exxon4 bak2

2/18

https://climateinvestigations.org/exxon-and-friends-still-funding-climate-denial-and-obstruction-through-ipaa-fti-energy-in-depth

Internal documents and conversations from the fracking lobby, revealed this week in HuffPost, shine new light on a ten year old public relations campaign front group called Energy In Depth. Documents show this front group is designed explicitly to exist without the fingerprints of its fossil fuel funders, giving the oil industry the “ability to say, do and write things that individual company employees cannot and should not.”

This reporting reveals how climate denial remains a key oil industry strategy in spite of their efforts to clean up their image. These shrouded attacks on climate science and solutions, attacks on lawmakers, scientists, lawyers and advocates stand in stark contrast to the seemingly desperate efforts of Exxon and their brethren to retain ‘social license’, gain credibility on climate change and distance themselvesfrom their legacy of climate science denial.

Let’s define “climate denial” up front, as we did years ago in a Guardianinterview for a story about Edelman PR: “Our definition of denial is anyone who is obstructing, delaying or trying to derail policy steps that are in line with the scientific consensus that says we need to take rapid steps to decarbonize the economy.” Simple enough. It goes beyond just denying that global warming exists.

HuffPost’s reporting shows that Exxon is a member of the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), an oil and gas industry trade association whose online assets include “news” sites like Energy In Depth (EID) that spew climate denial and attacks on scientists, journalists, advocates, and lawyers. IPAA acts as a pass through, bundling corporate members’ cash that’s funneled to the firm FTI Consulting, which created and manages sites like EID. An ExxonMobil spokesperson, responding to questions from the HuffPost reporter, tried valiantly to keep the veil in place, saying, “Your questions are better addressed to EID or IPAA.”

IPAA’s long history of denial

The IPAA has a long history of funding and proliferating misinformation on climate change, a legacy that continues to the this day. IPAA was named as a potential funder of the infamous multi-million dollar “uncertainty” campaign detailed in the 1998 Global Climate Science Communications Plan, an effort organized by API, Exxon, Chevron, Southern Company and assorted libertarian extremists. You can find that file and others in our...POTENTIAL FUNDING FOR GLOBAL CLIMATE SCIENCE COMMUNICATIONS xxx ...>Potential funding sources were identified as American Petroleum Institute (API) and its members; Business Round Table (BRT) and its members, Edison Electric Institute (EEI) and its members; Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) and its members; and the National Mining Association (NMA) and its members. - Potential fund allocators were identified as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), Competitive Enterprise Institute, Frontiers of Freedom and the Marshall Institute.xxx ...IPAA fact sheet on Climate Change released that same year has some pretty alarming climate denial claims — some even more extreme than the Global Climate Coalition was pushing at the time, and includes references to Fred Singer’s Leipzig Declaration ...“Consider this: the largest source of greenhouse gas may be termites, whose digestive activities are responsible for 10 times more production of CO2 than burning fossil fuels.” “So, since human-related CO2 is only a small portion of total atmospheric CO2, measures taken to limit it will have little or no measurable effect on overall emissions into the atmosphere. More importantly, there is still no evidence that CO2 emissions are warming the earth’s atmosphere. And we have no proof that man’s impact makes a difference at all.” “…no climate change policy action should discard the question of science. Too often, recent arguments for action discard the uncertainties of today’s understanding of global climate science. Global climate science is an emerging field, one that changes as the tools to model it improve.” June, 2019 presentation at an IPAA meeting, influential energy lawyer Mark Barron said the “ship has sailed” on using climate science denial as the first line of defense. Instead, Barron advocated lobbying Congress for climate legislation that benefits the oil and gas industry. He drew a sharp contrast between the industry’s former attacks on climate science and a more recent nuanced approach. He told the oil and gas executives and lobbyists gathered at the meeting sponsored by fracking giants Halliburton, Schlumberger and Oxy that they should be ready to talk about global warming, as long as they position fossil fuels as the solution. Despite this,HuffPost reporting shows that Barron’s audience, the IPAA and its members, are still deploying on climate denial and attacks on scientists through projects like EID and other web organs. Funding Front Groups – FTI and Energy In Depth

IPAA describes Energy in Depth as the industry’s lead “rapid response platform” for the fracking industry. IPAA created Energy in Depth (EID) shortly after the environmental impacts from the fracking boom began to make national headlines. IPAA member Exxon/XTO was one of EID’s first funders.

Internal IPAA Board documents, published by HuffPost, describe the purpose of the project:

“The main focus of EID has evolved into addressing the “Keep It In The Ground” movement.” (Keep it In The Ground refers to activists and scientists working to keep new fossil fuels from being extracted and burned, commensurate with the conclusion by international scientists that>we simply cannot burn even a percentage of known and potential fossil fuel reserves if we want to keep global temperatures from rising to dangerous levels.) funding for EID comes directly from unnamed oil and gas corporations like Exxon, Halliburton, Schlumberger, Oxy, Marathon Oil, and is funneled through IPAA, which funds the Energy in Depth project on an annual basis

BIG QUESTION: What puzzles us is how IPAA is classifying this expense to the IRS. This $2M plus annual payment to FTI does not appear, as required by law, on the IRS 990 form filed by IPAA under “Independent Contractors” “that received more than $100,000 in compensation from the organization.” (see Part VII Section B on page 8 of Colleagues at DeSmog have been watching Energy in Depth from the beginning, when it was launched to blunt attention to the rapid spread of fracking ten years ago and concerns from community members, lawmakers, journalists and activists IPAA’s Jeff Eshelman, described the genesis and purpose of the group in a 2017 IPAA retreat: The IPAA funding of over $2M a year to FTI/Energy in Depth is spent on five sub-campaigns, meant to undermine the public’s understanding and support of climate and environmental protections:

EID Climate exists “to counteract the “Keep it in the Ground” movement’s newsiest strategy to use climate change as a weapon to silence dissent and shut down American energy production”. The website pushes back on litigation against oil and gas companies. Endangered Species Watch is meant to blunt the Federal Endangered Species Act and is described as “disseminating news, regulations and issue alerts to member companies, affiliated industries and policy makers.” Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign advocates against movements asking Universities and pension funds to divest from fossil fuels. FTI has carved out a specialty in aggressive attacks on foes of the oil and gas industry, doing the dirty work that oil corporations would not want their brands tied to in public. An FTI “Techical Paper” report presented at a 2014 Brazilian oil industry conference describes Energy in Depth’s purpose pretty bluntly, stating that the web asset provides the “ability to say, do and write things that individual company employees cannot and should not.” (emphasis added)

The actual work of running EID is contracted out by IPAA to FTI Consulting, a massive global PR and consulting firm. Here are a few individuals we know are connected to the Energy In Depth project and have written themselves into the wrong side of history: Matt Dempsey, a Managing Director at FTI, manages Energy in Depth and lists himself as an editorial editor WesternWire, another front group run for Western Energy Alliance, another oil trade association like IPAA. Dempsey and a colleague were recently recorded by a lawyer for EarthRights International who called them out for being agents of Exxon, and pretending to be journalists. Exxon is a defendant in the Boulder Colorado lawsuit that EID and WesternWire have tried hard to malign. Dempsey used to work for Senator James Inhofe. Steve Everley, is an FTI Managing Director of Strategic Communications and a senior advisor on the Energy In Depth project. Inside Climate News ran a lengthy rebuttal to the work Everley did to trash their actual journalism on fracking in 2014.

Spencer Walrath, who is actually an FTI employee (Director, Energy & Natural Resources at FTI Consulting Inc) but pretends to be an journalist on Energy In Depth. He graduated University of Northern Iowa in 2012. Spencer’s FTI job was announced in his college newsletter. Katie Brown, PhD, who now works for FTI out of Belgium was a major part of Energy in Depth while working for FTI in Washington DC until a couple years ago. This archived 45 slide Powerpoint presentation from 2014 by Brown lays out the IPAA-FTI-EID connection and details all their work to undermine regulations on ozone, groundwater protection, methane emissions and more. (Brown’s PhD is in English, btw and she is or was working on a book on James Joyce…congratulations, but how does that PhD apply to an energy front group website besides using good grammar?

FTI’s Energy in Depth Climate front group spends most of its pixels trying to trash climate lawsuits, promoting natural gas as a climate solution, and attacking science implicating methane’s role in climate change. Methane, a super greenhouse gas and the main component of “natural gas”, leaks from fracking fields in vast quantities making the current natural gas supply much dirtier fuel than it used to be before fracking became a thing. This point was recently illustrated nicely with FLIR images by the New York Times, and news of this Exxon gas well leak which released more methane in a few weeks than many countries emit in a year. Each of the EID sub-campaigns employ tactics common to climate deniers, like attacking climate models, denying the impact of methane from fracking, repeating debunked myths about a global pause in warming, and claiming that “one in six climate and earth scientists” think human’s impact on climate change is “little or none.”

Most recently, Spencer Walrath wrote a piece in EID going after a peer reviewed scientific study on ocean acidification and the companies connected to the carbon dioxide that has acidified the ocean, the science of which is even harder to deny than climate change.

And this post by Katie Brown, PhD at EID uses sham science and Wikipedia links to attack calls for accountability for companies like Exxon.

EID “Experts”

On the EID Climate website, the list of experts includes people like Craig Richardson, president of the coal-funded, climate-denying Energy and Environment Legal Institute. Richardson has called climate change a communist plot.

Other experts include Horace Cooper, who is listed as a senior fellow the National Center for Public Policy Research an organization that has received $445,000 in grants from Exxon over the past two decades including several grants earmarked for climate work.

NCPPR CLIMATE GRANT (p. 44)

View entire document on DocumentCloud

Cooper is also a Fellow with the preeminent climate science denial group the Heartland Institute. Heartland has held a number of gatherings dedicated to outright climate science denial. Heartland was also heavily funded by Exxon until they dropped them after 2006. The Mercer Family stepped in in 2008 and has given Heartland upwards of $6.7M from 2008-2017. In 2018, this grant appears to have been moved through Donors Trust.

FTI work for other industries with legal and political problems

In 2019, court documents revealed FTI was running opportunities for Monsanto on RoundUp and GMO fights, alternately posing as journalists and attacking journalists, complete with an FTI campaign spreadsheet of steps taken to undermine and intimidate journalist Carey Gillam.

Most recently, FTI produced a report on health care for a front group attacking “Medicare for All” proposals by politicians.

IPAA Lobbying With Climate Denial Under Trump

IPAA is a significant lobbying arm of the oil industry, spending 1.4 million on lobbying in 2018. Freedom of Information Act requests have revealed emails from IPAA lobbyists to key political appointees in the Department of Interior, showing an ignorance of basic climate change information and a willingness to disregard climate science when it gets in the way of oil and gas production.

In one set of emails, IPAA lobbyist Samantha McDonald asked DOI appointees to reduce protections on an endangered species of beetle. A key reason IPAA protested the beetle’s protected status? – because its projected decline was based in part on climate change science. McDonald directly questioned the viability of climate change models, but not before admitting she is “not too familiar” with the 30 year old UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). As proof that the preeminent scientific body studying climate change in the world could not be trusted, she cited a Google search and a random Forbes article. MacDonald wrote to DOI appointee Vincent DeVito in 2017:

“All modeling is done using the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. While I am not too familiar with this organization or their work, I did some searching and found this Forbes article discrediting the IPCC, citing irresponsible science practices (intentionally manipulating data, suppressing legitimate opposing arguments, etc.). This may be something to look into and push back on, since most of the climate changes threat analysis in the SSA is based on this work.”

IPAA ON IPCC (p. 214)

View entire document on DocumentCloud

In spite of her lack of science background, IPAA’s McDonald would go on to testify on endangered species law, and the beetle would eventually be “downlisted” by the Trump administration as reported by the Washington Post.

In sum, the Energy In Depth project is entirely consistent with the 30 year campaign (or back to the 1940s…see CIEL’s Smoke and Fumes) by the oil industry to avoid being regulated for environmental harm caused by their products – climate change, air and water pollution. This covert effort contradicts oil industry leaders’ anxious attempts to portray a greener, climate friendly business model in recent years. We can see right through it, but the aim is clear. Between Barron, the lawyer’s comments and IPAA’s front group Energy In Depth, the fossil fuel industry clearly is trying to play it both ways – opposing climate action while pushing natural gas as a solution and trying to benefit from whatever climate policies do come to pass and keep drilling away unchecked. All the while refusing to treat the global climate crisis like the real and present danger that it is. While IPAA lobbyists may try to play good cop in meetings on the Hill, they are actually leaning on old fashioned attacks on science to delay and distort any serious attempt to address climate change.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/**2020-01-10**/exxon-climate-trial-loss-won-t-be-appealed-n-y-a-g-says

New York won’t appeal a ruling by a judge who rejected the state’s claim that Exxon Mobil Corp. misled investors for years about the oil giant’s internal planning for risks associated with climate change.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat who took office after the suit was filed, announced the decision late Friday without giving a reason. James nevertheless hailed the trial in state court as a landmark -- “the first time in history” Exxon was forced to answer publicly for its messaging around climate change.

“As we have done for the last year, my office will continue to fight to ensure companies are held responsible for actions that undermine and jeopardize the financial health and safety of Americans across our country,” James said in a statement.

James’s defiance belies the decision by New York Supreme Court Justice Barry Ostrager, who rejected all the state’s claims.Exxon has never taken the economic impact of climate change on its business seriously, “and that truth was laid bare at trial,” she said.

In its securities fraud suit, filed in October 2018, New York accused Exxon of lying to shareholders about its use of a “proxy cost” for carbon in its internal accounting to prepare for future climate change regulations. That alleged lie suggested to the public that Exxon was being more prudent about climate risks than it really was, the state said.

Ostrager, in a 55-page ruling in December, said the attorney general’s office “failed to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Exxon Mobil made any material misstatements or omissions about its practices and procedures that misled any reasonable investor.”

Irving, Texas-based Exxon previously accused New York of filing the lawsuit in a politically motivated attempt to target the company. That argument was bolstered on the final day of the trial when the state dropped its two most serious fraud claims against the company after failing to back them up with any evidence during the trial.

On Friday, a non-profit energy industry organization filed a motion to intervene in the case in an effort to unseal communications between the Attorney General’s office and a well-known plaintiffs lawyer who is involved in various lawsuits against the energy industry.

Energy Policy Advocates, based in Washington state, said in its filing that the lawyer, Matt Pawa, shopped around anti-Exxon litigation strategies in pitches to various AG’s office, including Massachusetts, which has also sued Exxon.

“Documents filed in this matter will shed light on the important ongoing debate about the propriety of the New York Attorney General’s actions in this matter,” the group said in its filing. “Regardless, they will show how such costly if failed litigation came to pass, or at least key influences.”

Neither the New York Attorney General’s office nor Pawa immediately responded to requests for comment on Saturday.

https://www.drillednews.com/post/alleging-consumer-fraud-minnesota-sues-exxon-koch-and-api-for-climate-change-deception

june 24

Minnesota on Wednesday joined the growing number of states and municipalities seeking damages from the fossil fuel industry for knowingly deceiving consumers about climate change and its impacts. But Attorney General Keith Ellison is charting a different and potentially groundbreaking legal course from those lawsuits, by suing ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute _{:{under state laws that prohibit lying to consumers.:(style="background-image:initial;background-position:0px 0px;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-attachment:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);:inherit"):}:}_

To date the majority of this generation of climate suits are nuisance cases. They allege that fossil fuel companies’ efforts to misinform the public on climate change successfully delayed for decades any regulations and other actions to slow or stop it, creating the need for billions of dollars in mitigation costs that municipal and state governments could otherwise have avoided. In those cases, which include among others suits filed by the cities of Oakland and San Francisco, Calif., and Boulder, Colo.,, the plaintiffs are seeking damages: They want fossil fuel companies to pay their fair share of the cost of climate adaptation.

The Minnesota case is different in a few key ways:

First, there are two of the defendants, Koch Industries and the American Petroleum Institute, or API, the largest fossil fuel industry trade group. The nuisance suits have concentrated on companies with refineries and pipelines, such as Exxon. This suit, however, focuses on knowingly and actively deceiving the public— it is targeting the refiners and distributors not just of fossil fuel products, but of climate change denial, an arena where both API and Koch have been major players.

In 1998, API convened a group of industry stakeholders to draft the _{:{blueprint of the industry’s climate disinformation strategy:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);:inherit"):}:}_ in an effort to keep the U.S. from committing to binding emissions reductions targets under the first international climate agreement, the Kyoto Protocol. Ten years later, ahead of the pivotal 2008 climate conference in Copenhagen where nations hoped to agree on a strong successor to the Kyoto pact, API spent at least $75 million with one PR firm alone, Edelman, to work against climate action. And that was_{:{ just one contract in one year.:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);:inherit"):}:}__{:{ :(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);:inherit"):}:}_

Koch Industries, along with co-owners and brothers Charles and the late David Koch themselves, have for decades funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into think tanks and front groups that spread climate disinformation. The long list of examples ranges from _{:{the work of Patrick Michaels,:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);:inherit"):}::{ :(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);:inherit"):}:}_the Cato Institute’s director of the Center for the Study of Science to the _{:{“documentary” Green Tyranny:(style="background-image:initial;background-position:0px 0px;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-attachment:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);:inherit"):}:}_ (which originally aired on Fox News), as well as one of the _{:{earliest convenings of climate deniers,:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);:inherit"):}:}_ “Global Environmental Crises: Science or Politics?” which _{:{the Cato Institute hosted:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);:inherit"):}:}_ in 1991.

“This complaint does not seek to hold these companies accountable for climate change. It seeks to hold them accountable for violating Minnesota’s consumer protections,” said Leigh Currie, Minnesota’s assistant attorney general at a press conference announcing the suit. This is significant because, the complaint’s reliance on state consumer protection laws may help it avoid some of the _{:{jurisdictional issues that the nuisance cases have faced. :(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);:inherit"):}:}_

And then there’s the injunctive relief part, which makes this case unique, and a really interesting one to watch moving forward. Injunctive relief is legalese for a court order that forces some person or entity to stop doing something. In this case, Ellison has asked for injunctive relief to stop deception, a corrective public education campaign in Minnesota on climate change, and full disclosure of all internal research the three defendants have conducted on the issue of climate change.

“This was a 30-year effort to defraud consumers in Minnesota about climate change and the role of fossil fuel products in it,” Ellison said at the press conference, illustrating his point with a series of images of internal industry documents revealing what they knew and when.

Several other speakers at the press event connected the fossil fuel industry’s climate denial efforts to the tobacco industry’s deception of the public about the harms of smoking, including Doug Blanke, a former state prosecutor who now directs the _{:{Public Health Law Center:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);:inherit"):}:}_ at Mitchell Hammond School of Law. When he worked in the Attorney General’s office, Blanke spent much of his time onlawsuits holding Big Tobacco accountable. “We were combatting the lies of the tobacco industry — lies that echo through every page of today's lawsuit,” he said. “These strategies are ripped straight from the pages of tobacco’s playbook.”

Minnesota’s suit is also seeking restitution and disgorgement of profits, essentially a handing over of ill-gotten gains. The complaint does not request a specific amount, but it compares the billions of dollars in profits earned by oil companies from the 1980s to the early 2000s, with the billions of dollars of climate-related costs borne by Minnesota residents, stating, “If Defendants had not misled the public to pad their own pockets, Minnesota would not have already incurred such large costs because of climate change and would not be facing such dramatic future costs.”

Flooding has increased dramatically in Minnesota over the past decade. _{:{According to the Environmental Protection Agency:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);:inherit"):}:}_, over the last half century, average annual precipitation in most of the Midwest increasing by 5 to 10% with rainfall during the four wettest days of the year has increased about 35%. The _{:{Minnesota Pollution Control Agency notes:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);:inherit"):}:}_ that temperatures have increased by 1 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit statewide, and that more frequent heavy rains have been causing low areas to flood, resulting in crop, home, and business damages.

