked the same question by the New York Times in early November, then-Vice President of Public and Government Affairs Kenneth Cohen likewise said no. "We stopped funding them in the middle part of the last decade because a handful of them were making the uncertainty of the science their focal point," he said. "Frankly, we made the call that we needed to back away from supporting the groups that were undercutting the actual risk" of global warming.

Cohen's response wasn't a surprise. He made the same disingenuous claim back in February 2007, a few weeks after UCS disclosed that ExxonMobil had been spending millions of dollars on climate science denier groups. Greenwire, a trade news organization, reported that Cohen said the company "has stopped funding them."

The surprise came on November 9, three days after the New York Times story ran, when PBS NewsHour host Judy Woodruff asked Cohen if ExxonMobil has been funding denier groups. This time he took a different tack.

"Well, the answer is yes," replied Cohen, who retired from the company in January. "And I will let those organizations respond for themselves."

But before anyone declares a victory for corporate transparency, it turns out that Cohen's moment of candor was, well, momentary.

On December 1, a Washington Post story quoted yet another ExxonMobil spokesperson who qualified Cohen's remark. Alan Jeffers, a media relations manager, said the company "rejects the premise" that it has been funding climate science denial.

"We were engaged with funding public policy groups on policy issues, not on science," Jeffers explained. "We made our position known on some climate policies that made us unpopular with environmental activists and they tried to position that as us funding climate denial. And that's just not accurate."

Not accurate? As Jeffers, Keil and their former boss, Cohen, surely know, the think tanks, advocacy groups and associations ExxonMobil has been sponsoring all these years lie about the science to strengthen the argument against doing anything to address climate change. After all, if people believe climate science is a fraud—or at least "far from settled"—they will see no reason to support a carbon tax, cap-and-trade system or any other climate policy. And that line of reasoning, which protects the status quo, seems to suit ExxonMobil just fine.

Elliott Negin is a senior writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists. UCS staff members Dave Anderson and Jayne Piepenburg provided research for this article.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19072016/exxon-climate-investigation-subpoenas-lamar-smith-maura-healey-eric-schneiderman

how subpoena war could play out

7/16 cf whitehouse bill:

EXXONMOBIL'S $33 MILLION CAMPAIGN TO SOW DOUBT AND DENIAL ABOUTGLOBAL WARMING

Revelations in media reports by The Guardian in July 2015, Inside Climate News' series, and Los Angeles Times partnership investigation with Columbia Graduate School of Journalism graduates led by Steve Coll (author of Private Empire) document what #ExxonKnew about the impact of fossil fuel pollution on climate and when the company knew it.

Despite its advanced knowledge of the climate disruption fueled in large part by oil, gas and coal pollution, ExxonMobil turned its back on crafting responsible solutions and instead funded a sophisticated campaign to sow doubt and delay action to curb carbon emissions — honing the tobacco industry's playbook with even more advanced public relations, advertising and lobbying muscle.

As Bill McKibben summed it up best,

“ExxonMobil, the world’s largest and most powerful oil company, knew everything there was to know about climate change by the mid-1980s, and then spent the next few decades systematically funding climate denial and lying about the state of the science.”

But nobody has spent more time and energy researching and exposing Exxon's climate denial campaign than Kert Davies, the creator of ExxonSecrets while he served as research director of Greenpeace USA. Davies, who now runs the Climate Investigations Center and continues to expose climate denial and attacks on solutions to global warming, worked with many researchers over the years (including DeSmog's Brendan DeMelle and Kevin Grandia) to assemble a clear record of Exxon's extensive funding of organizations and think tanks responsible for spreading doubt and denial about climate science.

Since the late 1990s, Greenpeace researchers have collected information on organizations and individuals blocking solutions to climate change and vending misinformation. In 2004, Greenpeace launched ExxonSecrets.org, which houses a relational database of Exxon funding to these people, think tanks and front groups. The database allows researchers, policy makers and advocates to see relationships and funding linkages.

In total, the ExxonSecrets database has found over $33M going to over 60 different organizations since 1998, the year after the Kyoto Protocol was launched. The data is drawn from Exxon's published “Giving” reports and IRS Form 990s for ExxonMobil Foundation.

We know this $33M figure is an underestimate of the total spending by Exxon to fund opposition work on climate policy. For example, the Chamber of Commerce appears for the first time on Exxon's Worldwide Giving report in 2014 at $1 Million. We assume this is not the first (or the last) contribution Exxon has made to the US Chamber of Commerce.

On this page, you'll find the total amount of funding from ExxonMobil and its foundations to dozens of organizations that worked to spread climate denial. Hyperlinks will take you to further detail about each organization's funding specifics and activities.

Organization ExxonMobil Funding 1997-2015

AEI American Enterprise Institute $4,199,000

CEI Competitive Enterprise Institute $2,100,000

US Chamber of Commerce Foundation $2,000,000

ALEC American Legislative Exchange Council $1,804,200

American Council for Capital Formation Center for Policy Research $1,779,523

Frontiers of Freedom $1,272,000

Annapolis Center $1,198,500

National Black Chamber of Commerce $1,100,000

Atlas Economic Research Foundation $1,082,500

Manhattan Institute $1,065,000

George C. Marshall Institute $865,000

Heritage Foundation $870,000

National Taxpayers Union Foundation $775,000

Heartland Institute $686,500

Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy $680,000

National Center for Policy Analysis $645,900

CFACT Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow $587,000

Communications Institute $515,000

Washington Legal Foundation $495,000

Center for American and International Law (formerly called the Southwestern Legal Foundation) $491,650

George Mason Univ. Law and Economics Center $475,000

FREE Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment $450,000

National Center for Public Policy Research $445,000

Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory $417,212

Mercatus Center, George Mason University $405,000

International Policy Network - North America $390,000

Citizens for a Sound Economy (FreedomWorks) $405,250

Acton Institute $365,000

Media Research Center (Cybercast News Service formerly Conservative News) $362,500

Institute for Energy Research $337,000

Congress of Racial Equality $325,000

Reason Foundation / Reason Public Policy Institute $356,000

Hoover Institution $370,000

Pacific Legal Foundation $300,000

Capital Research Center (Greenwatch) $265,000

Federalist Society $240,000

Center for Defense of Free Enterprise $230,000

National Association of Neighborhoods $225,000

National Legal Center for the Public Interest $216,500

Center for a New Europe-USA $170,000

American Council on Science and Health $165,000

Chemical Education Foundation $155,000

PERC Property and Environment Research Center (formerly Political Economy Research Center) $162,500

Weidenbaum Center (formerly Center for the Study of American Business) $190,000

Cato Institute $140,000

Federal Focus $125,000

Fraser Institute, Canada $120,000

Media Institute $140,000

American Spectator Foundation $115,000

International Republican Institute $115,000

Center for the Study of CO2 and Global Change $100,000

Environmental Literacy Council $100,000

Tech Central Science Foundation $95,000

American Conservative Union Foundation $90,000

Landmark Legal Foundation $90,000

Independent Institute $85,000

Free Enterprise Education Institute $80,000

Texas Public Policy Foundation $80,000

Institute for Study of Earth and Man $76,500

Independent Women's Forum $75,000

Consumer Alert $80,000

Mountain States Legal Foundation $75,000

Advancement of Sound Science Center $50,000

American Friends of the Institute of Economic Affairs $50,000

Free Enterprise Action Institute $50,000

Regulatory Checkbook $50,000

Arizona State University Office of Climatology $49,500

Lindenwood University, St. Charles, Missouri $40,000

Africa Fighting Malaria ddt rentatom $30,000

Institute for Senior Studies $30,000

Science and Environmental Policy Project $20,000

Lexington Institute $10,000

Institute for Policy Innovaton $5,000

GRAND TOTAL $33,799,735

Recommended Reading on Exxon's Funding of Climate Deniers

“Exxon knew of climate change in 1981, email says – but it funded deniers for 27 more years,” by Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian, July 8, 2015.

“Exxon: The Road Not Taken” series by Inside Climate News. See in particular “Exxon Sowed Doubt About Climate Science for Decades by Stressing Uncertainty,” by David Hasemyer and John H. Cushman Jr., Inside Climate News, October 22, 2015.

“What Exxon Knew About the Earth's Melting Arctic,” by Sara Jerving, Katie Jennings, Masako Melissa Hirsch and Susanne Rust, Los Angeles Times, October 9, 2015.

“Exxon Knew Everything There Was to Know About Climate Change by the Mid-1980s—and Denied It,” by Bill McKibben, The Nation, October 20, 2015.

“Exxon's climate lie: 'No corporation has ever done anything this big or bad,'” by Bill McKibben, The Guardian, October 14, 2015.

“ExxonMobil Targets Journalists and Activists After Climate Change Investigation,” by Melissa Cronin, Vice, October 24, 2015.

“Exxon Knew about Climate Change Almost 40 Years Ago,” by Shannon Hall, Scientific American, October 26, 2015.

“ExxonMobil pioneered climate-change research since the 1970s, and now it’s attacking media reporting on that,” by Steve LeVine, Quartz, October 26, 2015.

“Should Exxon Be Prosecuted for Suppressing Climate Science?” by Joseph Davis, Climate Science and Policy Watch, October 27, 2015.

http://www.alternet.org/environment/exxon-fraud-probe-biggest-bipartisan-climate-battle-ever

On June 24, the DNC platform committee unanimously agreed to call on the Department of Justice to launch a fraud investigation into ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies, which would add to the ongoing Exxon fraud probe by several state attorneys general, first launched by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in November.