Minnesotans are also grappling with immediate impacts of the oil and gas industry on public health and the environment, including air pollution and pipeline-related water pollution. Environmental activist and authorWinona LaDuke, a member of the Chippewa White Earth Nationin north-central Minnesota, spoke about the _{:{Enbridge pipeline:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);:inherit"):}:}_. “I never expected to be spending years fighting Enbridge, but this pipeline company brings more than 70% of the tar sands oil into this country,” she said.

Sam Grant, director of the climate action group Minnesota 350, connected the lawsuit to the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests spurred by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. “We have a choice between freedom to profit or freedom to breathe,” he said. “It ought to be a no brainer that freedom to breathe comes first, because we have to be alive for anything else to happen.”

Grant described low-income Black and Brown neighborhoods in northern Minneapolis where air pollution from fossil fuel facilities has shortened lifespans by at least 11 years compared to the national average. And in a first for climate lawsuits, the complaint itself highlights climate justice, too, right up top on the first page, where it notes, "Warming will continue with devastating economic and public-health consequences across the state and, in particular, disproportionately impact people living in poverty and people of color."

While oil companies don’t like to lose money, especially now when the oil and gas market:{_{ }_:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);:inherit"):}:_{:{is turned upside down:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);:inherit"):}:}_, it’s possible the “disclosure of all internal research” piece of the Minnesota suit is the thing they’ll fight hardest. A full disclosure of the Koch, API, and ExxonMobil files on climate change could hurt its chances of winning all the other climate cases, and send the industry hurtling down the Big Tobacco pathway towards a multi-hundreds of billions of dollars settlement with states.

Juwaria Jama, co-leader of the Minnesota Youth Climate Strike, spoke about the fossil fuel industry “infringing on Indigenous and low-income communities to build pipelines and refineries that harm those communities.”

“Because of the deception of these companies, as teenagers we are spending our time fighting for a future that could be stolen,” said Jama, “a last-minute battle to preserve a livable world for myself and subsequent generations. And the most heartbreaking thing is that it could have been prevented.

“These corporations knew the impacts of climate change long before now, and they could have sounded the alarm. Instead they covered up the damage,” she said. “These corporations have gone far too long without being held accountable for our globe and our future.”

https://desmog.co.uk/2020/05/20/exxon-sued-misleading-advertising-beyond-pesticides

exxonMobil is facing yet another lawsuit challenging the corporation’s allegedly deceptive behavior related to climate change. The latest suit, filed May 15 in the D.C. Superior Court, claims the oil major is misleading consumers with “false and deceptive” advertising about its investments in “clean” fuels and technology.

The Washington, D.C.-based environmental nonprofit Beyond Pesticides alleges that Exxon’s deceptive marketing and advertising violates the District of Columbia Consumer Protection Procedures Act. According to the organization, Exxon portrays itself as an environmentally friendly company in ads without revealing the true extent of its business that remains overwhelmingly invested in exploiting fossil fuels to the detriment of the environment and the climate.

“ExxonMobil’s advertising and marketing mislead the public by presenting ExxonMobil’s clean energy activities as a significant proportion of its overall business,” the complaint states. “In contrast to ExxonMobil’s representations, its investments and activities in clean energy constitute only a very small percentage of its total business, the majority of which continues to be based in traditional fossil fuels and in petrochemicals, including those used in environmentally harmful pesticides.”

“The claims are baseless and without merit,” Exxon spokesperson Casey Norton told DeSmog. “We will defend the company in court.”...[pix twt}

The lawsuit points to Exxon’s own numbers depicting the company’s investments in cleaner alternatives and compares them with the company’s total capital expenditures.

For example, over the last 20 years Exxon says it invested over $9 billion in what it calls “lower-emission solutions,” while its total capital expenditures during that time were over $465 billion. That equates to less than 2 percent spending on these technologies in the past two decades. Another figure Exxon touts is investing up to $100 million in lower-emissions technologies over 10 years, or an average of $10 million a year. This comes out to annual investments of only 0.03 percent of the company’s total annual spending, which in 2019 was $31.1 billion.

“Nowhere in its advertisements touting clean energy production does ExxonMobil state what percentage of the company’s investment is in oil and gas compared to how much is invested in clean energy,” the complaint argues....

The “clean” solutions that Exxon portrays in marketing and advertising include carbon capture and storage, next-generation biofuels such as algae, and natural gas. But as the lawsuit explains, these technologies and fuels have their own limitations and problems. This is particularly true for gas, a fossil fuel comprised almost entirely of the potent greenhouse gas methane, which consistently leaks into the atmosphere during production and delivery.

Exxon and Shell, as part owners of a Dutch petroleum company, have already faced censure in the Netherlands for advertising natural gas as climate friendly. The Dutch Advertising Code Authority previously ordered Shell to withdraw a misleading ad claiming the company’s greenhouse gas emissions were being recycled and used to grow flowers in greenhouses. Major oil companies have been reprimanded for misleading greenwashing advertising elsewhere in Europe as well.

In December last year, the UK-based environmental law organization ClientEarth filed a legal complaint against BP over the company’s recent ad campaigns, claiming the ads misled consumersover BP’s investments in and commitment to clean energy. That was the first known complaint filed with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) for deceptive advertising by a fossil fuel company. Earlier this year, as part of the company’s net zero announcement, BP withdrew one of the ad campaigns, which was targeted in the complaint and which represented the oil major's first global marketing blitz since before the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.

Exxon Facing Multiple Lawsuits Over 'Deceptive' Behavior

States, municipalities, and shareholders have all sued Exxon in recent years alleging deceptive behavior in communicating climate risks. Exxon is a defendant along with other fossil fuel companies in climate liability suits filed by over a dozen local governments seeking monetary damages to help pay for climate adaptation costs. But Exxon alone has also faced lawsuits from its own shareholders and from the states of New York and Massachusetts, claiming the oil giant misled investors over its accounting of climate risks to its business.

A judge dismissed New York’s lawsuit last fall following a high-profile trial. Massachusetts’ case, filed last October, is proceeding. That case also includes claims of deceptive marketing and advertising, alleging Exxon misled consumers in violation of the Massachusetts Consumer Protection Act. According to the Massachusetts complaint, Exxon’s deceptive behavior has gone on for decades and continues to this day.

[twt] maura h

An illuminating 2017 study by Harvard researchers Naomi Oreskes and Geoffrey Supran examined Exxon’s internal and external communications on climate change between 1977 and 2014. The pair of researchers found that the more public the company’s communications were, the more they expressed doubt about the climate crisis. The study concluded that Exxon had misled the public.

Lawsuits like the Massachusetts attorney general’s case against Exxon and the new Beyond Pesticides suit argue that Exxon’s alleged deception is ongoing and is unlawful under consumer protection laws.

“We cannot afford to be misled by corporations that are tinkering with solutions to the environmental crises of climate change and biodiversity devastation, which threaten our future over an ever-shortening time horizon,” said Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides. “Deceiving the public into believing that one of the largest petroleum companies in the world is committed to solving the climate crisis, while it continues to devastate the planet, is dangerous and inexcusable, especially given what’s at stake.”

https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/03/16/exxon-write-rules-regulating-methane-emissions

no lnx many

exxon Now Wants to Write the Rules for Regulating Methane Emissions

By Justin Mikulka • Monday, March 16, 2020 - 12:13

A compressor station along newly constructed pipeline in Loving County, Texas.

ExxonMobil is a company capable of contradictions. It has been lobbying against government efforts to address climate change while running ads touting its own efforts to do so.

And while the oil giant has been responsible for massive methane releases, Exxon has now proposed a new regulatory framework for cutting emissions of this powerful greenhouse gas that it hopes regulators and industry will adopt. As Exxon put it, the goal is to achieve “cost-effective and reasonable methane-emission regulations.”

So, why is Exxon asking to be regulated?

The answer may be simply that Exxon is very good at public relations. As industry publication Natural Gas Intelligence reported, this announcement “comes as energy operators face increasing pressure from lenders and shareholders to engage in decarbonization by following environmental, social, and governance standards.”

Exxon's proposed regulations have three main objectives: finding and detecting leaks, minimizing the direct venting of methane as part of oil and gas operations, and record keeping and reporting.

Casey Norton, Exxon's Corporate Media Relations Manager, explained to DeSmog that Exxon's proposal was not expected to be adopted as-is by regulatory agencies. “This is a starting point for conversations with policy makers and other regulators,” he said. “For example, New Mexico, Argentina, the EU, who are all considering new regulations for methane emissions.”

Under President Trump, the federal government last year rolled back Obama-era rules for oil and gas companies to report methane emissions and for restricting these emissions during drilling on public lands.

This isn’t Exxon’s first foray into voluntary regulations of methane. The corporation's natural gas subsidiary XTO started a voluntary methane emissions program in 2017. In June 2018, XTO noted that the voluntary program, which was mostly about replacing leaking valves, had reduced methane emissions by 7,200 metric tons since 2016.

However, leaking valves are not the biggest source of methane emissions. In February 2018, four months before XTO was touting the success of its methane reduction program, the company experienced the second largest methane leak in U.S. history. A gas well it operated in Ohio suffered a blowout, releasing huge amounts of the heat-trapping gas.

Did XTO’s voluntary program accurately report this? As The New York Times reported, “XTO Energy said it could not immediately determine how much gas had leaked.”

But a group of scientists using satellite data eventually did pin down the amount released — 120 metric tons an hour for 20 days. That adds up to roughly 50,000 metric tons more released than the 7,200 metric tons in reductions XTO was claiming months later. That one leak was estimated to be more than the methane emissions of the total oil and gas industry of countries like Norway.

As DeSmog reported, XTO is also flaring the most natural gas of any company in the Permian oil field (natural gas is almost 90 percent methane). While flaring isn't as bad for the climate as directly venting the methane into the atmosphere, it is increasing the levels of carbon dioxide and toxic air pollutants and is another problem the industry is saying it will address even as the practice continues on a large scale.

Flare in Loving County, Texas.

And now the same company is recommending that the rest of the industry and regulators adopt their approach to regulating methane emissions.

“It is not target-based, it is not volume-based,” Exxon's Norton said. “Again, it's starting a conversation, saying these are things that you can look at.”

Robert Howarth, a biogeochemist at Cornell University whose work focuses on methane emmissions in the oil and gas industry, drew attention to areas of Exxon's framework he thought were lacking. For starters, he pointed out that the proposed framework does not mention emissions from “imperfect well casings and from abandoned wells,” which Howarth says “can be significant.” He also noted that the proposal does not describe “a methodology for characterizing any of these emissions; there are techniques for doing so, but there is not much demonstrated use of these techniques by industry.”

Finally — and this is the real danger with any sort of industry self-regulation — Howarth said there must be some type of independent oversight to assess actual emissions instead of relying on the industry to self-report. XTO's well blowout in Ohio is an excellent example of why this third-party verification is critical. Without oversight, the “system is ripe for abuse,” according to Howarth.

Sharon Wilson of environmental advocacy group Earthworks documents the oil and gas industry's current widespread practices of flaring and venting methane. Sharing her concerns about Exxon's methane emissions proposal, she told DeSmog,”Exxon’s recent announcement is too little too late when it comes to the climate crisis they’ve help cause and are still making worse. Reducing methane emissions by any percentage is not enough when Exxon continues to expand sources of the same climate pollution.”

Wilson called for the company to support federal and state rules to cut methane.

Trump Administration Reversed Existing Methane Regulations

Methane emissions have become a much bigger issue in the last decade since the U.S. boom in shale oil and gas produced by fracking. Despite overseeing a huge rise in oil and gas production, the Obama administration acknowledged the methane problem and proposed and adopted new methane emissions regulations, which the Trump administration has since repealed.

The Trump administration has staffed regulatory agencies with former industry executives and lobbyists who have been quite successful at rolling back environmental, health, and safety rules.

Last August former coal lobbyist and current administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Andrew Wheeler explained the reasoning for removing the Obama methane rules.

“EPA’s proposal delivers on President Trump’s executive order and removes unnecessary and duplicative regulatory burdens from the oil and gas industry,” Wheeler said. “The Trump administration recognizes that methane is valuable, and the industry has an incentive to minimize leaks and maximize its use.”

The problem with this free-market assumption is that Wheeler is wrong about the industry's financial incentive to limit methane emissions.

There is too much natural gas, aka methane, flooding world energy markets right now. Current prices to buy it are lower than the costs to produce it. The methane currently produced in Texas' Permian Basin spent a good portion of last year at negative prices. There is no financial incentive for producers in the Permian to voluntarily cut methane emissions in the current market environment.

That is why Permian producers are flaring (openly burning) it at record levels as well as directly releasing (venting) methane into the rapidly warming atmosphere. So much for letting the free market address the issue.

Even the Remaining Regulations Are Controlled by Industry

While the Trump administration has rolled back many regulations for the oil and gas industry, the regulatory system in the U.S. was already designed to protect industry profits — not the public or environment. When the federal government creates regulations, the process can be heavily influenced by industry lobbyists, and if they don’t agree with the regulations, there are many ways they can get them revised to favor their companies.

While Exxon did publicly say in 2018 that it didn't support repealing the existing methane regulations, the company also wrote to the EPA voicing support for certain aspects of the American Petroleum Institute's (API) comments on the issue, and the API approved removing the regulations. In that letter Exxon used the same language it is now using with its propsed regulations, saying any rules need to be “cost-effective” and “reasonable.” But if the regulations are cost-effective, will they actually be effective in reducing methane emissions in a meaningful way?

Excerpt from Exxon letter to EPA about methane regulations. Source: ExxonMobil

The Wall Street Journal recently highlighted the influence that the oil and gas industry and its major U.S. trade group the American Petroleum Institute can have over regulations. After the deadly 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the federal government put into place new safeguards known as the “well control rule” in order to prevent another disaster during deepwater offshore drilling.

In 2019, the Trump administration revised the rule, weakening it, even though, as the Journal reported, federal regulatory staff did not agree “that an industry-crafted protocol for managing well pressure was sufficient in all situations, the records show.” The staff was ignored. (And the move is undergoing a legal challenge.)

Industry crafted protocol. Just the thing Exxon is now proposing.

This type of industry control over the regulatory process was also brought to light after two Boeing 737 MAX planes crashed and killed 346 people. Boeing had fought to make sure that pilots weren’t required to undergo expensive and lengthy training to navigate the new plane.

Reuters reported on internal communications at Boeing which revealed the airplane maker simply would not let simulator training be required by regulators:

“I want to stress the importance of holding firm that there will not be any type of simulator training required to transition from NG to MAX,” Boeing’s 737 chief technical pilot said in a March 2017 email.

“Boeing will not allow that to happen. We’ll go face to face with any regulator who tries to make that a requirement.”

Boeing got its way. And 346 people died.

For the past six years, I have reported on the failed regulatory process governing the moving of dangerous crude oil by rail (and even wrote a book about it). The only meaningful safety regulation that resulted from a multi-year process was requiring oil trains to have modern electronically controlled pneumatic brakes.

As I reported, shortly after this regulation was enacted, Matthew Rose, CEO of the largest oil-by-rail company BNSF, told an industry conference that “the only thing we don’t like about [the new regulation] is the electronic braking” and “this rule will have to be changed in the future.” As per the wishes of Matthew Rose, that rule was repealed despite the substantial evidence clearly showing this modern braking system greatly increases train safety.

A recent op-ed from an editor at the trade publication Railway Age referred to these oil trains as a “clear and present danger.” Nevertheless, these trains hauling volatile oil through North American communities are still operating with braking systems engineered in the late 1800s.

Exxon Touts 'Sound Science' Despite Its History

Exxon’s methane proposal states that any regulations should be based on “sound science.” This statement is coming from a company whose scientists accurately predicted the impacts of burning fossil fuels on the climate decades ago and yet has spent the time since then misleading the public about that science.

The current regulatory system in America does not protect the public interest. Letting Exxon take the lead in the place of regulators doesn't seem like it's going to help.

Megan Milliken Biven is a former federal analyst for the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the federal agency that regulates the oil industry’s offshore activity. Milliken Biven explained to DeSmog what she saw as the root cause of the regulatory process's failure.

“Regulatory capture isn't really the problem,” Milliken Biven said. “The system was designed to work for industry so regulatory capture isn't even required.”

https://books.google.com/books?id=APDGDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

after oreskes, kocks, darren wood ceo exxon promised 180 eboy trump

defectors

fear of lawsuits (B/c of discovery eg tobacco files?)

https://www.c-span.org/video/?469372-1/the-triumph-doubt

The Triumph of Doubt

Former Obama and Clinton administrations official David Michaels talks about the use of “science for hire” in the creation of public policy.

oxford up oct 2020

https://www.ecowatch.com/european-green-deal-exxon-lobbyists-2645438998.html

The European commission's effort to transition the 27-country economic bloc from a high-carbon to a low-carbon emitter in a few decades received input from the fossil fuel giant ExxonMobil in the weeks prior to its passage, according to a watchdog that monitors lobbying activity, as The Guardian guk] reported.

As Common Dreams reported, a report released last week by InfluenceMap revealed that Exxon lobbyists met with commission officials in November to request an extension of the Green Deal's carbon pricing policy, known as the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), to tailpipe emissions.

The report revealed that just ahead of the December announcement of the Green Deal, Exxon lobbyists met with Frans Timmermans, a member of the commission's cabinet, after the company avoided penalties for failing to attend a hearing on climate denial, as the EU Observer reported.

As InfluenceMap wrote in its report:

"In the meeting, the lobbyist for ExxonMobil tried to stall an overhaul of the transportation sector. ExxonMobil representatives pushed for the EU Commission to change its approach to climate regulation in the transport sector, including removing the EU's strict CO2 vehicle tailpipe standards, in what appears to have been an effort to stall a push towards electric vehicles. A direct extract from the meeting notes indicate the un-named ExxonMobil officials argued that the EU should: 'Give serious consideration to extending ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme) beyond stationary sources. Tail pipe emission legislation should be substituted with power plant to wheel emission regulation.'"

According to The Guardian, the maneuver aimed to tamp down knowledge about the carbon footprint of driving a combustion engine running on fossil fuels. And the lobbying effort seems to have worked, since the European Commission did not include plans to phase out combustion engines. It also did not include cars running on fossil fuels in its carbon-pricing plan.

Furthermore, the move aims to create unrest that would be politically unfeasible. The only way for a carbon-pricing plan for tailpipe emissions to be influential is for it to make greenhouse gas emissions very expensive. Yet, that type of action that transfers costs to consumers has been the bedrock of protests like the Yellow Vests protests in France, which stemmed from a proposed tax on diesel and gasoline, as the EU Observer reported.

Edward Collins, a director at InfluenceMap, said the document "represents yet another evidence piece" of ExxonMobil's efforts to protect its profits by thwarting meaningful regulatory action and shifting the focus to long-term technical solutions, as The Guardian reported.

The lack of decisive and meaningful regulatory actions that would change the transportation sector and the energy infrastructure of Europe in the immediate future drew the ire of climate activists, as EcoWatch reported. The Green Deal requires that European countries reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, which many scientists say is too late to stop the climate crisis.

"Net zero emissions by 2050' for the EU equals surrender. It means giving up," Greta Thunberg and 33 other youth climate activists wrote in an open letter published Tuesday and reported by Reuters. "We don't just need goals for just 2030 or 2050. We, above all, need them for 2020 and every following month and year to come."

As Common Dreams pointed out:

"Exxon's attempt to further weaken the European Green Deal represents 'a shift from the propagation of climate science denial towards a range of more subtle tactics and narratives to distract policymakers and the public away from an urgent and robust policy intervention on climate on the scale recommended by the IPCC's 2018 special report on 1.5 [degrees Celsius] warming,' said InfluenceMap."