The DNC request follows a forum titled Oil Is the New Tobacco, convened June 22 by members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition. The forum highlighted the worrisome inconsistency between ExxonMobil's internal process and business decisions regarding its early knowledge of the impact of fossil fuel combustion on the climate and its public campaign to promote doubt, deception and denial of climate science.

These recent moves by Democrats come on the heels of a second round of letters sent on June 17 by 17 Republican members of Congress on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology to several nonprofit organizations, including 350.org and Greenpeace USA, demanding documents and information related to their work advocating for climate action and holding Exxon accountable for fraud. The Committee also made similar requests to the state attorneys general working on the Exxon probe.

This most recent House request was not initially made public; however, 350.org and Greenpeace USA responded by the June 24 deadline, reiterating yet again in a letter that they have no intention of complying with the request. All nonprofit groups had rejected the Committee’s first request, which was made on May 18.

In their letter, the GOP legislators again repeated the claim that ExxonMobil’s alleged fraud is protected by the First Amendment:

The Committee intends to continue its vigorous oversight of the coordinated attempt to deprive companies, nonprofit organizations, and scientists of their First Amendment rights and ability to fund and conduct scientific research free from intimidation and threats of prosecution.

However, that claim has already been refuted. In United States vs Philip Morris Inc, the federal government explicitly told the tobacco industry: “False, misleading, or deceptive speech in furtherance of a scheme to defraud receives no First Amendment protection.”

In a June 24 Washington Post op-ed, Robert Post, the dean of Yale Law School, argued that ExxonMobil was abusing the First Amendment:

Despite the efforts of tobacco companies to invoke First Amendment protections for their contributions to public debate, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit found: “Of course it is well settled that the First Amendment does not protect fraud.” The point is a simple one. If large corporations were free to mislead deliberately the consuming public, we would live in a jungle rather than in an orderly and stable market.

ExxonMobil and its supporters are now eliding the essential difference between fraud and public debate. Raising the revered flag of the First Amendment, they loudly object to investigations recently announced by attorneys general of several states into whether ExxonMobil has publicly misrepresented what it knew about global warming.

Republicans funded by Big Oil

All 13 GOP Congress members who signed the first letter have collectively received more than $70,000 in contributions from ExxonMobil in the last decade alone. In particular, Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX), has a long history of attacking climate scientists and maintains strong financial ties with ExxonMobil and other oil and gas companies. Since 1998, Smith has taken more than $22,000 in campaign contributions from Exxon, according to Oil Change International's Dirty Energy Money database.

Steve Horn, research fellow at DeSmogBlog, reported that “$19,500 of the Exxon money has flowed to Smith's campaign since 2008 alone,” based on data from OpenSecrets.org.

“This latest bid by Exxon and their bought-and-paid-for allies in Congress proves that the House Committee on Science is more committed to sowing misinformation and deception about climate change than to actually acting on science,” said May Boeve, 350 Action executive director, in a statement to press. She addded:

At least half a century ago, Exxon’s executives were warned about the very devastation communities around the world are experiencing today, yet chose to pour resources into sowing doubt and funding an extensive climate denial machine. We know that this is an industry-wide problem, and we will keep spreading the word about all Exxon knew, and keep working to see these climate miscreants held accountable for their role in wrecking our planet and robbing us of a generation’s worth of climate action.

Schneiderman probe

In November 2015, New York Attorney General Schneiderman issued a subpoena to ExxonMobil, demanding a wide range of documents in order to determine if the world's largest publicly traded international oil and gas company lied to the public or investors about the risks of climate change to its future business, based on the firm’s own internal studies. The case is building that the oil giant has been pushing climate denial since the 1980s, when it joined with other energy firms to form the Global Climate Coalition, intended to lobby support from Congress and lawmakers while also working to cover up early evidence that global warming is caused by human activity; specifically, the combustion of fossil fuels.

By March of this year, Schneiderman's probe grew to a historic coalition of state attorneys general who have joined forces to investigate Exxon and defend President Obama’s Clean Power Plan against attacks from Big Oil. ExxonMobil has strenuously challenged investigations of the state AGs of Massachusetts and the U.S. Virgin Islands. But while Texas U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade rejected the company’s attempt to block the USVI investigation, it was announced Wednesday that USVI Attorney General Claude Earl Walker agreed to withdraw his subpoena requesting four decades of Exxon's internal documents in exchange for the oil giant dropping a retaliatory suit.

There have been major international governmental and public actions to tackle climate change, such as last year’s Paris climate agreement, the EPA's Clean Power Plan and the growing global divestment movement (which recently included a divestment of ExxonMobile shares by the Rockefeller Family Fund, which called the oil giant “morally reprehensible”). Yet the company appears dead set on ignoring calls to address the climate threat: ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson and Exxon’s board recommended the rejection of every single climate resolution brought to the company’s annual shareholder meeting in May.