320 heated

...Exxon’s Universe of Energy Center was at Epcot from 1982 through 1996. That’s fascinating, because that’s the exact time span that Exxon went from researching climate change to explicitly denying it. (Exxon’s denial started in the late 80s and picked up steam throughout the 90s).

And this exhibit touting fossil fuels—which again, was to KIDS AT DISNEYWORLD—opened in the same year that Exxon’s manager of environmental affairs, M.B. Glaser, sent a memo out to company executives about the greenhouse effect. This memo noted that fossil fuel combustion, along with clearing of virgin forests, were the primary contributions to the warming trend.

The memo added: “Our best estimate is that doubling of the current concentration could increase average global temperature by about 1.3 degrees celsius to 3.1 degrees celsius.”

Despite that knowledge, the comics and Epcot center explicitly promote fossil fuels as a method of environmental conservation, noted Carroll Muffet, the president and CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law.

“[Exxon] put out these in conjunction with Disney to teach kids about renewable energy and energy conservation and environmental concerns,” she said. “And it's perhaps unsurprising that what children learn from Mickey and Goofy about energy conservation and environmental concerns was we really need gas, we really need fracking, we win. Nuclear energy is fine. There are a lot of problems with wind and solar. It may work out eventually, but thank goodness for this bountiful resource of oil, gas and tar sands.”

Exxon wasn’t the only one using comic books to reach the youths. In the 1970s, Amoco put out a wildly racist comic book about “The Mochans,” a “primitive” people who wanted to do unseemly things like use renewable energy. The comic was released as part of a study guide for 7th to 12th graders studying economics—which Amoco graciously provided 40,000 copies of to Indiana public schools.

“The industry was teaching kids to be skeptical of regulation, skeptical of the agendas of environmentalists or people who were socially concerned, from their very earliest ages,”Muffett said, “and [they were] constantly emphasizing that anyone who talks about the environment, who talks about human health, should immediately be weighing that and defending it against the economic costs.”

Sound familiar? It should. These are the same refrains the industry uses today in its various attempts to shape the minds of young people, both in schools and in the media. And it’s reflected in the way most political pundits seem to think about what’s possible for climate action. You want to preserve a livable world? Well, how much will it cost?

Here’s one more example of the oil industry getting into teaching economics: Phillips’ Petroleum’s American Enterpriseeducational film series—hosted by none other than William Shatner. (I got my hands on the VHS but it hasn’t arrived yet—it’s taking forever!)

The subtitle is: How Did this America, in its 200 Years on Independence, Become a Nation of Supermarkets, Stock Markets, Skyscrapers and Split Levels; A Country With the Greatest Economic Output in the World? ...

https://theintercept.com/2019/10/31/exxon-mobil-massachusetts-climate-change-lawsuit-greenwashing/

eXXON MOBIL’S RELATIONSHIP with the New York Times is a case study in how the fossil fuel industry’s climate denialism has evolved over the past 20 years. Beginning in the 1970s, Exxon Mobil published an “advertorial” every Thursday on the New York Times editorial page. The quarter-page, essay-style ads were designed to mimic a Times op-ed. Starting in the 1980s, doubt about the seriousness of human-driven climate change was a repeated theme. The ads came with titles including “Apocalypse no,” “Reset the alarm,” “Less heat, more light on climate change,” and “Climate change: a degree of uncertainty.”

According to a lawsuit Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey filed against Exxon Mobil last week, the oil company’s use of the New York Times editorial section “to shift public perception was among the most significant and longest regular — in this case, weekly — uses of media to influence public and stakeholder opinion in modern U.S. history.”

The ads failed to mention that Exxon’s products’ emissions risked effects that would be “catastrophic (at least for a substantial proportion of the earth’s population),” as an Exxon scientist advised in 1981.

How the Media Launders Fossil Fuel Industry Propaganda Through Branded Content

Today, the message has changed, but the method is the same. Exxon Mobil’s contemporary equivalent is native ads produced by T Brand Studio, which sells “the New York Times’s proven recipe for storytelling” created by “talent that’s drawn from media, marketing and journalistic backgrounds.”

A recent Exxon ad published on the New York Times website was titled “The Future of Energy? It May Come From Where You Least Expect.” The heavily designed, article-style ad focused on Exxon’s biofuels research. “We’re aiming to have the technical ability to produce 10,000 barrels of algae-based biofuel a day by 2025,” Rob Brown, an algae researcher, is quoted as saying.

The ad does not mention that the goal only equates to 0.2 percent of the corporation’s current refinery capacity, nor does it note Exxon’s plans for fossil fuel production in the years to come. Last March, the company estimated that by 2024, it would produce 1 million barrels per day of oil and gas in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico — five times more than what it produces today. And it certainly doesn’t mention scientists’ assertion that governments and corporations need to cut carbon emissions by 45 percent before 2030 to have a shot at avoiding catastrophic climate impacts.

According to Healey, Exxon ads like the one by T Brand Studios are “false and misleading” and violate the Massachusetts Consumer Protection Act.

[A native advertisement for Exxon on the New York Times website, which focuses on Exxon’s biofuels research.

Screenshot: The Intercept

Exxon’s Evolving Denialism

On October 24, Healey became the second state attorney general to file a climate liability lawsuit against Exxon Mobil. The suit is broader than similar litigation in New York, where a trial began last week, centered on alleged Exxon securities fraud. Healey alleges that, in addition to the Times ads, the corporation’s marketing of “green” petroleum products under brands like Mobil 1 and Synergy illegally deceives consumers into believing that Exxon’s products can protect the world against the ravages of carbon emissions, without disclosing that the corporations’ products are an existential threat to humanity.

Like the New York case, the Massachusetts case highlights the way the corporation has deceived investors by using a misleading proxy cost of carbon. The cost of carbon is a price meant to account for the regulatory expense of carbon emissions. Exxon told investors it was deciding which projects to invest in according to one carbon price, while it actually used a different, lower price. In effect, investors believed that Exxon was taking climate change more seriously than it actually was, as it invested in some of the most carbon-emitting projects in the world.

Exxon’s history of denialism is key to the two climate liability cases. The corporation’s predecessor conducted serious climate research as early as the 1950s, and by the late 1970s, Exxon was well aware of coming crisis and its cause. In fact, in 1982, the corporation predicted with incredible accuracy 2019’s disturbingly high atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and the 1 degree Celsius temperature rise we’ve already met. Yet by the 1990s, its CEO was making statements that flew in the face of that research, sowing doubt about whether climate change was real and funding a wide network of politicians and institutions meant to challenge regulatory regimes that might have prevented extinctions, cultural collapses, hydrological crises, and generations of death and suffering.

The suits center on a more insidious form of modern-day denialism, though. Today, corporations like Exxon spend vast amounts of resources dressing up as climate realists, while at the same time obstructing climate policy behind the scenes and accelerating the crisis by continuing to pull oil out of the tar sands of Canada, the shale formations of Texas, and the deep-water oil deposits of the Gulf of Mexico. The Massachusetts complaint describes Exxon Mobil’s evolving deception playbook.

The “green” Mobil 1 brand — a motor oil dyed a garish green — is a case in point. In 2018, Exxon Mobil was part of a coalition that fought and killed federal policy that would have increased car fuel efficiency and significantly cut down on fossil fuel emissions from the transportation sector. Meanwhile, the corporation has promoted its Mobil 1 product as key to increasing fuel efficiency, by using a new low-viscosity formula. Exxon says another brand, Synergy, which includes an additive to all gasoline in Massachusetts, can “help customers reduce their emissions and improve their energy efficiency” in part by reducing engine deposits.

According to Sharon Eubanks, who led the Justice Department’s racketeering litigation against Big Tobacco, the moment is reflective of Tobacco’s turn to “light” or “mild” cigarettes. “After they realized there was this huge scare, they thought their product was going to become extinct,” Eubanks said. “They were afraid people would quit.”

Greenwashing Petroleum Products

The five largest publicly traded oil majors — Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, Total, and Chevron — together invested more than $1 billion in climate branding and lobbying in the three years after the landmark Paris climate agreement was signed, according to a study by the British nonprofit InfluenceMap. Exxon spent at least $56 million on climate messaging.

“The Paris Climate Accord was a watershed in terms of corporate engagement and investor engagement,” said Ed Collins, the report’s author. Many shareholders began pressuring the corporations to account for their climate impact, and it became increasingly unviable to explicitly advertise climate doubt.

Exxon Mobil began touting its support for a carbon tax (but only under a very specific set of circumstances), and in 2018, it joined the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, a coalition of oil and gas CEOs who promote climate solutions like voluntary methane reductions, carbon capture and storage, and energy efficiency — all approaches that would allow them to continue producing oil and gas.

Ultimately, behind the new branding is the same deadly advocacy for deregulation that the corporations have always carried out. In a new InfluenceMap report on advertising by the oil majors on Facebook, Exxon Mobil was far and away the biggest spender, investing $9.6 million, 10 times more than any other oil company, in political ads. A large proportion was spent to defeat state ballot initiatives in the 2018 midterm elections, including a carbon tax in Washington and limits to oil and gas development in Colorado.

Collins argues that deceptive climate messaging matters. “It mixes up the public knowledge and conversation enough to have a detrimental impact on the overall efforts to try to tackle climate change,” he said.

In the federal racketeering case against Big Tobacco, Justice Department lawyers were able to prove that the corporations knew that light cigarettes offered no clear health benefit compared to regular cigarettes. A judge agreed in 2006 that they were designed to “keep smokers smoking; to stop smokers from quitting; to encourage people, especially young people, to start smoking; and to maintain or increase corporate profits.” She forced tobacco companies to publish corrective statements in newspapers and on TV stating that “there is no safe cigarette” and the corporations had “deliberately deceived the American public.” She also ordered companies to stop branding their products as light, mild, or low tar. Corresponding legislation finally went into effect in 2010, banning the labels.

Prior to the federal lawsuit, the four largest tobacco companies signed a massive settlement agreement with state attorneys general. Eubanks is optimistic about the Exxon cases. “If they’re not prepared to come to the table at all, this will go on for quite some time, and I think you’re going to see success in some of these state cases,” she said. “We’re not going to have to wait 50 years to see one of these companies lose.”

Of course, Big Tobacco ultimately survived the litigation. There’s far less room for the oil industry to do the same. Tobacco companies may have continued to cause users to develop cancer, but continued oil production at anywhere near today’s rates will mean, as the lawsuit puts it, “a substantial increase in deadly extreme weather events, coastal property damage, disruptions of fisheries, the spread of vector-borne diseases, large-scale ecosystem disruption, and other unprecedented threats to human populations.”

https://theintercept.com/2019/11/12/climate-exxon-mobil-new-york-court/

...THE NEW YORK State Supreme Court building is a granite-faced behemoth with wide steps, towering columns, and an ornate rotunda. It is a place where critical legal battles have been fought for nearly a century. Yet, as proceedings began in a modest second-floor courtroom on a gray, unseasonably warm afternoon late last month, the storied building somehow felt outmatched by the gravity of the matter at hand.

Two legal teams were crammed shoulder to shoulder around wooden tables. Spectators and curious out-of-state attorneys filled the benches behind them. Reporters hunched over their laptops. A tattooed court officer strolled the periphery of the room looking for rule-breakers. If you squinted, it could be any of the many high-profile trials that come through New York City and not — as many hope it will be — a historic test of whether the industry responsible for setting humanity on a path to immolation can be held to account before it’s too late.

“The failure of the international community to strongly grapple with climate change and the rollbacks under the Trump administration are leaving advocates of strong climate action desperate for whatever tools they can use.”

The case was the People of the State of New York v. Exxon Mobil Corp., which concluded last week. It is part of a wave of litigation directed at the titans of the fossil fuel industry making its way through courts across the country. “It’s only the second climate-change case ever to go to trial in the United States,”

rex

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08112019/exxon-trial-closing-arguments-climate-investor-fraud-new-york-ostrager

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16102019/exxon-oil-sands-trial-climate-change-fraud-new-york-rex-tillerson

very long, many grfx

neW YORK, New York — In late 2013, ExxonMobil faced increasing pressure from investors to disclose more about the risks the company faced as governments began limiting greenhouse gas emissions. Of the many costs climate change will impose, oil companies face a particularly acute one: the demand for their product will have to shrink.

For years, Exxon had been using something called a proxy cost of carbon to estimate what stricter climate policies might mean for its bottom line. But as pressure from shareholders grew, a problem came sharply into focus: An internal presentation warned top executives that the way the company had been applying this proxy cost was potentially misleading. That's because Exxon didn't have one projected cost of carbon. It had two.

The contents of that presentation are at the heart of a trial set to start next week in a civil case brought against the company by the New York attorney general. Exxon is accused of disclosing one set of these projected carbon costs to investors while planners used an entirely different set internally for evaluating investments. The public set was more conservative and projected that climate policies would be more stringent, while the internal one assumed more modest attempts to limit emissions. The effect of using these dueling estimates, the attorney general says, was that Exxon hid tens of billions of dollars in potential costs, downplaying the risk to investors and inflating the company's value.

If the company is found guilty of defrauding stockholders, the penalties it faces could be substantial. Exxon's stock is among the most widely held in the country, nestled in pension funds, 401Ks and IRAs.

While Exxon has denied any wrongdoing, it does not dispute the core fact of the case: that for years it disclosed a public proxy cost that was higher than what it applied to its investment decisions. Its lawyers have argued these different sets of figures did not mislead investors and had distinct and legitimate purposes. But this only highlights another side of the case.

The energy Exxon produces today is more polluting, according to the attorney general's complaint, because the company took the potential costs of climate change less seriously than it represented to investors.

Applying a lower estimate for carbon costs made high-polluting projects look more financially attractive, and it undermined the investment case for any project that would reduce emissions. Nowhere is this clearer than in Exxon's tremendous investments in Canada's oil sands, a vast expanse of low-grade hydrocarbons that now make up about 30 percent of the company's oil reserves.

"The oil sands crystallizes, at least from my perspective, everything about this issue that is concerning with Exxon," said Andrew Logan, who runs the oil and gas program at Ceres, a nonprofit that works with investors to push for more sustainable business practices. "Oil sands tick all the boxes when it comes to a carbon-risky asset."

[grf]

Because they require enormous amounts of energy to exploit, the oil sands are among the world's most expensive and carbon-polluting sources of oil. Exxon is one of the top producers there, and the company has continued to commit billions of dollars to the resource even as much of the rest of the global industry has fled the region, puzzling some investors who have tried to square this with Exxon's lip service to climate risk, Logan said.

"The oil sands are this very concrete, specific example — and very big example — of the kind of asset you wouldn't invest in," he said, "if you actually believed the rhetoric of Exxon and others about climate risk."

But the trial may prove to be about much more than Exxon's risky investments. Climate change has abruptly shifted in the public consciousness from a future threat to a present danger, and many people and even local and national governments have begun demanding that courts step in to assign liability for the enormous costs they are facing. In the United States alone, more than a dozen local and state governments have sued energy companies seeking damages. Exxon is a defendant in many of these cases.

"Any one of them presents a real risk," said Lisa Hamilton, an attorney who until recently led the climate and energy program at the Center for International Environmental Law. She said she expects to see more of these cases enter the courts, and that some companies are now reporting that the lawsuits could have a material impact on their financial health.

Of all the lawsuits seeking to hold industry accountable for climate damage, the New York attorney general's case against Exxon would be the first to go to trial. What happens in the New York courtroom will reverberate in the climate cases yet to come.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22102019/exxon-climate-fraud-trial-starts-new-york-letitia-james-tar-sands

ExxonMobil went on trial Tuesday in a packed courtroom in New York, where the oil giant stands accused of defrauding investors by misleading them about the risks it faces from future climate regulations.

The civil case is the first major climate change lawsuit to reach trial in the United States, and it is the culmination of four years of investigation by the New York state attorney general's office.

The central allegation is that Exxon fraudulently used two sets of books to estimate the risks it faces as governments take steps to cut greenhouse gas emissions: one that was shared with investors and another that was used only internally. The public estimate was higher, suggesting a future with stricter limits on emissions, while the internal figures were lower, reflecting more lenient regulations.

Lawyers for Attorney General Letitia James, who took office this year, a few months after the lawsuit was filed, have argued that this practice exposed investors to greater risks than Exxon had disclosed and inflated the company's value.

...

The

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/exxonmobil-is-still-bankrolling-climate-science-deniers/

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ExxonMobil is still bankrolling climate science deniers

Written by Elliott Negin / Independent Media Institute October 23, 2019

ExxonMobil says it believes “the risk of climate change is real,” and it is “committed to being part of the solution.” The largest investor-owned oil company in the world also says it supports a federal carbon tax and the Paris climate agreement.

Then why, after all these years, is the company still financing advocacy groups, think tanks, and business associations that reject the reality and seriousness of the climate crisis, as well as members of Congress who deny the science and oppose efforts to rein in carbon emissions?

According to the company’s latest grantmaking report, it gave $772,500 to 10 such groups in 2018, which does not include its annual dues to trade groups such as the American Petroleum Institute, which opposes a carbon tax. In addition, ExxonMobil continued to promote gridlock directly on Capitol Hill. Two-thirds of the $1.65 million it spent on congressional election campaigns during the 2017-18 election cycle went to climate science deniers.

Nearly half of ExxonMobil’s 2018 donations to nonprofit denier groups went to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Another 30 percent went to the American Enterprise Institute and the Manhattan Institute, which have been ExxonMobil grantees for 20 years. All told, the company has spent some $37 million since 1998 on a network of denier organizations—a sorry record of support that ranks second only to Charles Koch and his brother, the late David Koch, owners of the coal, oil and gas conglomerate Koch Industries.

The shred of good news here is that ExxonMobil’s 2018 denier grant budget was half of what it spent in 2017 and the lowest amount since 2012. But if the company were truly serious about addressing climate change, it would cut off such funding completely. Likewise, it would support federal lawmakers who want to curb carbon emissions, not those standing in the way of government action.

So what did ExxonMobil get for its money in 2018?

Underwriting Climate Denial at the U.S. Chamber

In 2014, ExxonMobil pledged $5 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Capital Campaign over a five-year period on top of its annual dues, despite the lobby group’s history of misrepresenting climate science and the economics of transitioning to clean energy. Last year, the company kicked in $350,000 for the Capital Campaign and another $15,000 for the Chamber’s Corporate Citizenship Center, bringing its total 2018 donation to $365,000.

Two years ago, the Chamber sponsored a widely debunked report that wildly inflated the cost of adhering to the Paris climate agreement to the U.S. economy. President Trump used that report as his primary rationale for refusing to honor the U.S. commitment to the accord.

Earlier this year, however, the Chamber posted a new statement on its website that suggested that the business lobby is softening its position. “We stand with every American seeking a cleaner, stronger environment—for today and tomorrow,” the Chamber now asserts. “Our climate is changing and humans are contributing to these changes. Inaction is simply not an option.” The website also features the Chamber’s definition of an effective climate policy, which it says should include, among other things, “large-scale renewables, energy storage and batteries,” and should “encourage international cooperation.”

Does that mean the Chamber has finally come to its senses? Not quite. It opposed the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which would have reduced coal power plant carbon emissions, and supports the Trump administration’s move to repeal it. And although a Chamber spokesman told Politico in August that it is “absolutely important for the U.S. to remain in the Paris climate agreement,” he added that the “Obama administration’s pledge was unrealistic [and] was going to have a negative impact on our economy. And so we’d like to see that revisited.” In other words, the Chamber would like the United States to remain a party to the agreement so that it can try to weaken the U.S. commitment to it.

Backing Denial at the American Enterprise Institute

The American Enterprise Institute, an 80-year-old, free market think tank in Washington, D.C., has received more money from ExxonMobil than any other climate science denier organization. In 2018, ExxonMobil gave the organization $160,000, bringing its total to $4.65 million since 1998.