Activists, environmentalists and corporate accountability advocates had used that meeting, held in Dallas on May 25, as an arena to call on ExxonMobil to reject climate disinformation, adapt its business to the realities of climate change and take regulation seriously. A similar effort was taken up at Chevron’s shareholders meeting, held in San Ramon, Calif., on the same day. While ExxonMobil is the primary focus of official investigations, the entire oil and gas industry has come under greater scrutiny.

poster iceberg

“These multibillion dollar global organizations have potentially bilked the American people out of financial stability, national security, and the health and safety of our future generations by creating a false debate designed to protect their profits,” said Annie Leonard, Greenpeace USA executive director.

Party politics

While the state attorneys general maintain their ongoing fraud investigation into ExxonMobil, pressure is mounting across the nation for elected officials and candidates to support these and similar investigations. More than half a million people have signed the #ExxonKnew coalition's petition supporting the fraud investigation, which has been expanding in scope—the Department of Justice recently referred the case to the criminal branch of the FBI. The case is also shaping up to be a pitched partisan conflict on Capitol Hill and beyond.

The National Review accused the attorneys general of “trampling the First Amendment.” Characterizing the Exxon probe as an example of the “authoritarianism” he argues is ingrained in progressivism, Post columnist George F. Will called Schneidermann and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)—who supports using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act to criminalize Big Oil's climate denial apparatus—"garden-variety authoritarians ... eager to regulate us into conformity.”

However, the investigations are receiving strong support from leading environmental groups and Democrats.

“These attorneys general are doing their jobs to investigate whether or not this massive fraud has occurred, and we stand with them,” said Greenpeace’s Leonard, in a statement to press. “If Exxon, its allies, enablers, and congressional yes-men are afraid of an open inquiry into allegations of fraud, then the American people should be even more suspicious of what they’ve been up to in the decades they’ve been peddling climate denial. It was fraud when Big Tobacco did it; it’s time to find out if this Exxon scheme was fraud, too.”

Evidence that Exxon knew

The evidence suggests that, for many years, Exxon attempted to cast doubt on the scientific findings regarding climate change in the public mindset by purchasing newspaper advertisements questioning the science and funding climate deniers through an intricate network of conservative think-tanks, including the American Legislative Exchange Council. The allegations of fraud also stem from a massive trove of internal corporate documents revealing Exxon was fully aware of the dangers to climate posed by the extraction and use of its primary product: fossil fuel.

One damning piece of evidence is an email—written as a response to an inquiry regarding business ethics from the Institute for Applied and Professional Ethics at Ohio University—unearthed last year from Lenny Bernstein, a climate expert working for Exxon. He wrote, “Exxon first got interested in climate change in 1981 because it was seeking to develop the Natuna gas field off Indonesia. ... This is an immense reserve of natural gas, but it is 70% CO2." According to Bernstein, that awareness was seven years ahead of not just other oil companies, but the general public.

“What it shows is that Exxon knew years earlier than James Hansen’s testimony to Congress that climate change was a reality; that it accepted the reality, instead of denying the reality as they have done publicly, and to such an extent that it took it into account in their decision making, in making their economic calculation,” the director of the institute, Alyssa Bernstein (no relation), told the Guardian.

But Exxon’s knowledge of the impact its business had on the global climate dates much earlier, to a report two pollution experts prepared for the American Petroleum Institute in 1968. The authors, Elmer Robinson and R.C. Robbins of the Stanford Research Institute, contended that carbon dioxide emissions produced by the combustion of fossil fuels was as critical an issue as the soot and smog that was the primary pollution concern at the time.

"If the earth's temperature increases significantly, a number of events might be expected to occur including the melting of the Antarctic ice cap, a rise in sea levels, warming of the oceans, and an increase in photosynthesis," they wrote.

They regarded the focus on local-based pollution concerns as a case of missing the forest for the trees:

It seems ironic that in our view of air pollution technology we take such a serious concern with small-scale events such as the photochemical reactions of trace concentrations of hydrocarbons, the effect on vegetation of a fraction of a part per million of sulfur dioxide, when the abundant pollutants which we generally ignore because they have little local effect, carbon dioxide, and submicron particles, may be the cause of serious worldwide environmental changes.

Robinson and Robbins also noted the view of Roger Revelle, one of the first scientists to warn that the growing amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide created by fossil fuel combustion may cause global warming over time. “In summary,” they wrote, “Revelle makes the point that man is now engaged in a vast geophysical experiment with his environment, the earth. Significant temperature changes are almost certain to occur by the year 2000 and these could bring about climactic changes.”

Adapt or die

Kathy Mulvey, who manages the climate accountability campaigns at the Union of Concerned Scientists, was one of the many environmentalists, activists and scientists who attended the ExxonMobil shareholders meeting in May. Part of the grassroots activist effort is to get the fossil fuel industry to recognize the choice it now faces: Adapt or die.

"Major fossil fuel companies must also begin to align their business models with a carbon-constrained world, acknowledging the political reality and moral imperative of the agreement made by world leaders in Paris last December,” she said.