Economist Benjamin Zycher, an Enterprise Institute staff member who writes regularly about climate issues, argues that a carbon tax would be “ineffective” and has called the Paris agreement an “absurdity.” He also routinely cites largely debunked papers by John Christy, Judith Curry and other outlier scientists to buttress his attacks on what he calls “climate alarmism.”

Last fall, for example, Zycher took aim at the second volume of the Fourth National Climate Assessment—a periodic, congressionally mandated analysis of peer-reviewed climate science by 13 federal agencies. The report warned that by the end of this century, unchecked climate change could cause tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. The Trump administration issued it the day after Thanksgiving in the hope that it would receive limited attention.

Zycher took issue with the report’s conclusions in a blog post on the think tank’s website, citing “systematic evidence on climate phenomena” that he says the report ignored. His “evidence” included half-truths, cherry-picked facts and fabrications. Contrary to Zycher’s claims, human activity is responsible for more than half of the increase in average global temperatures since 1950; sea level rise has accelerated due to climate change; and although there has been little change in the frequency of hurricanes globally, research suggests there has been an increase in hurricane intensity over the past 40 years.

Zycher also posted a column belittling a lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood that charges ExxonMobil with defrauding investors by publicly claiming to incorporate climate risks in its business decisions while downplaying or ignoring them for internal planning purposes. The lawsuit, which went to trial on October 22, alleges that ExxonMobil inflated its value, falsely assuring investors that its oil and gas reserves would not become “stranded assets” that would have to be left in the ground. Zycher accused Underwood of “picking an unpopular target and then trying to find a way to convict it of something,” and suggested that she filed the suit to advance her career.

Financing the Manhattan Institute’s Specious Case Against Renewables

The Manhattan Institute, a New York City-based think tank, received $75,000 from ExxonMobil last year for its Center for Energy Policy. Since 1998, the company has given the Libertarian policy shop more than $1.3 million.

Like the Enterprise Institute, the Manhattan Institute opposes the Paris climate accord. Senior Fellow Oren Cass, who regularly testified before Congress against Obama administration climate efforts, alleges the international agreement is “somewhere between a farce and a fraud.” The think tank is also an outspoken opponent of renewable energy, routinely calling for an end to federal subsidies for wind, solar and electric vehicles. At the same time, it is mum about the significantly bigger subsidies the oil and gas industry has been receiving over the last 100 years.

Cass’s colleague, Senior Fellow Robert Bryce, has been bashing wind power for years and, like President Trump, he wildly overstates its threat to birds. In fact, the top human-caused threats to birds are climate change, buildings, power lines, misapplied pesticides, communications towers, and oil and gas industry fluid waste pits. Bryce never mentions that. It would undermine his bogus argument.

Still another Manhattan Institute senior fellow, Mark P. Mills, wrote an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal in May titled “What if Green Energy Isn’t the Future?” In it, he maintained that, “using wind, solar and batteries as the primary sources of a nation’s energy supply remains far too expensive.” In fact, renewables are now the cheapest type of new electricity generation for more than two-thirds of the world, according to a June report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. By 2030, Bloomberg researchers project, wind and solar will “undercut existing coal and [natural] gas almost everywhere.” Mills also failed to factor in the cost of doing nothing to curb carbon pollution. The top 10 largest climate change-related disasters in 2018 alone cost at least $85 billion in damages.

Aiding and Abetting Congressional Gridlock

On top of the hundreds of thousands of dollars ExxonMobil gave to climate science denier groups last year, the company continued to fund deniers on Capitol Hill. As noted above, 67 percent of the $1.65 million it spent during the2017-18 election cycle—roughly $1.1 million—went to the campaigns of 189 climate science deniers. It then spent$11.15 million in 2018 to lobby lawmakers, more than any other oil and gas company.

One of the most talked-about climate proposals in Congress today is a carbon tax, and despite ExxonMobil’s professed decade-long support for one, it has consistently funded senators and representatives who oppose the idea. Since 2013, there have been at least five nonbinding resolutions in Congress on such a tax. Each time, a majority of ExxonMobil-funded legislators, ranging from 75 percent to 93 percent, voted against it. The most recent example of the company’s upside-down funding priorities is the outcome of a July 2018 nonbinding resolution in the House stating such a tax would be “detrimental” to the U.S. economy. Once again, a majority of ExxonMobil-funded lawmakers favored the resolution, which passed by a 229-to-180 vote. This time, 78 percent of the 174 House members who had received ExxonMobil campaign contributions since 2013 voted for it.

ExxonMobil first announced its support for a carbon tax in 2009 in a cynical attempt to derail a cap-and-trade bill in Congress, and last year, the company announced it would give $1 million over two years to Americans for Carbon Dividends, a political action group created to promote a revenue-neutral carbon tax. The proposal—developed by the Climate Leadership Council, a coalition of corporations, environmental groups and former government officials—would levy a carbon fee starting at $40 a ton in exchange for dropping all “stationary source” (non-transportation) carbon pollution regulations and granting the fossil fuel industry immunity from climate lawsuits.

In a surprise move, however, the Climate Leadership Council and Americans for Carbon Dividends recently deleted the provision shielding the fossil fuel industry from liability, apparently abandoning coalition co-founders BP, ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil, which are facing more than a dozen lawsuits for billions of dollars in climate change-related damages. It remains to be seen what ExxonMobil will do now, but based on past experience, the company likely will continue to finance lawmakers who cite fraudulent reports by the groups it funds to make their bogus case that climate change is not a threat. In other words, ExxonMobil will keep bankrolling climate science denial to make sure nothing happens on Capitol Hill.

Author’s note: Besides the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ($365,000), American Enterprise Institute ($160,000) and Manhattan Institute ($75,000), ExxonMobil gave grants in 2018 to the following seven climate science denier groups: American Council on Science and Health ($60,000), Center for American and International Law ($12,500), Federalist Society ($10,000), Hoover Institution ($15,000), Mountain States Legal Foundation ($5,000), National Black Chamber of Commerce ($30,000) and the Washington Legal Foundation ($40,000).

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

This article first appeared on Truthout and was produced in partnership with Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/09/16/fossil-fuel-ad-campaigns-climate-science-denial-pr-exxon-lawsuits

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Fossil Fuel Ad Campaigns Emphasize 'Positives' After Climate Science Denial PR Lands Industry in Hot Seat

By Sharon Kelly • Monday, September 16, 2019 - 19:09

This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.

Public relations experts keep a careful eye on the multitude of ways that PR can go wrong: tracking the year’s biggest “PR blunders,” assessing flopped ads for lessons learned, and noting when to remain silent and when to circulate a particular point of view.

PR blunders have been blamed for causing stock prices to dip, powerful executives to lose jobs, and occasionally even forced public apologies from PR representatives themselves.

But it takes a special kind of PR nightmare — a particularly unusual kind in the U.S., with its broad protections for free speech — to prompt investigations by state attorneys general into whether a company’s public messaging was so misleading and harmful that it should be considered illegal.

That is the situation facing one of the world’s most powerful industries, on one of the most consequential issues of our time, climate change. The subject of these investigations isn’t the direct harm from the fossil fuel industry’s actions, it’s the ways that companies communicated about their actions, and how that misled investors or the public.

And right on cue, the fossil fuel industry's PR professionals have been stepping in to help reshape the narratives propping up their bottom lines.

What #ExxonKnew

Exxon Knew billboard

Sign about what Exxon knew about climate change. Credit: John Duffy, CC BY 2.0

ExxonMobil, for example, currently faces investigations by multiple state attorneys general centering on how the oil giant communicated about climate change and the risk of climate regulation to investors and to the public.

In 2015, the New York state attorney general subpoenaed ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy, following an InsideClimate News investigative series, eight months in the making, that was one of three finalists for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

Last year, New York’s investigation ripened into a lawsuit, still pending.

“Investors put their money and their trust in Exxon — which assured them of the long-term value of their shares, as the company claimed to be factoring the risk of increasing climate change regulation into its business decisions,” New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood said in a statement roughly a year ago, when her investigation turned into a lawsuit that claims ExxonMobil defrauded its investors. “Instead, Exxon built a facade to deceive investors into believing that the company was managing the risks of climate change regulation to its business when, in fact, it was intentionally and systematically underestimating or ignoring them, contrary to its public representations.”

In January, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to block a different investigation into ExxonMobil’s climate communications, this one by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey.

Alexander Kaufman

@AlexCKaufman

Big news: SCOTUS just rejected Exxon Mobil's appeal to stop Massachusetts' attorney general from forcing the oil giant to turn over documents detailing what and when it knew about burning fossil fuels causing climate change. http://news.trust.org/item/20190107143238-u421z/ …

U.S. top court rejects Exxon in climate change document dispute

Ruling clears the way for Massachusetts attorney general to obtain records from Exxon Mobil to probe whether it concealed its knowledge of the role fossil fuels play in climate change

news.trust.org

In March, a report by the Climate Investigations Center tallied $1.4 billion worth of public relations, advertising, and communications contracts signed by energy and business trade associations from 2008 to 2017. One organization, the American Petroleum Institute (API), accounted for nearly half of that sum.

The Evolution of Fossil Fuel Messaging — and Climate Science Denial

Amid the investigations into their communications on climate change, many fossil fuel companies have been slowly re-tooling their messaging.

Some have acknowledged a need to transition away from fossil fuels — but at what critics respond would be a very slow pace.

Others have continued to push natural gas as a climate-friendly fossil fuel, despite the industry’s severe climate-changing methane problems. API, for example, has placed ads claiming natural gas can “help meet the growing global demand for sustainable energy” under the Washington Post’s “branded content platform,” as The Intercept’s Sharon Lerner reported in April.

Other campaigns ditch mention of climate change and pollution all together, instead focusing on the benefits of products made from fossil fuels.

During the Super Bowl in 2017, the American Petroleum Institute released an ad campaign called Power Past Impossible, touting the many uses of oil and natural gas and highlighting how dependent modern life is on the byproducts of these fossil fuels.

“Oil majors are projecting themselves as key players in the energy transition while lobbying to delay, weaken, or oppose meaningful climate policy,” Edward Collins of the UK-based think tank InfluenceMap said in a March statement accompanying a report he authored on public relations campaigns by oil and gas giants. “They advocate gradual implementation of market-based and technological climate solutions, but the latest [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report makes clear that urgent policy action and limitations on fossil fuel use are needed to avoid dangerous climate change.”

The shift doesn’t spell the end of climate science denial — DeSmog’s database of individuals and organizations that seek to cast doubt on climate science or oppose action to prevent some of the worst effects of warming the world includes roughly 225 organizations — and that list continues to grow.

Climate sciences deniers, many with ties to the oil, gas, and coal industries, have also climbed to dizzying heights within the Trump administration, placing them in positions where they can wield power directly and also communicate doubt to the public. Vice President Mike Pence is closely tied to the Koch network and in 2016 said, regarding climate change, “I don't know that that is a resolved issue in science today.”

And of course, there's President Trump himself, who in June responded, “I believe that there’s a change in weather and I think it changes both ways,” when asked by Good Morning Britain if he believed in climate change.

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

Any and all weather events are used by the GLOBAL WARMING HOAXSTERS to justify higher taxes to save our planet! They don't believe it !

But some of the organizations and think tanks in DeSmog's database have gotten a lot quieter when it comes to questioning climate science, even during the Trump administration — and a handful have dissolved entirely.

Take, for instance, the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), a free market think tank that co-authored a 1991 report that read: “Currently, scientists disagree on whether global warming has already occurred, whether significant global warming will occur in the future, whether warming would be harmful or somewhat beneficial to humans and whether, if harmful, it is better to adjust to the warming or try to prevent it.”

A quarter century later, the organization carried a very different message to an industry conference. “It is no secret that the oil and gas industry has an image problem,” Jacki Pick of the NCPA reportedly told the Tyler Area Energy Summit in Texas in March 2017. “We don't do a very good job of explaining the value of the industry.”

Later that year, the NCPA folded,citing “significant financial challenges over the last three years.”

'A Crisis of Perception'

This year, the state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco’s chief executive similarly warned of the oil and gas industry’s image problem.

“My encounters in Davos showed me that fewer and fewer of our stakeholders accept logic and facts, least of all from us. We are therefore facing what I would call a crisis of perception,” Amin Nasser told an industry audience in February, according to The Guardian. “Because it threatens our industry’s very relevance, it puts our ability to supply ample, reliable, and affordable energy to billions around the world at risk, which in turn risks their energy security.”

Ethical oil ad

The oil industry has had image problems before. The “Ethical Oil” ad campaign pitted Canadian oil [peacekeeper un cdn soldier?!] against Middle Eastern oil producers. Credit: EthicalOil.org

In August, a top Chevron executive hinted that a group of major oil and gas companies plans to launch a new branding campaign, which she suggested would be modeled after the “Got Milk?” ad campaigns that launched in 1993.

“I think as an industry, we have an image that we need to change, where people equate what we do to their everyday life,” Kimberly S. McHugh, a Chevron vice president, said at the Summer NAPE Expo in Houston.

“What we do is noble,” she added, “we help humankind.”

That's a message that the fossil fuel industry, particularly as investigations into their past communications continue, may be trumpeting a lot more loudly in coming days.

Or, in the words of McHugh at the NAPE Expo: “The world needs what we have.”

gizmodo?

TargetPoint and Causeway, the two firms employed by the RNC in addition to Deep Root, apparently layered their own analytics atop the information provided by Data Trust. TargetPoint conducted thousands of surveys per week in 22 states, according to AdAge, gauging voter sentiment on a variety of topics. While Causeway helped manage the data, Deep Root used it to perfect its TV advertising targets—producing voter turnout estimates by county and using that intelligence to target its ad buys.

A source with years of experience working on political campaign data operations told Gizmodothat the data exposed by Deep Root appeared to be customized for the RNC and had apparently been used to create models for turnout and voter preferences. Metadata in the files suggested that the database wasn’t Deep Root’s working copy, but rather a post-election version of its data, the source said, adding that it was somewhat surprising the files hadn’t been discarded.

Because the data from the 2008 and 2012 elections is outdated—the source compared it to the kind of address and phone data one could find on a “lousy internet lookup site”—it’s not very valuable. Even the 2016 data is quickly becoming stale. “This is a proprietary dataset based on a mix of public records, data from commercial providers, and a variety of predictive models of uncertain provenance and quality,” the source said, adding: “Undoubtedly it took millions of dollars to produce.”

Although basic voter information is public record, Deep Root’s dataset contains a swirl of proprietary information from the RNC’s data firms. Many of the filenames indicate that they potentially contain market research on Democratic candidates and the independent expenditure committees that support them. (Up to two terabytes of data contained on the server was protected by permission settings.)

One exposed folder is labeled “Exxon-Mobile” [sic] and contains spreadsheets apparently used to predict which voters support the oil and gas industry. Divided by state, the files include the voters’ names and addresses, along with a unique RNC identification number assigned to every US citizen registered to vote. Each row indicates where voters likely fall on issues of interest to ExxonMobil, the country’s biggest natural gas producer.

The data evaluates, for example, whether or not a specific voter believes drilling for fossil fuels is vital to US security. It also predicts if the voter thinks the US should be moving away from fossil-fuel use. The ExxonMobil “national score” document alone contains data on 182,746,897 Americans spread across 19 fields.]

yikes

https://theintercept.com/2019/09/06/exxon-mobil-progressive-policy-institute-climate/

kate a

PROGRESSIVE POLICY Institute, a centrist Democratic think tank that grew out of the party’s pro-business wing in the 1980s and ’90s, received $50,000 from Exxon Mobil in 2018 via its parent organization, the Third Way Foundation, according to the oil giant’s 2018 Worldwide Giving Report.

Exxon Mobil did not return The Intercept’s multiple requests for comment. In an email, PPI Executive Director Lindsay Lewis said the money was used for general support and that “we only accept general support funding from corporate interests, we do not do paid for work/research or have any donor run programs.”

Lewis also confirmed that this is the first time Exxon Mobil has donated to the Third Way Foundation.

Though it’s a first, PPI’s new donor isn’t so dramatic a shift from its fundraising record. The Intercept’s Akela Lacy has also found that PhRMA — the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America — has annually donated between $25,000 and $75,000 to the Third Way Foundation since 2009, upping its donation to $265,000 in 2016 — the same year that Medicare for All, which the trade group and PPI both oppose, entered the national spotlight. Donations dipped back to normal levels in 2017, although documents were not yet available for 2018 when the piece was published in late April.

PhRMA Is Funding a Democratic Think Tank Trying to Derail Medicare for All

In the last couple years, Exxon has taken up softer messaging on climate than either the Koch brothers or the Mercer family. With business all over the world, Exxon — like every other multinational oil company — is well-accustomed to operating in environments where denying the reality of the climate emergency outright is politically unthinkable. As climate concerns spike around the U.S., the company is still plenty opposed to environmental regulations and the lawsuits being lobbed its way from climate-vulnerable communities and attorneys general, who are each calling into question Exxon’s rule in fueling both the climate crisis and misinformation campaigns about it. Rather than paying people to say that there’s no problem at all, it can rebrand as a good-faith actor in the climate fight with paeans to carbon capture technology, low-carbon fuels (algae!), and carbon taxes that also conveniently exempt it from some of the lawsuits and regulations it’s most worried about. The decades of climate denial Exxon helped fund — and now the Trump administration — have dragged the national debate on climate change so far into the gutter that there are influential liberals willing to give the company credit simply for not denying the science.

This all dovetails well with a centrist approach to climate politics that’s long sought common ground with industry and harbors both temperamental and ideological opposition to big, confrontational proposals like the Green New Deal. The upshot is that they’ve started to sound a lot alike. Carbon capture, R&D, and carbon pricing — while not mutually exclusive with the Green New Deal framework that the Sunrise Movement, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and others have begun to flesh out — have reliably been wielded as a cudgel by establishment types against calls for more sweeping action.

Kert Davies, founder and director of the Climate Investigations Center, noted that the report indicates the money PPI received was through a “corporate” grant, rather than through the ExxonMobil Foundation. “We have never sussed how thesetwo black boxes of money are managed or dolled out. So if you grab the ExxonMobil Foundation 990s, there are sometimes different descriptions or breakdowns of the funding, but this grant won’t be there,” he wrote in an email. “There is no need for public accounting of such grants. No obligation. But they have seemed compelled to disclosed them through the years.”

Of course, $50,000 is not an enormous amount of money either for PPI or Exxon Mobil. But it may well signal a shift in the fossil fuel industry’s relationship to climate politics.

In March, [who?] Goldberg co-authored a reportfor the industry front group Grow America’s Infrastructure Now on how to bring legal action against anti-pipeline organizers. “Allowing vigilante regulation to go unchecked undermines our democracy. We honor civil protests in this country, but we should not have to accept improper efforts to overturn the rule of law,” Goldberg said in a press release. “People who violate the law by improperly interfering with legitimate business activities, even to advance a political or public policy preference, can be held accountable for their actions through civil litigation.”

While not disclosed on the group’s website, GAIN spokesperson Craig Stevensis a partner at the DCI Group, which specializes in astroturf campaigns that have fought everything from anti-smoking laws to climate legislation. From 2005 through 2016, Exxon Mobil was a DCI client. In another detail not mentioned on the GAIN site, the group’s strategic adviser is James “Spider” Marks,who as of 2017 was the advisory board chair of the security firm TigerSwan, which — as The Intercept has documented extensively — engaged in “military-style counterterrorism measures” against anti-pipeline protesters.