The writing is on the wall about the downfall of dirty energy. Nafeez Ahmed recently wrote on AlterNet that signs indicate we are in the midst of the death of the fossil fuel industry:

Although the world remains heavily dependent on oil, coal and natural gas—which today supply around 80 percent of our primary energy needs—the industry is rapidly crumbling. This is not merely a temporary blip, but a symptom of a deeper, long-term process related to global capitalism’s escalating overconsumption of planetary resources and raw materials. ... In February, the financial services firm Deloitte predicted that over 35 percent of independent oil companies worldwide are likely to declare bankruptcy, potentially followed by a further 30 percent next year—a total of 65 percent of oil firms around the world. Since early last year, already 50 North American oil and gas producers have filed bankruptcy.

And in April, Bloomberg’s Joe Carroll and Asjylyn Loder reported on ExxonMobil's historic credit downgrade:

The worst oil crash in a generation has cost Exxon Mobil Corp. the gold-plated credit rating it had held since the Great Depression. … The downgrade will not only raise Exxon’s cost to borrow money but may also erode its status among oil-rich governments as a premier partner with which to do business. As Exxon Vice President of Investor Relations Jeffrey Woodbury said in February, the company’s AAA rating was a key selling point when competing for drilling licenses.

When ExxonMobil had advance knowledge of global warming, it attempted to hide the details from the public and its shareholders to protect its future business. Since then, it has made hundreds of billions of dollars year after year. It appears now there is strong evidence that the company has committed fraud, and even as its profit outlook is grim, it is still trying to dodge reality.

"Half a century ago, Exxon discovered climate change and quickly learned all there was to know well before the rest of us,” said 350.org’s Boeve. “Instead of urging action and becoming a part of the solution, the company's executives poured their resources into sowing doubt and disinformation among the public. The last twelve months have set record-busting temperatures, yet Exxon is still attempting to distract us from the fight for climate justice.”

Big Oil: Worse than Big Tobacco?

The unfolding drama has been compared to the Department of Justice's successful lawsuit, almost two decades ago, against Big Tobacco over fraud regarding the health risks of smoking and marketing its harmful products to the public. In 1999, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a racketeering lawsuitagainst several major tobacco companies for "fraudulent and unlawful conduct and reimbursement of tobacco-related medical expenses."

Federal district court Judge Gladys Kessler found the tobacco companies liable for violating RICO by intentionally committing fraud through an elaborate coverup of the health risks associated with smoking, writing in her opinion that the defendants “crafted and implemented a broad strategy to undermine and distort the evidence indicting passive smoke as a health hazard. … [and] attempted to deceive the public, distort the scientific record [and] avoid adverse findings by government agencies."

ExxonMobil is accused of using the same tactics Judge Kessler deemed fraudulent in the tobacco industry coverup. If the Exxon probe is as similar to the DoJ's tobacco suit as it appears to be, then Exxon and its Big Oil peers should be prepared to be found guilty. However, the impact of Big Tobacco's fraud is quite different from that of Big Oil. Neva Rockefeller Goodwin, the great-granddaughter of John D. Rockefeller Sr., founder of the American oil giant Standard Oil Company, from which ExxonMobil was born, recently announced she was divesting her shares in the company. She told AlterNet:

In the large picture, however, tobacco and fossil fuel emissions are quite different. Tobacco kills people one by one. Climate change will increasingly cause events like hurricanes that will destroy large swathes of property, kill numbers of people, make many homeless.

While it can be argued that smoking tobacco is a matter of individual choice, the production and use of fossil fuels is more obviously a social issue. In the long run, producers of fossil fuels will have to lose. The only question is how much the people and ecologies of the world will lose before our economies cease to make the situation worse.

“One thing that occurs to me," said Bernstein of the Institute for Applied and Professional Ethics, "is the behavior of the tobacco companies denying the connection between smoking and lung cancer for the sake of profits, but this is an order of magnitude greater moral offense, in my opinion, because what is at stake is the fate of the planet, humanity and the future of civilization.”

Reynard Loki is AlterNet's environment and food editor.

6/16 fuel fix bs

A campaign by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to end the investigation into ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies over false statements on climate change is gaining support among other state law enforcement officials.

Attorneys general from 13 states signed an open letter Wednesday, arguing that climate change is a public policy debate, not a criminal matter, and urging law enforcement officials in other states to “stop policing viewpoints.”

“We all understand the need for a healthy environment, but we represent a wide range of viewpoints regarding the extent to which man contributes to climate change and the costs and benefits of any proposed fix,” the letter reads. “Nevertheless, we agree on at least one thing—this is not a question for the courts.”

Attorneys general from Alabama, Michigan, Texas, Alaska, Nebraska, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and South Carolina signed the letter.

Paxton made headlines last month when he and Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange filed a motion seeking to block a subpoena by the U.S. Virgin Islands for ExxonMobil’s internal documents related to climate change. Paxton called the the probe a “a fishing expedition of the worst kind.”