For years, Exxon Mobil prolifically funded climate denier groups like the Heartland Institute and Competitive Enterprise Institute. Under pressure, the company pledged to stop funding deniers in 2007, although it kept bankrolling politicians who deny the reality of the climate crisis. Exxon also still support right-wing think tanks like theManhattan Institute, which received $970,200 from Exxon between 2008 and 2018. As recently as 2011, MI Senior Fellow Robert Bryce said “the science is not settled” on climate change. Another MI Senior Fellow,Oren Cass,last year — the year after three of the five most expensive hurricanes to have ever hit the Atlantic — authored a report arguing that the potential costs of climate change are overblown, suggesting that many people prefer warmer temperatures and could adapt easily to global warming. In addition to Exxon, MI is — like other flagrant denier groups — funded by the Mercer Family Foundation; Rebekah Mercer, a key financier of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, runs the foundation and sits on the MI board. Exxon also continues to give large donations the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and remains a member of the American Petroleum Institute, each of which has fought hard against environmental regulations and climate measures. The oil company only left the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council in 2017, four years after it pushed model legislation in Oklahoma, Colorado, and Arizona that described global warming as a “theory.”

Itai Vardi reported at DeSmog this summer that Phil Goldberg, director of PPI’s Center for Civil Justice, has come out swinging against climate lawsuits being brought by cities and states against fossil fuel companies. The law firm at which Goldberg is a partner — Shook, Hardy & Bacon — defended the tobacco industry**for decades** and was the inspiration for the fictional firm Smoot, Hawking in the 2005 film “Thank You For Smoking.” As a slew of lawsuits has begun to call into question fossil fuel companies’ role in fueling and spreading misinformation about the climate crisis, the industry has stepped into high gear to fight off litigation.

Goldberg is a former lobbyist for the coal company Peabody Energywho was brought on as special counsel by the National Association of Manufacturers in January as part of its Manufacturers Accountability Project, founded in 2017 to take on “activist litigation” against big oil companies; Exxon Mobil is a NAM member, and the MAP project has been among the most active bodies fighting off climate-related legal action. Both Peabody and NAM have also donated generously to climate denial groups over the years. Both, for instance, were members of the now-defunct Global Climate Coalition, which through the 1990s sought to undermine U.N. climate negotiations and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Goldberg has also been an adviser for ALEC’s Civil Justice Task Force. In addition to the model legislation on global warming, ALEC has vigorously opposed climate and clean energy legislation around the country.

Lewis said that Goldberg works with PPI in a volunteer capacity and is not employed by the Third Way Foundation, despite his lofty title. Evidently, he’s vocally defending fossil fuel companies out of the goodness of his heart.

Asked whether Goldberg’s positions on climate litigation were also PPI’s, Lewis replied, “PPI, which has long advocated for cap and trade, a carbon tax, and other polices to combat climate change, believes such policies should be made in representative legislatures, not the courts.” In short, yes.

Throughout the 2020 campaign cycle, PPI strategic adviser and Clinton White House insider Paul Bledsoe has commented frequently about the dangers of candidates being too hard on fossil fuels.“[Joe] Biden and other moderate candidates must emphasize that the market is already phasing out coal over time, but that their climate policies still allow a role for natural gas as a low-carbon transition fuel for some time,” he told the Washington Examiner in August. “This distinction is crucial to success in swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan.” In a New York Times piece about Biden’s critics on the left, Bledsoe said, “Indulging in ideological purity is great until you actually want to solve the problem.”

“Happily,” he wrote in a February Forbesop-ed attacking the Green New Deal, “there is no need to eliminate fossil fuels in the next decade or require only renewable energy or guarantee public sector jobs to meet our climate goals.” We might never find out what Exxon Mobil’s money got up to at PPI last year. If its experts keep sounding like Bledsoe and Goldberg, though, it’ll probably keep coming.

https://blog.ucsusa.org/elliott-negin/exxonmobil-still-funding-climate-science-denier-groups

2x?

Why is ExxonMobil Still Funding Climate Science Denier Groups?

ELLIOTT NEGIN, SENIOR WRITER | AUGUST 31,2018, 12:42 PM EDT

A decade after pledging to end its support for climate science deniers, ExxonMobil gave $1.5 million last year to 11 think tanks and lobby groups that reject established climate science and openly oppose the oil and gas giant’s professed climate policy preferences, according to the company’s annual charitable giving report released this week.

Nearly 90 percent of ExxonMobil’s 2017 donations to climate science denier groups went to the US Chamberof Commerce and three organizations that have been receiving funds from the company since it started bankrolling climate disinformation 20 years ago: the American Enterprise Institute, Manhattan Institute and American Legislative Exchange Council, which — in a surprise move — ExxonMobil recently quit. (More on that later.)

The other ExxonMobil denier grantees last year were the Center for American and International Law ($23,000), Federalist Society ($10,000), Hoover Institution ($15,000), Mountain States Legal Foundation ($5,000), National Black Chamber of Commerce ($30,000), National Taxpayers Union Foundation ($40,000), and Washington Legal Foundation ($40,000).

ExxonMobil’s funding priorities belie the company’s purported support for a carbon tax, the Paris climate agreement and other related policies, which it reaffirmed in a January blog post by its public affairs director, Suzanne McCarron. If, as McCarron claims, ExxonMobil is “committed to being part of the solution,” why is the company still spending millions of dollars a year on groups that are a major part of the problem?

ExxonMobil’s history of deceit

There is ample evidence that Exxon was fully aware of the danger its products pose to the planet since the 1980s and likely even earlier. Nonetheless, the company helped initiate a fossil fuel industry-backed climate disinformation campaign in 1998, a year before it merged with Mobil.

The company’s behind-the-scenes role went largely unnoticed for nearly a decade, but in early 2007, a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists revealed that it had spent at least $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to fund a network of more than 40 think tanks and advocacy groups to manufacture doubt about climate science under the guise of being neutral, independent analysts.

In response to the negative press generated by the UCS report, ExxonMobil vowed in its “2007 Corporate Citizenship Report” to “discontinue contributions [in 2008] to several public policy research groups whose positions on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion on how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner.”

Note that the company only promised to stop funding several policy groups, not all, and it did in fact drop some high-profile grantees, including the Cato Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heartland Institute and Institute for Energy Research. But it never completely ended its support for the disinformation network. From 1998 to 2007 — the year of the pledge — it spent nearly $23 million on it. From 2008 through last year, it spent another $13.17 million, for a total of $36.13 million over the last 20 years. As far as anyone has been able to determine from publicly available data, only Charles and David Koch, the multibillionaire owners of Koch Industries, have spent more to deceive the public about climate science and block government action on climate change.

Last year, $1.35 million of the $1.5 million ExxonMobil spent went to the following four organizations:

US Chamber of Commerce: Sponsoring slanted studies

In 2014, ExxonMobil committed to give $5 million to the US Chamber of Commerce’s Capital Campaign in $1 million-a-year increments on top of its annual dues, despite the lobby group’s history of misrepresenting climate science and the economics of transitioning to clean energy. Last year, the company kicked in another $15,000 for the Chamber’s Corporate Citizenship Center, bringing its total donation to $1,015,000.

If one takes ExxonMobil’s climate policy claims at face value, the Chamber’s positions are polar opposite.

ExxonMobil has been very vocal about its support for the Paris climate agreement, for example, and during its former CEO Rex Tillerson’s brief stint as US secretary of state, he reportedly implored President Trump to keep the United States in it. What did Trump cite last year when he announced he was pulling out of the accord? A widely debunked report from the US Chamber of Commerce.

Cosponsored by a former ExxonMobil grantee — the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF) — the report maintained that the Paris accord would cost the US economy nearly $3 trillion over the next several decades and eliminate 6.5 million industrial sector jobs by 2040.

According to analyses by the Associated Press (AP), Politifact and The Washington Post, however, the Chamber and ACCF cooked the books. As the AP put it: “The study makes worst-case assumptions that may inflate the cost of meeting US targets under the Paris accord while largely ignoring the economic benefits to US businesses from building and operating renewable energy projects.”

American Enterprise Institute: Undue faith in the market

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an 80-year-old free-market think tank in Washington, D.C., has received more from ExxonMobil than any other climate science denier organization. In 2017, ExxonMobil gave AEI $160,000, bringing its total to $4.49 million since 1998.

Economist Benjamin Zycher, the only AEI staff member who writes regularly about climate issues, rejects mainstream climate science, insists a carbon tax would be “ineffective,” and has called the Paris agreement an “absurdity.” He not only disagrees with ExxonMobil’s professed climate policy positions, he has attacked the company for taking them.

Zycher’s colleague Mark Thiessen, a regular contributor to The Washington Post, also dismisses the Paris accord, maintaining that “free enterprise, technology, and innovation—not pieces of parchment signed in Paris and Kyoto — will revolutionize how we produce and consume energy.” Never mind that it often takes regulations to drive innovation and force corporations to adopt cleaner technology. Without federally mandated air pollution controls, for example, power plants and other industrial facilities would be emitting considerably more toxic pollution than they do today.

Manhattan Institute: Propaganda masquerading as news

Another free-market think tank, the Manhattan Institute, received $115,200 from ExxonMobil last year for its Center for Energy Policy. Since 1998, it has received $1.25 million. Like Zycher and Thiessen at AEI, Manhattan Institute fellows oppose a carbon tax and the Paris accord.

Earlier this year, the New York City-based organization hired longtime TV newsman John Stossel, former host of Fox Business Network’s “Stossel” and ABC’s “20/20,” to interviewManhattan Institute Senior Fellow Oren Cass for a slickly produced, 4-minute YouTube segment titled “The Overheated Costs of Climate Change.”

Cass, who regularly testified before Congress against Obama administration climate efforts, told Stossel that the Paris climate agreement “was somewhere between a farce and a fraud.” Stossel wholeheartedly agreed. “The Earth is warming,” Stossel intoned in his wrap-up. “Man may well be increasing that. But the solution isn’t to waste billions by forcing emissions cuts here while other countries do nothing. Well, pretend to make cuts. Trump was right to repudiate this phony treaty.”

Waste billions while other countries do nothing? Besides the fact that it is now cheaper to produce electricity from utility-scale solar and wind energy in the United States than nuclear, coal and even natural gas, as of last November — a year after the Paris agreement officially went into effect — China, India and other major carbon emitters were already making significant progress in meeting their Paris accord commitments.

The other glaring problem with the segment is it’s a prime example of fake news. With a former network news show host playing anchor, viewers could easily mistake the piece as a clip from of a legitimate newscast. At least one member of the conservative echo chamber treated it that way. The Washington Free Beacon, an online news organization funded by GOP megadonor Paul Singer, ran a news story about the Stossel-Cass interview on March 19.

American Legislative Exchange Council: Fossil fuel industry ‘bill mill’

On July 12, ExxonMobil announced it had ended its longtime membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council after a disagreement over the corporate lobby group’s climate policy. From 1998 through last year — when Exxon Mobil reported it gave the group $60,000 — ALEC received $1.93 million from the oil company.

Over the last two decades, ALEC has routinely featured climate science deniers at its conferences and supplied state lawmakers with a range of fossil fuel industry-drafted sample legislation, including bills that would restrict investment in renewables, eliminate incentives for electric vehicles, and hamper the solar industry from selling electricity directly to residential and business customers.

Since 2012, more than 100 corporations, including BP, ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell and electric utilities Entergy, Pacific Gas & Electric and Xcel Energy, have severed ties with ALEC, in many cases because of its regressive policy positions.

ExxonMobil’s exit from ALEC came just months after the company fought to defeat a draft resolution sponsored by the Heartland Institute — an ExxonMobil grantee from 1998 through 2006 — calling on the Environmental Protection Agency to “reopen and review” its “flawed” conclusion that climate change poses a threat to human health. The EPA’s “endangerment finding” requires the agency to regulate carbon dioxide and other global warming emissions as hazardous pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

After ExxonMobil and the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), a utility trade group, objected to the resolution, the Heartland Institute withdrew it and accused the two of being in league with the likes of Greenpeace and the Sierra Club.

“Big corporations like ExxonMobil and trade groups like EEI have long been members of the discredited and anti-energy global warming movement,” Heartland’s president, Tim Huelskamp, said in a December 7 press release. “They’ve put their profits and ‘green’ virtue signaling above sound science and the interests of their customers.”

Huelskamp’s ludicrous assertion notwithstanding,some might construe ExxonMobil’s exit from ALEC as a welcome change in direction. The company’s money trail, however, clearly shows that it is still financing climate science denier groups that denigrate any and all climate policy options and provide cover for Congress and the current administration to do nothing. Until ExxonMobil stops funding these groups, its avowed support for a carbon tax, the Paris agreement and other climate initiatives can’t be seen as anything more than a cynical PR ploy.

Posted in: Energy, Global Warming Tags: carbon tax, Climate Denier, Climate Science, ExxonMobil, fossil fuel, Global warming

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06082019/exxon-climate-fraud-investigation-witness-pressure-investors-new-york-attorney-general

Prosecutors in New York are accusing ExxonMobil of trying to discourage potential witnesses from testifying about whether the oil giant misled investors over the costs it may face from future climate regulations. They asked a judge to block Exxon from making what they describe as "unreasonable" and extensive requests for documents from the witnesses.

On Thursday, Justice Barry Ostrager of the New York Supreme Court sided with the prosecutors, saying that Exxon "can't go on a gigantic, burdensome fishing expedition to exhume hundreds or thousands of documents that have no relevance to the issues in this case."

Court filings show that Exxon sent letters to a group of investment advisers and shareholder activists who prosecutors want to put on the stand, informing them they will be subject to subpoenas from the company seeking documents relevant to the case if they choose to testify.

Because of their roles investing in and engaging with Exxon over climate change, these witnesses' testimony could prove critical to the state's case.

With opening statements scheduled to begin Oct. 23, a lawyer in New York Attorney General Letitia James's office wrote that the request would "impose disproportionate burdens on these witnesses in a transparent attempt to discourage them from testifying voluntarily, and threatening to upend the trial schedule."

While prosecutors had agreed to allow Exxon to interview the witnesses before the trial, the company went further by sending at least one witness what the attorney general described as an expansive request for documents and communications, including "all documents concerning your oil and gas holdings" and more. Exxon wrote on July 30 that it planned to send documents requests to seven witnesses.

James issued a statement after Ostrager's ruling on Thursday saying, "We appreciate the court's very reasonable decision to deny Exxon's over burdensome fishing expedition, and look forward to making our case in court this fall."

Aaron Caplan, a law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and expert in legal ethics, said the letter from Exxon included in the court filing was unusually aggressive and tested ethical bounds, though he said Exxon could argue that it is simply being thorough in its defense.

"It tiptoes right up to the line of impropriety," he said. "And whether it crosses that line is up to interpretation."

Prosecutors argued that the requests would set off lengthy negotiations between the parties and onerous demands for document searches on the witnesses and their employers, with less than three months before a scheduled trial.

Exxon did not reply to requests for comment. But a lawyer representing the company wrote in a filing that the request for documents and communications "goes hand-in-hand" with pre-trial interviews of the witnesses, a step prosecutors had agreed to.

Why New York Is Suing

New York prosecutors filed the case against Exxon last year, accusing it of defrauding investors by downplaying the costs it could face as governments try to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

At the heart of the case is the revelation that the company essentially kept two sets of books for how it estimated these costs, one that it shared with the public, and another that it used internally when assessing its investments.

The result, prosecutors allege, was that Exxon led investors to believe that it was being far more conservative about these future costs than it really was, thereby exposing the investors to greater risks.

The company has said the two figures were used for separate, legitimate purposes, and that it never misled anyone.

Exxon's Letters to the Witnesses

The latest tussle in court was prompted by a set of letters that Exxon sent to witnesses in early July, saying that if they decided to testify, Exxon would use a subpoena to seek documents from them.

The letter from Exxon that was included in the court filings says that the witnesses cannot be compelled to testify, but "nonetheless may be willing to testify." It says "please let us know" if you choose not to testify, and adds that if the witness does testify, "ExxonMobil is entitled to discovery concerning her relevant knowledge."

At least one witness, Danielle Fugere, president of As You Sow, an advocacy group dedicated to increasing corporate sustainability through shareholder engagement, received the specific document request. It asked for any documents related to the witness's investments in ExxonMobil or other oil and gas companies, as well as documents related to the investment criteria for these holdings.

Exxon also asked for copies of communications with the attorney general's office discussing the case or climate change, and any communications with a list of lawyers, academics, advocacy groups and foundations that have supported climate change lawsuits against the oil and gas industry.

It's unclear how many witnesses have received the specific document request. Other witnesses either declined to answer specific questions about the requests or did not reply to inquiries.

Fugere said she expects to testify if she's called as a witness, though she declined to talk about her potential testimony or Exxon's demands for documents.

Attorney: 'It's Pretty Unorthodox'

Caplan said the wording of Exxon's letter to the witnesses would have been less questionable had Exxon simply issued subpoenas without the suggestion that the matter would disappear if witnesses chose not to testify.

"You can see where it could be interpreted as Exxon using a carrot and stick approach," Caplan said. "If you're not going to be a witness, we don't need anything from you."

Annika Martin, a New York attorney who has squared off with BP over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill but is not associated with the Exxon case, said Exxon's letter appeared to be "aggressive and carefully calculated not to step over the line."

"It's pretty unorthodox to send a letter like that," she said. "I can't pin it on any rule it violates, but it is pretty clear what the intention is."

Published Aug. 6, 2019

PUBLISHED UNDER:

BUSINESS AND ACCOUNTABILITY

OIL/TAR SANDS

EXXON CLIMATE

LITIGATION

Law360 breaking news.

Exxon Hit With New Stock-Drop Suit Over Climate Disclosures

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"Internal documents show that Exxon's executives knew the company's disclosures regarding the impact of climate change related risks on its

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https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2019/05/07/exxon-shareholder-lawsuit-climate-change/

An ExxonMobil shareholder has filed a lawsuit against the oil giant and some of its executives alleging they misled investors by understating how much risk climate change poses to the company’s assets.

Sarah Von Colditz filed the suit Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. Defendants include current and former Exxon executives and board members, including current chief executive Darren Woods and his predecessor, Rex Tillerson. The complaint accuses the company and executives of violating federal securities law, breaching fiduciary duties and wasting corporate assets.

Exxon is already facing two lawsuits over the company’s alleged misrepresentation of asset values to investors. The state of New York filed a lawsuit in October following a three-year investigation that showed Exxon had used two different sets of numbers to calculate climate risk—one disclosed publicly while the other was used internally. The public numbers indicated that Exxon was using higher costs of potential greenhouse gas regulations, or proxy costs, for internal planning than it was using in its business decisions.

Von Colditz cited this alleged misrepresentation in her complaint. “Exxon’s failure to employ carbon proxy cost policies that actually corresponded to its public statements violated generally accepted accounting principles,” the complaint said.

The complaint also says that Exxon’s behavior and resulting litigation has damaged the company’s credibility and reputation. It calls for stronger oversight of the company’s proxy cost and climate risk considerations.

Another shareholder climate suit against Exxon is moving forward, also in the Northern District of Texas. Exxon recently requested the court deny class certification to that suit, filed as a class action by the Greater Pennsylvania Carpenters Pension Fund.

Exxon has also been opposing efforts by investors to push the company to deal more transparently with climate issues. The Securities and Exchange Commission allowed Exxon to block a proposal requesting it set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The New York State Common Retirement Fund and the Church of England submitted that proposal for consideration to be included in the materials that shareholders will vote on at the upcoming annual meeting. On Friday, the two institutions filed a notice indicating they would vote againstre-election of current Exxon board members and would vote in favor of establishing an independent board chairman.

“The Fund and the Church Commissioners believe that ExxonMobil’s inadequate responses to climate change and to engagement with Climate Action 100+ participants reflect in significant part a board that is not functioning effectively in the absence of an Independent Chairman,” the proposal says. Climate Action 100+ is an investor initiative that works to push the largest corporate emitters to curb emissions and strengthen climate-related financial disclosures.