AG Coalition Resp Letter 2016-06-15

http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2016/06/16/climate-inquisition-exxonmobil-sues-massachusetts-ag-civil-rights-violations/

Irving-based ExxonMobil Corporation (NYSE: XOM) launched a counteroffensive against the ongoing effort to target American energy companies for presumed politically incorrect viewpoints by left wing attorneys general. The Texas energy giant accused Massachusetts AG Maura Tracy Healey of violating its civil rights in federal court Wednesday.

In a strongly-worded, 33-page complaint brought by the Texas energy company, ExxonMobil accused General Healey of violating several civil rights protections and unlawful interstate commerce intervention while colluding with other attorneys general and private third parties. Without a permanent injunction and other granted forms of financial relief from the federal courts, the company expects to only be further harmed, according to documents obtained by Breitbart Texas.

A critical moment in ExxonMobil’s case civil against General Healey centers on a meeting in March 2015, when she and 19 other attorneys general comprising the “Green 20” declared their collective intent to target the company and others like it with subpoenas and related political actions. The complaint alleges that Healey’s promise of an investigation into the company was prejudiced by her expectation that it would “reveal ‘a troubling disconnect between what Exxon knew’ and what it ‘chose to share with investors and with the American public’.” The pleading repeatedly makes note of Healey and her associates’ political biases as the primary driver for their legal pursuits.

The State of Massachusetts’ effort to probe whether ExxonMobil “committed consumer or securities fraud by misrepresenting its knowledge of climate change” was summarily deemed “a weak pretext for an unlawful exercise of government power to further political objectives,” according to the document. The company claims that it has “for more than a decade” recognized the “risk of climate change and its potential impacts”.

On April 19, ExxonMobil was served a subpoena to further study energy and securities sales potentially occurring within the Commonwealth. The company claims that it neither sold fossil fuel products nor owned and operated a single retail location there in at least five years. Further, it sold no equity to the public there during the same time period. The complaint argues that the demands for documents related to activities outside of the Commonwealth were out of bounds.

General Healey’s “effort to silence, intimidate, and deter those possessing a particular viewpoint” rises to the level of a claimed First Amendment violation, according to the court filing. ExxonMobil argues that Massachusetts’ 40-year timeline for document demands “constitutes an abusive fishing expedition” in violation of its Fourth Amendment protections while Healey’s public commentary about the company presents an addition due process concern – leaving ExxonMobil doubting it is on the receiving end of a “disinterested prosecution”. The company raises additional issues of interstate commerce regulation and procedural violations as well.

The lawsuit hopes to halt the enforcement of Massachusetts’ subpoena and be granted other forms of relief the court feels ExxonMobil is entitled to, including the costs of litigation.

The Irving company’s docket is not limited to Massachusetts, however. Breitbart Texas previously reported on how Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton moved to intervene in a then-state court battle brought by the U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker in May. Texas decried the Virgin Islands’ similar “abusing the power of the subpoena” and warned that if left unchecked, “anyone can be criminally investigated” for viewpoints not acceptable to incumbent political powers. In response, the Virgin Islands relocated its case to a federal district court, where the parties continue to disagree on jurisdiction and venue for the matter, according to the complaint.

Outside of the courtroom, ExxonMobil has been fending off attempts from activist investors to force internal climate policy reforms. A May 2016 shareholders meeting ended when investors voted in large margins against the hiring of new climate experts and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) disclosures, according to a separate Breitbart Texas report.

California Attorney General Kamala Harris, a U.S. Senate candidate and member of the Green 20, recently brought criminal charges against Houston-based Plains All-American Pipeline L.P. (NYSE: PAA) after a leak was discovered downstream from ExxonMobil plants near Refugio State Beach.

ExxonMobil’s lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Fort Worth Division. A copy of the complaint has been provided below.

Logan Churchwell is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. You can follow him on

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/06/17/wsjs-kimberley-strassel-pushes-illogical-conspiracy-theory-about-exxon-climate-investigations/211024

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board has tried every trick in the book to wrongly defend ExxonMobil against allegations that the company intentionally misled shareholders and the public about the science of climate change. Now one member of the editorial board is pushing yet another defense of Exxon so riddled with errors that it completely falls apart upon a basic review of the facts.

In a June 16 column, the Journal’s Kimberley Strassel alleged that Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey’s recent subpoena of ExxonMobil shows that the attorneys general investigating Exxon aren’t really concerned with whether the company’s climate science denial constitutes fraud. Rather, Strassel declared, “The real target is a broad array of conservative activist groups that are highly effective at mobilizing the grass-roots and countering liberal talking points.”

As supposed proof, Strassel pointed to Healey’s request for Exxon’s communications with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Strassel asserted that Healey targeted ALEC because it is “one of the most powerful forces in the country for free-market legislation,” an argument she based on the false premise that “ALEC doesn’t now, and hasn’t ever, taken a position on the climate.”