The notice also said Exxon’s intransigence stands in contrast to other oil majors, such as Shell, that have agreed to set emissions reduction targets.

https://gas2.org/2016/10/08/exxon-father-toyota-prius-hybrid/

Was Exxon The Father Of The Toyota Prius Hybrid?

:{ October 8, 2016:(style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;display:inline-block;text-rendering:auto;-webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased;transform:translate(0px, 0px);padding-right:3px"):}: Steve Hanley

AC electric motor, Chrysler Cordoba Hybrid, exxon, first hybrid car, inverter,lithiim ion battery, Toyota Cressida Hybrid

It started with the first Arab oil embargo in 1973. Suddenly, America didn’t have access to cheap gasoline any more and the term “gas guzzler” first began appearing in news reports. Signs that said “NO GAS” became a regular part of the landscape as drivers fought to get a few precious drops of gasoline. The federal government imposed the first ever fuel economy standards on automakers. From then on, ads for new cars would focus on miles per gallon instead of cubic inches.

After that first oil embargo, Exxon created a research division under the umbrella of its venture capital group known as Exxon Enterprises, Inc, or EEI. The goal was to find an alternative to the gasoline engine. For a brief moment in time, Exxon — soon to become the largest oil company in history — was at the forefront of automotive research. Its goal was to create the world’s first hybrid car, a vehicle that would couple an electric motor with a small gasoline engine to get fuel economy unheard of until that time.

The goal was to enable a large American car like the Chrysler Cordoba (older readers will remember it as the car that featured “fine Corinthian leather”) to get 27 miles per gallon — approximately double what the regular production car was capable of.

New Technology Needed

But before a hybrid could become a reality, it needed a battery and a newfangled gizmo called an inverter. Exxon became a leader in lithium-ion battery research. That quest formed the foundation for the batteries that powered the first portable digital devices like the iPhone.

Today, lithium-ion battery cells are the basis for almost every hybrid and electric car in the world, including the Tesla Model S. Breakthroughs in chemistry and manufacturing techniques have made today’s lithium-ion batteries possible, but the basic research that started it all can largely be traced back to the pioneering work done at Exxon.

The AC Motor Idea

The automotive team at Exxon, called ELVECS, soon decided to concentrate on AC motors for their proposed hybrid powertrain because they are smaller and lighter than DC motors. They are also significantly less expensive to manufacture. The biggest issue was that inverter thing. A battery stores electricity as direct current. The motors the team wanted to use required alternating current. The inverter is the device that converts DC to AC.

In November 1976, ELVECS hired Richard Baker, a former MIT electronics researcher, as a full-time consultant. Baker had developed an alternating current synthesizer, or ACS, that could converted DC to AC. Equally important, it could vary the frequency and voltage of electricity to change the speed of the electric motor. Baker had invented the electronic equivalent of the accelerator pedal.

The Exxon automotive team (L-R John Corcoran, David McCalvin, Luciano Forte and Bernard Dennison) stands in front of the Toyota Cressida that was delivered to Japan. (Courtesy: Keith Dennison)

Other labs had built similar devices, called variable speed drives, but they were too large, inefficient and expensive to be practical. Baker’s inverter was small enough to fit in a car’s trunk. Today, inverters are the size of a glove box, but in the 70s, anything small enough to fit in the trunk was thought of as “compact.”

Building The First Hybrid

The team realized that the research on lithium-ion batteries was going to take years to bear fruit. They wanted to get their prototype on the road as soon as possible so they could pitch it to various car companies. That’s when they outfitted a Chrysler Cordoba with their rudimentary hybrid powertrain plus 10 conventional lead-acid batteries and Baker’s inverter. The car averaged 27 miles a gallon, which just happened to be the target the EPA had set for 1985 model year cars.

The powertrain the team came up with included a 50 horsepower diesel engine from Volkswagen and a 100 horsepower AC electric motor normally used in aircraft. It was one of the earliest uses of an AC motor in an automotive application. “We were young and naïve for the most part. We sort of didn’t know what we didn’t know,” say Kevin White, a member of the team.

Pitching The Hybrid To Detroit

At that time, the Big Three in Detroit were focused on meeting fuel economy targets by building smaller cars. Ford had its Falcon, Chevrolet had the Chevette, and Chrysler had the forgettable Alpine. The Exxon team put together a brochure for the car companies with the bold title, “Detroit, your future can be both as big and as small as America wants it to be” and set off in search of customers.

Interest from the car companies was tepid at best. Detroit suffered from what was known as “Not Invented Here” syndrome. Each of the Big 3 had nothing but disdain for any ideas that didn’t come from within their hermetically sealed fiefdoms. The Exxon team found little interest from the American car industry.

Enter Toyota

But they did from Toyota. “We discussed back and forth with Toyota what they wanted to do,” says team member John Corcoran. Toyota wasn’t that interested in gas mileage at the time, he says. Their focus was on driveability. “We kept talking about fuel economy but Toyota wasn’t interested in that yet. They felt that problem would get resolved. They were more interested in whether it would drive the same as a regular car.”

In autumn 1979, Toyota and Exxon signed a joint technology agreement. A small group of engineers from Toyota’s research facility in Susono, Japan, visited the Exxon Enterprises automotive group in New Jersey to see the Cordoba. Toyota decided to have Exxon outfit a Cressida sedan with the new technology. In early 1980, a white Cressida arrived in New Jersey where the Exxon automotive team installed, tested, and refined its hybrid technology over more than 18 months.

A Hybrid Goes To Japan

In September 1981, Corcoran and the team delivered the electric hybrid to the Toyota research facility in Susono, Japan. They spent two weeks installing and testing the Cressida’s hybrid system. Their Toyota counterparts seemed pleased. The project the two companies had embarked on nearly 3 years earlier produced the roomy, driveable hybrid that Toyota was looking for.

Toyota began selling its Prius hybrid 16 years later. It was developed in part by a team in Susono and equipped with a gasoline engine and a 40 horsepower AC motor. “We shouldn’t overstate Exxon’s role in hybrid vehicles in the long term,” says Corcoran. “But if we planted any seed at all with anyone, it was that the electric motor in a hybrid could be an AC motor.”

Exxon As Innovator

For a while, Exxon was one of the leading technology innovators in the world. But as time went along, oil prices declined and the senior management of the company elected to shut down any activities that did not have to do with pumping and selling oil. Today, the company is accused of deliberately lying about what it knew about carbon emissions and climate change 40 years ago.

But for those decisions in the boardroom, Exxon could have been then what Tesla Motors is today — a vibrant, exciting place to work and a company at the cutting edge of change in the world of transportation. Exxon chose to put profits ahead of people, a decision that could come back to haunt it as it faces civil and criminal legal actions in the courts.

Today, John Corcoran drives a Toyota Prius, a car he may have helped create 40 years ago. “The gates of history turn on tiny hinges,” they say. Corcoran’s team may have been one of those hinges.

Source: Inside Climate News | Photo credit: National Archives

Exxon Uses Governments’ Financial Reports Against Them

ExxonMobil countersued California municipalities this week -- using the governments’ own bond documents as evidence.

The move is in response to a September suit filed by a handful of local governments against Exxon and 17 other energy companies. The governments are seeking billions of dollars in damages to pay for infrastructure to protect coastal cities from potential damages caused by rising sea levels, which studies have linked to the burning of fossil fuels and rising global temperatures.

Exxon alleges that the municipalities’ own bond documents don’t back up their claims that combating the effects of climate change will be a drain on their finances because the issue isn't included as part of their fiscal pictures. So, Exxon argues, municipalities have either committed securities fraud by keeping this information from investors, or adapting to climate change isn't really the big fiscal albatross the governments claim it is.

The Takeaway:Increasingly, governments’ financial statements -- even verbal ones -- have been used against them. In 2013, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged the state of Illinois with securities fraud for not divulging the severity of its underfunded pensions to investors. It also suedHarrisburg, Pa., for securities fraud, citing a former mayor’s State of the City address, which called the debts of the city’s waste treatment facility an “issue that can be resolved.”

For what it's worth, Moody’s Investors Service warns in a recent report that climate change could increasingly stress the credit of localities, particularly for coastal cities. "While we anticipate states and municipalities will adopt mitigation strategies for these events, costs to employ them could also become an ongoing credit challenge," says Michael Wertz, a Moody's vice president.

719 desmog

ExxonMobil will retain its ability to lobby the European Parliament after MEPs refused to take away their badges.

The ability of the oil major to meet with Brussels decisionmakers was under question after the company refused to attend a hearing on their history of climate denial, citing ongoing litigation in the US.

Party presidents within the European Parliament decided against banning ExxonMobil in a meeting last week. Instead, they pushed the decision to a smaller group of MEPs, known as ‘quaestors’, and to Klaus Welle, the Secretary General of the European Parliament.

The quaestors declined to revoke ExxonMobil’s access badge on a technicality, according to parliamentary aides tracking the meeting. The company was not sent an official letter of invitation by the administration of the European Parliament, and therefore could not be formally excluded, the quaestors ruled, following a proposal from Welle.

“I’m deeply disappointed that ExxonMobil will continue to have the right the haunt the corridors of the Parliament, spreading their disinformation about climate change and blocking the action we need to take to protect the planet for future generations,” said Molly Scott Cato, a Green Party MEP in the South West, in a statement.

“If we want a real democracy in Europe, the Parliament needs to show that it is serious when it organises public hearings on important issues — especially on issues as important as climate denialism. We need to produce a legally watertight official invitation, issue it to Exxon, and let them make a choice being accountable and keeping out of the Parliament.”

Lobbying

Academics and non-governmental organisations tracking the hearing believe that the refusal to revoke ExxonMobil’s access badges could have been politically motivated.

“All the way from the committee itself, it felt as though the main parties — ALDE, S&D and the EPP — were not here to see Exxon being punished for this. I don't know if this is a genuine fear for jobs and investment, or the ramifications of lobby groups,” says Pascoe Sabido, a researcher at Corporate Europe Observatory.

“There has been a lot of pressure around this, and an awareness among some fossil fuel groups that this could be a slippery slope.”

As parliamentarians weighed up the issue, the fossil fuel industry was lobbying in favour of the company.

Two days before MEPs were due to take the decision, FuelsEurope — a lobby group for the oil industry, of which ExxonMobil is a member — emailed the heads of the parliamentary groups, warning that debadging the company would send a “very worrying warning signal” to investors in the low-carbon economy across Europe.

In a leaked email, FuelsEurope CEO John Cooper wrote that the “hundreds of billions of Euros per year in energy technologies” required to reduce emissions across Europe could be at risk if MEPs decided to revoke ExxonMobil’s access badges.

“The Parliamentary Hearing and the proposed action at the Conference of the Presidents, even before the decision, sends the worst possible message to the global investment community; that despite making very substantial investments already, having thousands of employees, and tens of thousands of customers every day for their products, a company can be at risk of being excluded from the stakeholder engagement around the very enabling policies required to deliver the energy and industrial transition,” he wrote.

“This is likely to be a very worrying warning signal to a wide range of investors and potential investors in Europe.”

Exxon weighs in

Ahead of the hearing, ExxonMobil sent a letter to MEPs attempting to undermine the research of Harvard academics Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes, who have tracked the company’s history of misleading the public on climate change. Supran was included on the parliamentary panel examining Exxon’s behaviour. Citing a report commissioned by ExxonMobil, the letter alleges Supran’s study contains “fundamental errors”.

“They don’t need to win this debate; they just need to make it seem like there is one,” Supran told DeSmog.

“This whole thing is very ironic and predictable — the fact they are not only employing the same tactics towards me and Naomi as I described in my testimony, but also just around the hearing in general, they’re employing the same kind of denial and delay that were the very basis on which the hearing was convened. In some sort of ironic way, they’re laying bare here, for the public and MEPs to see, their corporate capture strategies.”

Supran responded with his own letter to the European Parliament, criticising ExxonMobil for shunning peer review in their own report. He also expresses his shock at the extent to which the company’s interventions actively influenced the parliamentary hearing, with one MEP citing the accusations laid out in Exxon’s letter and accusing Supran of “villifying” and “trying to kill” ExxonMobil.

While the current process was unsuccessful, Cato sees an opportunity for parliamentarians to think about the wider process of tackling corporate lobbying within the EU.

“As we crack down on lobbying that works against the interests of European citizens we need to streamline this process [to] remove lobby accreditation, and other corporations can also be expecting to hear from us,” she said.

desmog

guest post by Zorka Milin, Senior Legal Advisor for Global Witness.

The world was recently stunned to see the highest ever recorded concentration of carbon dioxide in our planet’s atmosphere: 415 parts per million, and rising. This figure, the highest in the millions of years that humans have existed, is unthinkably ominous to most of us. Yet it was no surprise for the company responsible for emitting a good share of that CO2: Exxon’s own scientists predicted this grim milestone with eerie accuracy way back in 1982.

If Exxon knew back then, what is the company doing to tackle the growing greenhouse gas emissions that are already causing a climate and extinction crisis? ExxonMobil investors, and the public, deserve to know. The company’s response has been to bury its head in the sand and continue with business as usual. But that is not cutting it, and this week’s annual general meeting (AGM) is a major test, with the company facing a push by some of its investors such as New York state pension fund to oust the entire board.

READ MOR

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2019/04/18/sec-rules-exxon-must-allow-shareholder-votes-on-dark-money-climate-policies

In a victory for environmental and shareholder activists, the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) has denied ExxonMobil’s request to prevent a shareholder vote on a resolution requiring the oil giant to disclose its political spending, including “dark money” contributions to advocacy groups and trade associations.

The SEC ruling comes on a shareholder proposal brought by the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) that would require Exxon to compile a semiannual report on its “political contributions and expenditures (direct and indirect) with corporate funds,” as well as related company policies, and post it on the company’s website.

The SEC also rejected Exxon’s attempt to prevent a vote on a resolution brought by an activist shareholder to create a board-level committee to review and oversee the company’s strategy on climate change.

The SEC rulings were first reported by Climate Liability News.

Dark Money

Dark money is money used to influence elections that is passed through trade associations and advocacy groups in a way that obscures its true source. These groups can take money from corporations, unions, and individuals, and, for example, air TV ads to influence elections, without disclosing where the money came from.

In trying to deny the resolution’s place on the shareholder ballot, to be voted at its May 29 annual meeting, Exxon claimed that it did disclose its policies having to do with political contributions. UUA correctly noted, however, that Exxon only discloses direct contributions to candidates, candidate committees, PACs and party committees. Money run through other nonprofit groups is not disclosed.

According to the Climate Investigation Center, fossil fuel and corporate trade groups spent $1.4 billion on PR firms and ad buys between 2007 and 2018. How much of that money is Exxon’s is unknown.

Taking Climate Change Seriously

The climate shareholder proposal, brought by Arjuna Capital, calls for Exxon to create a new board committee to “assess the company’s responses to climate related risks and opportunities, including the potential impacts of climate change on business, strategy, financial planning, and the environment.”

Exxon claimed that it already considers climate change through a committee with a broad mandate to evaluate the company’s health and safety and environmental performance.

According to Climate Liability News, Arjuna Capital argued that Exxon “has no specific mention of climate change in its charter and while it may address climate change to an extent, the wide array of issues under its jurisdiction do not provide the specialized focus necessary to address the ‘more strategic climate change issues concerning investors, including the emissions associated with burning the company’s product.'”

Most people would think that Exxon has a committee at the board of director level to tackle climate change by itself, but it does not.

Arjuna Capital noted that with only one climate expert on its board, the company is ill-prepared to deal with the biggest threat to its business and shareholders in this century.

The shareholder meeting is May 29 in Dallas. Stay tuned.

About Don Wiener

ExxonMobil could be the second company after Monsanto to lose lobbying access to members of European Parliament after it failed to turn up to a hearing Thursday into whether or not the oil giant knowingly spread false information about climate change.

The call to ban the company was submitted by Green Member of European Parliament (MEP) Molly Scott Cato and should be decided in a vote in late April, The Guardian reported.

desmog

With millions of students taking to the streets and oil majors increasingly facing litigation, the fossil fuel industry is finally being held to account for its contribution to the climate crisis.

This week, the EU is taking this accountability up a notch, with ExxonMobil’s decades-long denial of climate science facing the scrutiny of MEPs and the public at a hearing at the European Parliament in Brussels on Thursday.

During the two-hour session, scientists, campaigners and a historian will examine the history of climate denial and in particular the misinformation spread by Exxon, with MEPs able to ask questions about the role and behaviour of the oil major.

The hearing is being held jointly by the petitions committee and the environment, public health and food safety committee. It was arranged following a petition by Food & Water Europe, a Brussels-based non-governmental organisation, which gained 732 signatures.

“To my knowledge, this is the first major body of lawmakers, certainly at the national or international level, to hear on record expert testimony about the history of climate denial today,” says Geoffrey Supran, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard who has examined Exxon’s history of obfuscation on climate change, and who will testify at Thursday’s hearing. “There’s a general momentum here, that investigative bodies are starting to formalise this enquiry.”

Representatives from the oil company itself won’t attend the hearing, due to “ongoing climate change related litigation in the US”, according to leaked notes from the coordinators of the hearing. Exxon did not respond to requests for comment at the time of publication.[twt]

Political Access

One issue MEPs will be asked to consider is the easy access to policymakers that Exxon enjoys, which contrasts sharply with that afforded to members of civil society.

In a five-minute speech that Frida Kieninger, campaigns officer at Food & Water Europe, will make at the hearing on Thursday, she plans to highlight the lengths to which young people have recently gone to gain the attention of lawmakers, compared to the access that Exxon has to the corridors of power.

“We have the young people marching on the streets, while at the same time Exxon is sitting within the European institutions; it's basically on the table helping to draft climate and energy laws, and has a big influence and a lot of money to do so. It's not proportionate to what civil society organisations have,” says Kieninger .

“At the same time they have lied for decades to us about the importance of climate change that they are actually causing with their activities.”

Exxon came under fire in 2015 when investigations by various publications, including DeSmog, InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times, revealed that the oil company had known about the causes and impacts of climate change since the 1970s. But instead of acting to reduce emissions, financed efforts to sow seeds of doubt about the science, and lobbied to block federal and international efforts to tackle the problem.

“The overwhelming consensus of experts studying the history of fossil fuel interests is essentially that the fossil fuel industry has known about the basic dangers of global warming caused by their products for 60 years, yet instead of taking action and warning the public, it orchestrated and funded decades of denial,” says Supran.

“A key actor in that history is ExxonMobil. But I also plan to give the committees a broader perspective, to point out that I’m only showing them the tip of the iceberg. We have now thousands of pages of documented evidence and it all points one way, and that’s that Big Oil is the new Big Tobacco. [I’m helping] them understand that I’m just talking about one cog in this web of denial machine.”

EU Lobbying

As well as examining Exxon’s history of climate science denial, Thursday’s hearing will also focus on the extent of Exxon’s lobbying within the EU itself, and on its efforts to delay climate action.

“In the US, I think the political climate is far friendlier towards climate denialism, and in the EU I think it has not been possible,” says Pascoe Sabido, a researcher at Corporate Europe Observatory.

“Publicly in Europe, it's been a lot harder for Exxon and others to really downplay the reality of climate change, so instead they're spending millions and millions on lobbying to delay climate action and distract us with false solutions. This hearing is a chance to explore Exxon's climate denialism, which is well documented, but we're also hoping to hold them to account for scuppering much needed climate action.”

DeSmog UK has previously revealed how Exxon funneled millions of Euros to corporations, lobby groups, and academic institutions in the EU.

According to a new report by Corporate Europe Observatory, citing the EU Transparency Register, ExxonMobil spent up to €3.5 million on lobbying in 2018. The company declares 12 lobbyists, six of whom have badges that give them direct access to the European Parliament.

Campaigners hope that MEPs will punish Exxon for spreading climate disinformation by revoking its lobbyist access badges to the European Parliament, similar to its decision to revoke access to lobbyists from Monsanto, the US seed company, in 2017, following its refusal to participate in a hearing in Parliament on the ‘Monsanto Papers’.

the decision to revoke Exxon’s lobby badges would not be taken by the hearing, but rather by the leaders of the parliamentary groupings. Even so, given that the oil company has various means by which to access decisionmakers, any action taken to ban the group from parliament itself would be partially symbolic, says Kieninger.

“It's really affecting only the European Parliament. We know it's a very strong symbolic move, but we are aware of the fact that Exxon have other institutions that they can access, and we also want to make aware of the fact that they have many other channels to influence decision makers, even within the European Parliament, even without the lobby badges,” says Kieninger.

“It's a strong way of parliamentarians to show publicly what they think about Exxon lobbyists, and we can much more easily put pressure on those who are still engaging with Exxon or still showing up to events that Exxon are organising and so on.”

The European Commission has already proved reluctant to censure Exxon for its climate science denial, or to limit its lobbying power. Following the submission of the petition, asking for action against Exxon, the Commission refused to hold a hearing.

“Misinformation about climate change, while deplorable, is not in itself a breach of EU law,” the Commission responded in May 2017. “The best response to climate scepticism is to pursue the current actions and ensure the reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions.”

In a subsequent 2018 hearing, the Commission refused to hold a hearing on the grounds that everyone, including climate science deniers, have the right to freedom of speech.

While the potency of the hearing may be weakened by the absence of Exxon itself, the company’s refusal to cooperate could be what ends up making an impression on the MEPs in attendance, says Kieninger.

“I think it's losing some of its strength by Exxon not being there. On the other hand, it gives a chance for MEPs to really consider if they want to keep cooperating with Exxon who's obviously not cooperating with them once they invite them,” she says.

Sabido agrees that Exxon should have its lobbying privileges stripped for its refusal to show up before the committees, suggesting that their absence means the company doesn’t believe the Parliament will hold them to account.

“Exxon not showing up shows the disregard they have for democracy, and for European institutions. What's happening in Brussels is not a court case – it's a political hearing,” says Sabido, adding that their excuse of the ongoing litigation in the USdoesn’t hold much water as a result.

“If Exxon is not going to show up to be held to account, then they shouldn't be able to show up to lobby the Parliament.”

see energy corps 2 for grafs and lnx

https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/03/22/paris-oil-exxon-chevron-bp-total-shell-billion-climate-lobbying-advertising-influencemap

all rhet

A new report by a British think tank estimates that since the 2015 Paris Agreement, the world’s five largest listed oil and gas companies spent more than $1 billion lobbying to prevent climate change regulations while also running public relations campaigns aimed at maintaining public support for climate action.

Combined, the companies spend roughly $200 million a year pushing to delay or alter climate and energy rules, particularly in the U.S. — while spending $195 million a year “on branding campaigns that suggest they support an ambitious climate agenda,” according to InfluenceMap, a UK-based non-profit that researches how corporations influence climate policy.

InfluenceMap cites as an example ExxonMobil’s heavily-touted algae-biofuels research, which the oil giant says “offers some of the greatest promise for next-generation biofuels” with significant climate benefits and has made it the focus of its “The Tiny Organism” ad campaign.

InfluenceMap notes that “detailed disclosures from the companyshow its goal of 10,000 barrels of bio-fuel a day would equate to only 0.2 percent of its current refinery capacity.

[algae tiny vid]

Oil majors are projecting themselves as key players in the energy transition while lobbying to delay, weaken, or oppose meaningful climate policy,” Edward Collins, author of the new report, said in a statement. “They advocate gradual implementation of market-based and technological climate solutions, but the latest [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report makes clear that urgent policy action and limitations on fossil fuel use are needed to avoid dangerous climate change.”

Today’s report updates the group’s 2016 report that estimated these companies spent $115 million a year lobbying against climate regulations — even policies companies said they supported.

“Say one thing,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, as he described InfluenceMap’s 2016 research on the floor of the U.S.Senate, “do another.”

The new estimates suggest that spending to influence climate policy by the five oil giants has increased sharply over the last two years.

It also comes as global banks are investing more in fossil fuel projects since the Paris Agreement. In addition, the five oil companies are spending heavily on finding and producing more fossil fuels — and putting only a tiny fraction of their budgets into efforts to transition away from climate-altering fuels.

“This spending accompanies the expansion of the companies’ operations with combined annual sales of over $1 [trillion] and profits of $55 [billion in] 2018, the vast majority of which is oil and gas related,” InfluenceMap wrote. “Combined capital investment will increase to $115 [billion] in 2019 but only about 3 percent of this will go to low carbon investments, according to company disclosures.”

Lobbying One Message While Advertising Another

The report focuses on the world’s five largest listed oil and gas companies,ExxonMobil,Shell, BP, Total, and Chevron, leaving out state-controlled oil giants like Saudi Aramco and China’s Sinopec.

InfluenceMap examined the extent to which each company’s branding efforts and advertising campaigns focused on climate change.

Shell's branded content about its emissions scenario in The New York Times

Shell's branded content about its “Sky” emissions scenario in The New York Times.

“The research suggests that Total maintains the highest proportion of its branding activities on climate (29 percent),” the new report finds. “Following this, ExxonMobil, which has faced significant negative media attention in 2018, allocates 19 percent. Shell and BP followed with 16 percent and 14 percent respectively. Chevron appears far less concerned, using approximately 2 percent of its branding budget on climate issues in 2018.”

The think tank's research also looked at what the companies were saying to government regulators, either directly or through industry groups funded by the oil majors.

“Since Paris, Chevron, BP and ExxonMobil have led in opposition to a range of climate-motivated policy stands,” InfluenceMap wrote. “For example, in 2018 both BP and Chevron have directly lobbied U.S. policymakers for a rollback on U.S. methane requirements.” (Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and the major constituent in natural gas.)

The report credits Shell and Total for becoming “more positive on a number of climate policy issues” since 2015, but adds that they “continue to support policies that will extend the role for fossil fuels in the energy mix and remain part of highly climate-oppositional trade associations.”

Mixed Messages and Industry Trade Groups

At times, the public stances of a corporation’s leadership stand starkly at odds with the messages from industry groups funded by that same corporation.

For example, on electric vehicles, Shell’s CEO Ben Van Beurden had a very direct and simple message in July 2018. “We need battery electric vehicles,” he said. And a year earlier, at the oil industry conference, CERAWeek, in 2017, he expressed support for “regulations that speed up investment in low carbon technologies and ? at the same time ? move consumer demand.”

Oil and gas lobbying on climate policies through trade associations. Credit: InfluenceMap, 2019

In May 2018, the American Petroleum Institute, the largest U.S. trade group for oil and gas, pushed the U.S. Congress to move in the opposite direction by rolling back incentives for electric vehicles.

“American Petroleum Institute (API) opposes mandates and subsidies,” API testified before the U.S. House of Representatives, according to InfluenceMap’s new report. The fossil fuel trade group voiced its opposition for subsidies for electric vehicles, adding that “the level of market penetration achieved by electric vehicles should not rely on government interference.”

The report also notes the difficulty in tracking corporate lobbying in the U.S. given the rise of so-called “dark money” groups and the lack of transparency surrounding political contributions in the U.S. “Political contributions that were made without full disclosure of their ultimate source totaled $539 [million] in the 2018 election cycle according to OpenSecrets.org,” the report says.

Social Influencers

InfluenceMap also dives deep into how companies used social media to influence Americans during the mid-term elections last year.

“During this time ExxonMobil was by far the most prolific spender, racking up over $400K in four weeks on over 360 individual political ads,” InfluenceMap wrote. “The ads urge rejecting specific ballot initiatives whilst promoting the benefits of increased fossil fuel production. Facebook’s data indicates that ExxonMobil’s ads made over 10 million ‘impressions’ in this time with users in Colorado, Texas, and Louisiana.”

graf:

Oil industry spending on Facebook and Instagram ads leading up to the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. Credit: InfluenceMap, 2019

All of this spending has implications for shareholders, InfluenceMap observed — and some shareholder groups appear to be listening.

“InfluenceMap’s research confirms a widely held suspicion that Big Oil’s glossy sustainability reports and shiny climate statements are all rhetoric and no action,” Catherine Howarth, Chief Executive of ShareAction, a UK charity focused on responsible investment, said in a statement accompanying the report. “These companies have mastered the art of corporate doublespeak — by boasting about their climate credentials while quietly using their lobbying firepower to sabotage the implementation of sensible climate policy and pouring millions into groups that engage in dirty lobbying on their behalf.”

DeSmog has reached out to ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Total, and Chevron for comment.

“We firmly reject the premise of this report. We are very clear about our support for the Paris agreement, and the steps that we are taking to help meet society’s needs for more and cleaner energy,” Shell said in a statement provided to The Guardian. “We make no apology for talking to policymakers and regulators around the world to make our voice heard on crucial topics such as climate change and how to address it.”

“We have not been afforded the opportunity to review the data but we disagree with the assertion that Chevron has engaged in ‘climate-related branding and lobbying’ that is ‘overwhelmingly in conflict’ with the Paris Agreement,” Chevron said in a statement provided to DeSmog, adding that the company was taking “prudent, cost-effective actions” and seeking “balanced and transparent” policies to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. “We believe climate change is real and human activity contributes to it. We accept the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

Updated: This article has been updated on March 22, 2019 to reflect a statement from Chevron.

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/03/the-us-is-accused-of-blocking-global-action-against-plastic-pollution/

Environmental groups involved in talks at a United Nations conference in Kenya have accused the US of blocking an ambitious global response to plastic pollution.

Representatives of countries at the UN environment conference in Nairobi this week agreed to significantly reduce single-use plastics over the next decade but the voluntary pledges fell far short of what was required, according to green groups.

Norway, Japan and Sri Lanka had put forward proposals for a legally binding agreement for nations to coordinate action against plastic litter in the oceans and microplastics. India also suggested strong action with a resolution to phase out single-use plastic across the world.

But a coalition of environmental groups at the conference condemned the US for blocking the ambitious attempts to tackle plastic pollution at source as well as downstream.

An initial ministerial statement at the beginning of the event had proposed a commitment to “phase out single-use plastics … by 2025”, a far stronger promise than the compromise nations reached.

On Friday, a series of non-bindingproposals were agreed, including the adoption of an action plan by the International Maritime Organization’s marine environment protection committee to reduce plastic litter from ships, and suggestions for better global management of data on plastic pollution. A final statement said countries would “address the damage to our ecosystems caused by the unsustainable use and disposal of plastic products, including by significantly reducing single-use plastic by 2030”.

In response, environmental groups including Break Free From Plastic, IPEN, Plastic Change, No Waste Louisiana and Coare said the proposals did not go far enough.

“Despite sweeping agreement by the majority of countries that urgent, ambitious and global action is needed to address plastic across its lifecycle, from production to use to disposal, a small minority led by the United States blocked ambitious text and delayed negotiations,” they said in a statement.

Countries most affected by plastic pollution including the Philippines, Malaysia and Senegal were against the resolution being watered down.

Large oil firms in the US are investing billions of dollars in petrochemical production over the next decade, particularly shale gas.

The new facilities, which are being built by ExxonMobile Chemical and Shell Chemical, among others, will help fuel a 40% rise in plastic production in the next decade, according to industry experts.

The world already produces more than 300m tonnes of plastic a year.

“It’s hard to find one solution for all member states,” Siim Kiisler, the president of the UN environment assembly, told Agence France-Presse before the final decision. “The environment is at a turning point. We don’t need verbose documents, we need concrete commitments.”

When asked whether the US had pushed to have the commitments watered down during the week’s negotiations, Kiisler said: “I will not answer that question.”

David Azoulay, from the Center for International Environmental Law, condemned the weakening of the commitment.

He said: “The vast majority of countries came together to develop a vision for the future of global plastic governance. Seeing the US, guided by the interests of the fracking and petrochemical industry, leading efforts to sabotage that vision is disheartening.”

Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are quietly helping Big Oil destroy the climate

So much for Google's slogan, "Don't be evil."

JOE ROMM

FEB 28, 2019, 11:59 AM

https://thinkprogress.org/amazon-google-microsoft-oil-climate-b8b1dd15f115/

A protest from Microsoft to use clean energy in cloud computing at Tel Aviv, April 22, 2012 . CREDIT: JACK GUEZ/AFP/GettyImages.

A PROTEST FROM MICROSOFT TO USE CLEAN ENERGY IN CLOUD COMPUTING AT TEL AVIV, APRIL 22, 2012 . CREDIT: JACK GUEZ/AFP/GETTYIMAGES.

ExxonMobil and Microsoft announced last week that they are partnering in the “largest-ever oil and gas” deal to use cloud computing, which the corporations say will boost production up to 50,000 barrels of oil per day by 2025.

Microsoft likes to tout how it’s running its operations on 100 percent renewable energy and embracing the Paris climate agreement. The company’s founder, Bill Gates, also portrays himself as a champion of climate action.

But the tech giant is working overtime to close deals with the world’s biggest oil companies to help them boost fossil fuel production using the latest information technology, such as cloud computing, which enables companies to capture, store, and analyze vast amounts of data in real time.

And Microsoft isn’t alone. Many of the most well-known tech giants we think of as green and sustainable — including Amazon and Google — are helping the dirtiest polluters increase production of climate-destroying fossil fuels, as Gizmodo’s Brian Merchant has pointed out.

Lawmakers declare war on the biggest civil rights

problem you’ve probably never heard of

So while these tech giants tout their public support for the Paris climate agreement, they are working to undermine its central achievement — that the world’s nations unanimously agreed to leave most of the world’s fossil fuels in the ground. Preserving a livable climate requires heroic efforts to slash fossil fuel use, not cynical efforts to produce even more.

In Historic Paris Climate Deal, World Unanimously Agrees To Not Burn Most Fossil Fuels]

“These actions by these so-called responsible actors on climate illustrate the futility in relying on corporations to act to address climate change,” environmental sociologist Robert Brulle told ThinkProgress in an email. “Profitability, not any concern about the planet and its future, drives their actions.”

For instance, Google launched a new oil, gas, and energy division in 2018 “to court the oil and gas industry,” the Wall Street Journal reported last summer. It’s headed by Darryl Willis, who worked at BP for nearly three decades. And it has already made deals with oil giants like Anadarko Petroleum and France’s Total, and oilfield services companies like Schlumberger and Baker Hughes.

In September, Google announced a major deal with a Houston energy investment bank. The goal of this partnership is to “cut costs in the wake of the oil bust and remain competitive as electric vehicles and renewable power sources gain market share,” according to The Houston Chronicle.

In short, Google is helping dirty energy compete with clean energy.

“Google’s motto was once ‘Don’t Be Evil,'” leading climatologist Michael Mann told ThinkProgress in an email. “It appears they’ve dropped the ‘Don’t.’ It is time for them to cease and desist in serving as enablers of climate destruction.”

U.S. Companies Publicly Support Climate Action, Privately Fund Deniers

Ironically, when Google was criticized last month by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Chellie Pingree (D-ME) for supporting a conference promoting climate science denial, a Google spokesperson replied, “Google has long been a leader in sustainability. Since 2007, we have operated as a carbon neutral company and in 2017, we reached 100 percent renewable energy for our global operations.”

Google clearly has a different definition of “leader in sustainability” and “carbon neutral company” if it includes helping Big Oil produce more climate-destroying, carbon-intensive fossil fuels.

Finally, Amazon Web Services, the largest provider of cloud computing in the world, has its own “Oil & Gas” division. Amazon promises it can help Big Oil “unleash innovation to optimize production and profitability.” It already does work with GE’s oil business and oil giants like Royal Dutch Shell and BP.

Those hoping the tech giants would help lead the world into a carbon-free future based on their climate-friendly press releases and renewable energy purchases, will need to look elsewhere for true climate action leadership.

As Brulle put it, these companies care about profits more than the planet — they will never be the answer to our climate crisis. “To have real action on climate change requires strong government action to break our reliance on fossil fuels,” he said.

Netflix charges more per month for you to use its service than it paid in income taxes all last year

"Netflix posted its largest-ever U.S. profit in 2018—$845 million—on which it didn't pay a dime in federal or state income taxes," writes ITEP senior fellow Matthew Gardner. In fact, the streaming giant received a $22 million return.

no lnx cnbc

UPDATE 2-U.S. top court rejects Exxon in climate change document dispute

Nate Raymond

Jan 7 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for the attorney general of Massachusetts to obtain records from Exxon Mobil Corp to probe whether the oil company for decades concealed its knowledge of the role fossil fuels play in climate change.

The justices declined to hear Exxon's appeal of a ruling by the top court in Massachusetts holding that state Attorney General Maura Healey, a Democrat, had jurisdiction to seek records to probe whether the company misled consumers and investors.

The high court's action marked the latest setback for Exxon in its efforts to halt the Massachusetts investigation and a similar one by New York's attorney general, who in October filed a lawsuit against the company.

New York's lawsuit accused Exxon of engaging in a systematic scheme to deceive investors about the impact that future climate change regulations could have on its business. Exxon has called the claims "meritless."

The Massachusetts and New York investigations were launched following 2015 news reports that Exxon's own scientists had determined that fossil fuel combustion must be reduced to mitigate the impact of climate change.

Those news reports, by InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times, were based on documents from the 1970s and 1980s. Exxon said the documents were not inconsistent with its public positions.

Healey in 2016 issued a civil investigative demand to Exxon seeking documents to investigate whether it had violated the state's consumer-protection law through its marketing and sale of fossil fuel products.

Exxon said that because it is incorporated in Texas and New Jersey, Healey had no basis to seek documents to conduct a Massachusetts-based investigation.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in April held that jurisdiction existed because of Exxon's control over advertising conducted for about 300 franchise gas stations operating under the Exxon and Mobil brands in Massachusetts.

Exxon has called the Massachusetts and New York investigations politically motivated.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond and Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

https://www.ecowatch.com/argentina-fracking-indigenous-lawsuit-2623742584.html

A major indigenous group in the Argentine Patagonia is suing some of world's biggest oil and gas companies over illegal fracking waste dumps that put the "sensitive Patagonian environment," local wildlife and communities at risk, according to Greenpeace.

The Mapuche Confederation of Neuquén filed a lawsuit against Exxon, French company Total and the Argentina-based Pan American Energy (which is partially owned by BP), AFP reported. Provincial authorities and a local fracking waste treatment company called Treater Neuquén S.A. were also named in the suit.

The Mapuche accused the companies of contaminating the environment with "dangerous waste" due to "deficient treatment" close to the town of Añelo, according to AFP.

The waste comes from operations in the Vaca Muerta field, one of the largest deposits of shale oil and gas in the world that lies in the Neuquén province.

...

no lnx many

https://www.ecowatch.com/exxonmobil-and-chevron-distorting-climate-science-2614802732.html

Yes, ExxonMobil and Chevron Are Still Distorting Climate Science

By Brenda Ekwurzel

If you look at headlines from the last year, ExxonMobil, Chevron and other major fossil fuel companies have seemingly turned a new page on climate change. Recently, ExxonMobil received major kudos for giving $1 million to Americans for Carbon Dividends, a lobbying offshoot of the industry-backed Climate Leadership Council. Shortly before that, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Occidental Petroleum got good press for each pledging $100 million to the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, which amounts to less than one percent of their capital and exploration budget for 2018 (ExxonMobil's is $28 billion while Chevron's is $15.8 billion). Companies have also touted their support for the Paris climate agreement as well as their research and investments in renewables.