The truth is that ALEC has crafted model legislation that misrepresents the science of climate change and hosted prominent climate science deniers at its conferences, and ALEC officials – including CEO Lisa Nelson – have refused to acknowledge or outright denied the scientific consensus that burning fossil fuels and other human activities are causing climate change. ALEC, a corporate front group that connects fossil fuel industry executives with legislators to serve industry interests, has also pushed model bills that would mandate teaching climate science denial in public schools. So it’s not hard to understand why Healey would want to know whether Exxon and ALEC have teamed up to undermine climate science.

Strassel similarly claimed that Healey targeted the oil billionaire Koch brothers’ front group Americans for Prosperity (AFP) because “its 2.3 million activists nationwide are highly effective in elections.” This must be true, Strassel argued, because “AFP confirms it has never received a dime from Exxon.”

However, as Climate Hawks explained in response to a Daily Caller article that made the same claim, “Americans for Prosperity's predecessor Citizens for A Sound Economy got hundreds of thousands from ExxonMobil,” meaning that “the group in question simply went by another name when it was funded by ExxonMobil.”

Moreover, it remains an open question whether Exxon is continuing to funnel money to AFP via DonorsTrust and the Donors Capital Fund, dark money groups largely backed by the Koch brothers. In October, InsideClimate News reported that a group of Democratic senators wrote a letter to Exxon “questioning Exxon's contributions to Donors Trust and the Donors Capital Fund, which provide a conduit between well-heeled contributors and various conservative public policy organizations, including many at the forefront of climate science denial.” InsideClimate News further noted that the senators cited research from Robert Brulle of Drexel University, who provided evidence that Exxon may have engaged in an effort to “simply reroute its support” of climate denial organizations:

Brulle is a leading sociologist who has been published extensively in the peer-reviewed literature on the climate denial movement.

In material supplementing one of his studies, Brulle documented Exxon donations directly to climate denial groups such as the Heartland Institute, up until about 2008. At about the time Exxon scaled back its giving to those groups, Donors Trust and the Donors Capital Fund stepped up their donations to them.

Americans for Prosperity “frequently provides a platform for climate contrarian statements,” as the Union of Concerned Scientists has noted. The Americans for Prosperity Foundation has received approximately $23 million in combined contributions from Donors Trust and the Donors Capital Fund since 2008.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/05/26/1531184/-New-ExxonKnew-Document-Database

exxonMobil’s shareholder meeting is bringing even more attention to the company, with the Guardian alone running four separate stories on it: attempted censorship of scientists back in 2001 under in the Bush administration; (failed) shareholder proposals to recognize climate’s impact on Exxon's future; an op-ed from someone whose “father warned Exxon about climate change in the 1970s"; and the fact that Exxon denied the Guardian access to its annual meeting. (Apparently its First Amendment fealty does not extend to freedom of the press.)

With all this new information swirling around, it can be tricky to remember the basics of what the #ExxonKnew campaign is about. With investigations coming out of different institutions and primary source documents housed in various places, it’s a lot harder to source claims than it is to tweet the hashtag.

But for those seeking out the truth, a new website has emerged as a clearinghouse of new and old Exxon and fossil fuel industry documents: ClimateFiles.com. Announced with a post at the Climate Investigations Center highlighting the Top Ten #ExxonKnew Documents, the new site is a great source for anyone curious about what, exactly, Exxon and others have said and done. From the early ‘80s warning of climate change, to the industry-wide misinformation efforts of the '90s to the “op-ad” series, lobbying and public relations regulatory fights of the ‘00s, the documents make a compelling case for further investigation.

http://www.climateinvestigations.org/top-ten-documents-every-reporter-covering-exxon-should-know

three basic phases to this story.

What Exxon knew and when they knew it - The crux of what was revealed in the fall and winter of 2015 by the Inside Climate News investigation and the Columbia University/ Los Angeles Times collaboration is extensive new evidence that Exxon and the rest of the oil industry had a more thorough understanding of climate science in the 1970s and 1980s than had previously been realized. And that they also understood the policy and economic implications of the climate threat. Further revelations by DeSmog in April 2016 confirmed Exxon's unequivocal knowledge in the late 1970s that "there is no doubt that increases in fossil fuel usage" were problematic for climate, and that these facts were known across Exxon's global operations. This serves as a new backdrop for what happened next.

What Exxon did to block rising concern about climate change - This phase starts in the late 1980s, heats up in the mid 1990s and extends into the late 2000s, changing shape and tone with increased governmental attention to the climate threat. Here there are key documents showing Exxon's (and Mobil's and later ExxonMobil's) ringleader role in driving the corporate campaign against advancing national and international policies to avert dangerous climate change.

What Exxon would like hide from investigators now - Exxon executed a turn about a decade ago with clever PR tactics, declaring that they had always known about climate change but had been "misunderstood". This is detailed extensively in Steve Coll's increasingly important book Private Empire (see chapter 15 "On my honor"). Between 2006 and 2008, the company began to mark its words on climate change more carefully and abruptly stopped funding multiple non-profit organizations and front groups it had been coordinating to apply pressure in the public policy arena by attacking climate science, climate scientists and elected officials who took up the charge. This campaign ramped up after the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and escalated during the first 5 years of the Bush Administration.

KEY DOCUMENTS:

1998 American Petroleum Institute Global Climate Science Communications Plan

This leaked plan was launched the year after the Kyoto Protocol was signed. It was developed by representatives from the API, Exxon, Southern Company, Chevron and a team of people free market organizations along with communications professionals. The plan includes a multimillion dollar, multi-year budget to install “uncertainty” in the public policy arena. Target audiences are detailed including media, policy makers and science teachers and the plan includes an objectives list titled “Victory will be achieved…” itemizing the measurable goals of the plan. Multiple groups Exxon would subsequently fund are named in the plan.

1980 Imperial Oil’s Review of Environmental Protection Activities for 1978-1979

A 1980 report, “Review of Environmental Protection Activities for 1978-1979,” produced by Imperial Oil, Exxon’s Canadian subsidiary, again suggests that Exxon knew that CO2 was a harmful pollutant in the atmosphere in the 1970s. The distribution list for the Imperial Oil report indicates that it was disseminated to managers across Exxon’s international corporate offices, including in Europe.

1981 Letter from Esso scientist on impact of Natuna Gas Project CO2 emissions

February 3, 1981 letter from Gilbert Gervasi, scientist at Esso Eastern to G.A. Northington, Exxon Research and Engineering regarding CO2 calculations for the Natuna Gas Project finding “the total release of CO2 from producing Natuna gas and burning of LNG manufactured from the gas would be almost twice that emitted by burning the equivalent amount of coal.”

There are multiple other key documents on Natuna in the ClimateFiles archive. The majority of these were illuminated by the Inside Climate News team.

1995 Global Climate Coalition draft primer Predicting Future Climate Change a Primer

This document contains a "final draft" of a to-be-published document by the Global Climate Coalition responding to the IPCC Second Assessment. It has been edited by Lenny Bernstein a Mobil Oil scientist (page 2). The document contains a back section with extensive rebuttals of major counter-arguments used by climate deniers. This part was never published.

1996 Exxon publication "Global Warming - Who's Right?"

Exxon Corporation’s Spring 1996 Publication, “Global warming: who’s right? Facts about a debate that’s turned up more questions than answers,” includes a statement by then Exxon CEO Lee Raymond trumping up uncertainty in the science behind global warming as well as the cost of a carbon-restricted market. The publication cites to Exxon funded climate change deniers.

1997 Lee Raymond speech at China World Petroleum Congress

In this speech, delivered in October 1997, weeks before the Kyoto Protocol final negotiations commenced, Raymond launches attacks on climate science and policy proposals. He exclaims that proposed international climate change policies will adversely affect Asian countries desiring economic growth.

1998 ExxonMobil Pamphlet: Global Climate Change - everyone’s debate

This pamphlet, circulated to both U.S. and international policy-makers questions whether climate change is man-made and if so, the extent of contribution of fossil fuels to the problem. Although statements in this pamphlet are partially true in that Exxon “carefully studied” the science behind climate change, it contradicts its own internal early climate change research and findings and instead emphasizes unknowns in the “honest debate.”

2000 ExxonMobil publishes collection of New York Times Op-ad series on climate change

In April 2000, Exxon published a collection of Op Eds it had submitted across the country in order to influence public understanding of the risks of climate change and proposed solutions. The series here includes articles entitled “Do No Harm,” “Unsettled Science,” “The Promise of Technology,” and “The Path Forward on Climate Change.” Each of these propaganda pieces highlights uncertainty regarding impacts and paints Exxon as a key to the solution for global climate change rather than the problem. Readers can review highlighted excerpts and the rhetoric used in 2000 with Exxon political activity at the time.

2001 FOIA-ed memo from Exxon Mobil’s Randy Randol to Bush Administration

This fax and memorandum dated February 6, 2001 from Exxon lobbyist Randy Randol to John Howard at the White House Center for Environmental Quality makes recommendations for changing the U.S. team working on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment and Synthesis Report and delaying IPCC proceedings.

Another 2002 memo from Randy Randol to the Bush Whitehouse outlined what would eventually become the Bush ClimateScience.gov program

2006 ExxonMobil Heartland Institute DCI Group meeting targeting Clean Air Act

This meeting invitation and agenda illustrate the ongoing ringleader role ExxonMobil played in organizing asymmetrical attacks on the Clean Air Act and other environmental protections laws. The meeting was hosted by Heartland Institute which received a $115,000 grant from ExxonMobil that year. The meeting was held at the offices of DCI Group, a public relations firm contracted by ExxonMobil.