But, as I and my colleagues have analyzed, this "support" is a PR distraction when these companies are keeping up business-as-usual. They intend to continue producing, marketing and selling fossil fuels at current levels for the foreseeable future, which runs counter to the steep reductions in carbon dioxide and methane emissions needed to limit global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Tuesday the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released a scorecard, which analyzed what eight major fossil fuel companies are saying they're doing about climate change, and just how much these companies are doing to drastically lower their emissions.

What did we find? Contrary to media reports and shiny company press releases, most of these major fossil fuel companies continue to mischaracterize climate science.

Why is this important? Any company that makes, markets and sells a product that is the primary cause of climate change has a responsibility to stay on top of and clearly communicate with the public scientific developments regarding their product. Misrepresenting climate science and underplaying the urgency of action allows companies to justify their business as usual practices all while climate impacts, including increasingly frequent and severe weather events such as Hurricanes Harvey and Florence, get worse and costlier. Releasing inaccurate statements allows companies to "check the box" for voicing belief in climate change, while continuing to funnel tens of tens of millions of dollars to climate-denying politicians, trade associations and other industry groups that do the dirty work of opposing climate policies.

Major Fossil Fuel Companies Fail to Accurately Represent Climate Science

We measured whether companies consistently and accurately acknowledged the scientific evidence of climate change in their public platforms. Overall, they didn't do great.

We found that five of the eight companies we studied had made public statements on climate change that underplayed the need to urgently reduce emissions, emphasized scientific uncertainty and/or were blatantly incorrect. Only BP amended its statement after UCS and Barnard College called the company out for its deceptive language.

These statements are surprising since these companies have known about climate change for at least four decades now, which would be plenty of time to figure how to make it a priority to accurately convey the latest developments in climate science. Since 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued climate assessments which companies can rely on. The IPCC's Fifth Assessment (2014) represents the latest* mainstream scientific consensus on climate change and it clearly states that "It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century." The primary human influence is through the burning of fossil fuels.

*(Earlier this month, this group released a special report detailing the impacts of a global average temperature increase of 1.5C relative to 2C above pre-industrial levels, and pathways to limit temperature increase to that level. See my colleagues' blog series about what the report means for us and for climate policy).

Let's see how oil and gas company statements on climate change stacked up.

ExxonMobil

ExxonMobil employs a dedicated climate change team and boasts about leading research around cutting-edge technology, such as carbon capture and storage. Yet the company's statements on climate change, including the one above, do not consistently reflect the current scientific consensus around the issue.

Contrary to ExxonMobil's claims, scientific understanding of the likelihood, magnitude and time frame of climate impacts as tied to human-caused climate change has advanced greatly. Research has over the last decade developed to the point where scientists can identify and quantify the part human-caused climate change plays in many types of extreme weather and other climate impacts. For many impacts, the likelihood is high; the magnitude is severe; and the timeframe is now. Scientists have shown, for example, that the likelihood of heat wave similar in magnitude to the one that hit Europe in 2003—during which over 30,000 people died—has doubled. Scientists have also shown that human-caused climate change made the record rainfall that hit Houston during Hurricane Harvey roughly three times more likely and 15 percent more intense.

No matter how much ExxonMobil talks about using oil to lubricate wind turbines, the company knows that most of its oil and gas are being burnt by cars, by energy generation, by human activity—which is the primary cause of climate change.

Chevron

Chevron's statement misrepresents the IPCC Fifth Assessment's conclusions, as mentioned earlier, that human activity is "extremely likely" to be the dominant driver of warming since the 1950s, not simply one possible cause of many possible causes, as is implied by Chevron's phrase "due in part." Chevron's seemingly subtle shift in wording is significant because the report shows that the overwhelming majority of the world's top researchers agree that burning fossil fuels is by far and away the largest contributor to climate change. Injecting any doubt or uncertainty into that conclusion is disingenuous at best, and outright deceiving at worst.

Above: Chevron Corporation. 2018. Climate change resilience: A framework for decision making. Online here, accessed Oct. 15.

If Chevron is going to quote the IPCC, the company should, at the very least, cut-and-paste from the panel's report.

ConocoPhillips

ConocoPhillips's statement on climate science suggests the last decade-worth of climate research, including the most recent IPCC report, simply doesn't exist.

Above: ConocoPhillips. No date. Climate change position. Online here, accessed Oct. 15.

There are three major issues with the company's statement: 1) the claim that increasing atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping gases "can lead" rather than "are leading" to climate change, as has been established since at least the IPCC third assessment report, is followed by 2) highlighting uncertainties on the first point, when there are none and 3) proposing that it is sufficient for the company to "manage" global warming emissions rather than reducing them. Alone, each of these statements is problematic and inaccurately represents the mainstream scientific consensus. Together, they subvert the public's understanding of climate science and supply the company with an alibi for continuing to extract, sell and profit off of fossil fuels.

BP – Old and New

When we analyzed BP's statements from 2018 we found similarly misinforming language. But when we pointed the problematic language out to company representatives (as we did with all eight companies studied), BP promptly made changes that brought its statement back in line with climate science. As you can see in the first attempt, BP emphasizes scientific uncertainty by referring to atmospheric carbon's "possible" climate impact. Svante Arrhenius, more than a century ago, published the fundamental scientific principle that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration results in changes to Earth's temperature.

Above: BP PLC. 2018a. Energy and the environment. Online here, accessed May 22.

BP's new statement, on the other hand, is an excellent example of an accurate copy-and-paste. The company's new statement mentions the IPCC 5th Assessment and, unlike Chevron, gets its facts right in stating that human activity, including the burning of fossil fuels, is extremely likely to be the primary driver of climate change.

Above: BP PLC. No date. Energy and the environment. Online here, accessed Oct. 15.

Shell

Above: First quote: Royal Dutch Shell Corporation. No date. Climate change and energy transitions. Online here, accessed, Oct. 15. Second quote: Royal Dutch Shell Corporation. 2018c. Energy Transition. Online here, accessed July 10.

Shell's PR machine has gone into overdrive recently in an effort to paint the company as a climate leader.While Shell falls short in a number of areas, its statements on climate science and the need to reach net-zero emissions are accurate and consistent. There's no equivocating, no hedging, no backsliding, no prevaricating and no hiding inaccurate climate statements on less popular pages of its website. Climate change is real, it's caused by human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels, and we need to make changes immediately. Check, check and check.

Additional Studies on the Language of Climate Deception

Several peer-reviewed academic papers have documented how fossil fuel companies have used public communications to mislead the public about the state of climate science and its implications. A University of Reading study published this year showed that up until the mid-2000s, climate change was discussed as a problem with a solution; more recently fossil fuel company language has portrayed climate change as unpredictable and unknowable. Last year, Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes analyzed 187 climate change communications by ExxonMobil and found that while company's scientists were quietly contributing to climate science and writing reports about it to company executives, the company was paying for advertisements that told a different story.

Watchdogging Matters

Whether through outright climate denial, sowing public confusion on climate science, or funding of third-party groups that spread climate disinformation, each of these companies has tried to obscure climate science. But, as we saw with BP, the threat of public exposure and pressure apparently pushed the company to correct its website. As with most companies, major fossil fuel companies want to avoid the reputational risk of being branded climate deniers. This is why public watchdogging really matters.

Fossil fuel companies need to acknowledge scientific evidence that shows

The extraction and burning of their product is the main driver of climate change and,

avoiding the worst climate impacts requires dramatic cuts to carbon emissions immediately.

UCS and members of our science network and supporters will continue to hold these companies accountable for what they (and their trade groups) say and do on climate change.

Brenda Ekwurzel is a senior climate scientist and the director of climate science at UCS.

Calculating Climate Risk: What Exxon Told Investors

At the heart of the dispute are business records that the attorney general's office said would show how Exxon calculated the financial impact of future climate regulations on its business.

Attorney General Barbara Underwood's office wants Exxon to turn over cash flow spreadsheets that would reflect how the company incorporates proxy costs—a way of projecting the expected future costs of greenhouse gas emissions from regulations or carbon taxes—into its business planning.

Last year, the attorney general's office filed documents accusing Exxon of using two sets of numbers for those proxy costs. The result, it said, was that Exxon misstated the risks and potential rewards of its energy projects.

"Exxon has repeatedly assured investors that it is taking active steps to protect the company's value from the risk that climate change regulation poses to its business," Underwood's office wrote ina 30-page motion filed with the court in June.

Exxon has maintained that its use of different costs was not deceptive and was consistent with the company's public statements. In one case, the company has said, it used an actual carbon tax enacted in Alberta, Canada, rather than the higher figures in its corporate proxy costs.

"We didn't tell people we use $60 a ton or $40 a ton, we said we use costs where appropriate," said Daniel J. Toal, a lawyer representing the company at the hearing on Wednesday. He said the degree to which the company complied with its own internal policies had no bearing on the investigation.

Judge Pressures Both Sides to Wrap It Up

Michael Gerrard, director of Columbia University's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said after nearly three years of sparring in court it's a practical matter for the judge to look for the finish line.

"The pressure is on both sides," he said, adding that while Ostrager is urging investigators to end their work, he's also requiring Exxon to provide additional documents and answers within a month to move the case along.

New York investigators, under the direction of then-Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, hit Exxon with the first subpoenain 2015. A second subpoena was issued in 2017. The two parties have been battling ever since, through filings and in hearings, about which documents specifically have to be produced. The Massachusetts Attorney General's Office has a similar investigation underway.

On Wednesday, Ostrager left no doubt that he wants the New York investigation to conclude shortly, either by prosecutors bringing charges or dropping the case. "If you choose to bring a formal complaint," he told the state's lawyers, "this is going to be a 2019 trial."

PUBLISHED UNDER:

BUSINESS AND ACCOUNTABILITY

OIL/TAR SANDS

EXXON CLIMATE

made two promises to stop $ to BS?

and yet:

https://www.alternet.org/environment/worlds-largest-publicly-traded-oil-company-continues-fund-climate-deniers

Adecade after pledging to end its support for climate science deniers, ExxonMobil gave $1.5 million last year to 11 think tanks and lobby groups that reject established climate science and openly oppose the oil and gas giant’s professed climate policy preferences, according to the company’s annual charitable giving report released this week.

Nearly 90 percent of ExxonMobil’s 2017 donations to climate science denier groups went to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and three organizations that have been receiving funds from the company since it started bankrolling climate disinformation 20 years ago: the American Enterprise Institute, Manhattan Institute and American Legislative Exchange Council, which—in a surprise move—ExxonMobil recently quit. (More on that later.)

The other ExxonMobil denier grantees last year were theCenter for American and International Law($23,000), Federalist Society ($10,000), Hoover Institution ($15,000), Mountain States Legal Foundation ($5,000), National Black Chamber of Commerce ($30,000), National Taxpayers Union Foundation ($40,000) and Washington Legal Foundation ($40,000).

ExxonMobil’s funding priorities belie the company’s purported support for a carbon tax, the Paris climate agreement and other related policies, which it reaffirmed in a January blog post by its public affairs director, Suzanne McCarron.If, as McCarron claims, ExxonMobil is “committed to being part of the solution,” why is the company still spending millions of dollars a year on groups that are a major part of the problem?

ExxonMobil’s history of deceit

In response to the negative press generated by the UCS report,ExxonMobil vowed in its “2007 Corporate Citizenship Report” to “discontinue contributions [in 2008] to several public policy research groups whose positions on climate change could divert attentionfrom the important discussion on how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner.”

Note that the company only promised to stop funding several policy groups, not all, and it did, in fact, drop some high-profile grantees, including the Cato Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heartland Institute and Institute for Energy Research. But it never completely ended its support for the disinformation network. From 1998 to 2007—the year of the pledge—it spent nearly $23 million on it. From 2008 through last year, it spent another $13.17 million, for a total of $36.13 million over the last 20 years. As far an anyone has been able to determine from publicly available data, only Charles and David Koch, the multibillionaire owners of Koch Industries, have spent more to deceive the public about climate science and block government action on climate change.

Last year, $1.35 million of the $1.5 million ExxonMobil spent went to the following four organizations:

1. US Chamber of Commerce: Sponsoring slanted studies

If one takes ExxonMobil’s climate policy claims at face value, the Chamber’s positions are polar opposite.

Cosponsored by a former ExxonMobil grantee—the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF)—the report maintained that the Paris accord would cost the US economy nearly $3 trillion over the next several decades and eliminate 6.5 million industrial sector jobs by 2040.

According to analyses by the Associated Press (AP), Politifact and The Washington Post, however, theChamber and ACCF cooked the books. As the AP put it: “The study makes worst-case assumptions that may inflate the cost of meeting US targets under the Paris accord while largely ignoring the economic benefits to US businesses from building and operating renewable energy projects.”

2. American Enterprise Institute: Undue faith in the market

Zycher’s colleague Mark Thiessen, a regular contributor to The Washington Post, also dismisses the Paris accord, maintaining that “free enterprise, technology, and innovation—not pieces of parchment signed in Paris and Kyoto—will revolutionize how we produce and consume energy.” Never mind that it often takes regulations to drive innovation and force corporations to adopt cleaner technology. Without federally mandated air pollution controls, for example, power plants and other industrial facilities would be emitting considerably more toxic pollution than they do today.

3. Manhattan Institute: Propaganda masquerading as news

Earlier this year, the New York City-based organization hired longtime TV newsman John Stossel, former host of Fox Business Network’s “Stossel” and ABC’s “20/20,” to interview Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Oren Cass for a slickly produced, 4-minute YouTube segment titled “The Overheated Costs of Climate Change.”

Waste billions while other countries do nothing? Besides the fact that it is now cheaper to produce electricity from utility-scale solar and wind energy in the United States than nuclear, coal and even natural gas, as of last November—a year after the Paris agreement officially went into effect—China, India and other major carbon emitters were already making significant progress in meeting their Paris accord commitments.

4. American Legislative Exchange Council: Fossil fuel industry ‘bill mill’

On July 12, ExxonMobil announced it had ended its longtime membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council after a disagreement over the corporate lobby group’s climate policy. From 1998 through last year—when Exxon Mobil reported it gave the group $60,000—ALEC received a $1.93 million from the oil company.

ExxonMobil’s exit from ALEC came just months after the company fought to defeat a draft resolution sponsored by the Heartland Institute—an ExxonMobil grantee from 1998 through 2006—calling on the Environmental Protection Agency to “reopen and review” its “flawed” conclusion that climate change poses a threat to human health. The EPA’s “endangerment finding” requires the agency to regulate carbon dioxide and other global warming emissions as hazardous pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

Huelskamp’s ludicrous assertion notwithstanding, some might construe ExxonMobil’s exit from ALEC as a welcome change in direction. The company’s money trail, however, clearly shows that it is still financing climate science denier groups that denigrate any and all climate policy options and provide cover for Congress and the current administration to do nothing. Until ExxonMobil stops funding these groups, its avowed support for a carbon tax, the Paris agreement and other climate initiatives can’t be seen as anything more than a cynical PR ploy.

This article is part of a content partnership between Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute, and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

https://www.alternet.org/environment/exxonmobils-support-carbon-tax-total-sham

ExxonMobil executives just had another opportunity to convince skeptics that their support for a carbon tax is genuine.

They blew it.

On July 23, Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL-26) introduced a bill that would place a $24 per ton tax on carbon emissions and dedicate 70 percent of the revenue to rebuilding U.S. infrastructure. ExxonMobil’s reaction? “We appreciate Rep. Curbelo’s effort to help generate a constructive discussion on this important issue” was all a company spokesman was willing to say.

ExxonMobil’s reluctance to seriously engage, however, should not come as a surprise.

Yes, the company has consistently paid lip service to a carbon tax since 2009. And yes, it is a founding member of the Climate Leadership Council—which supports a $40 per ton carbon tax—and it recently endorsed Americans for Carbon Dividends, a new bipartisan lobby group promoting a carbon tax that would return revenues to taxpayers.

But more telling is the fact that the oil giant has never publicly supported a carbon tax bill and consistently funds members of Congress who oppose a carbon tax.

How does that square with the company’s avowed position?

Just say no

It doesn’t.

Curbelo’s bill is hardly the first carbon tax legislation that ExxonMobil has snubbed. When Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA-33) asked ExxonMobil lobbyists to support a carbon tax bill in 2015, they refused. And when Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Brian Schatz (D-HI) introduced the “American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act” in 2016, the company would not endorse their bill or lobby on its behalf.

“Regarding ExxonMobil’s alleged seven years of support for a carbon fee, we’ve seen no meaningful evidence of that,” the senators wrote in a letter they sent to the company in August 2016. “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.”

Besides ExxonMobil’s unwillingness to support actual legislation, it rewards members of Congress who oppose a carbon tax by consistently funding their reelection campaigns.

Scalise has introduced similarly worded measures before—with similar results. In March 2013, 156 House members cosponsored his resolution stating that “a carbon tax…is not in the best interest of the United States.” Ninety-three percent of the cosponsors, including Scalise, were funded by ExxonMobil. Three years later, the House passed a Scalise resolution with the same wording as the one earlier this month. Eighty-five percent of the 237 House members who voted for the resolution received ExxonMobil funding since 2013. The day before that vote, a reporter asked an ExxonMobil spokesman for the company’s opinion. Given its supposed support for a carbon tax, surely it would encourage the House to vote no. His response? “We’re not commenting on the resolution.”The most recent example of ExxonMobil’s upside-down funding priorities was a nonbinding carbon tax resolution in the House, which stated that such a tax would be “detrimental” to the U.S. economy. The measure, which Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA-1) sponsored just days before Curbelo introduced his carbon tax bill, passed by a 229 to 180 vote, and a majority of ExxonMobil-funded lawmakers lined up in favor of it. All told, 78 percent of the 174 House members who have received ExxonMobil campaign contributions since 2013 voted for the resolution.

Most of ExxonMobil’s beneficiaries in the Senate also oppose a carbon tax. In March 2013, for example, Whitehouse offered a budget resolution amendment that would ensure that “all revenue from a fee on carbon pollution is returned to the American people.” That’s exactly what ExxonMobil claims to support: a revenue-neutral carbon tax. Regardless, 39 of the 48 senators on the floor that day who had received contributions from ExxonMobil between 2010 and 2014 opposed the amendment, which was defeated by a 58 to 41 vote. Two years later, the Senate voted 58 to 42 in favor of a budget resolution amendment introduced by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) prohibiting a carbon tax. Thirty of the 40 senators who received ExxonMobil campaign contributions, including Blunt, voted in favor of the amendment.

The $130-million question

A few years ago, a top ExxonMobil official claimed that since 2009, his company had been vigorously promoting a carbon tax with federal lawmakers as the most viable way to curb carbon emissions. “ExxonMobil executives,” he wrote, “have echoed that message in countless private briefings with members of Congress on carbon tax policy options.”

Since 2009, ExxonMobil has spent nearly $130 million on its Washington lobbying operation—more than any other oil and gas company—and another $9.6 million on federal campaigns. The $130-million question: What have ExxonMobil executives been saying during those countless private briefings?

To be sure, ExxonMobil is not the only fossil fuel company plying the halls of Congress, and Koch Industries and Murray Energy are definitely not trying to sell a carbon tax to anyone, so perhaps ExxonMobil lobbyists—no matter how hard they try—are overmatched. That said, the voting record compiled by ExxonMobil-funded lawmakers, the company’s refusal to back a bona fide carbon tax bill, and the fact that it continues to finance a climate disinformation campaign all suggest that the company is deliberately misleading the public while it sabotages federal efforts to address climate change.

This article is part of a content partnership between the Union of Concerned Scientists and Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media inst

2x? ca offshore drill!

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/03/06/california-trump-offshore-drilling-exxon-koch

Public officials throughout the state of California have made headlines for loudly opposing Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke's decision to approve offshore drilling in California and throughout the Pacific Outer Continental Shelf region.

This move is part of the Trump administration's broader plans to lease record amounts of offshore areas in the Gulf of Mexico and open up the Atlantic Ocean for drilling. Many city governments, county governments, the California Assembly, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, and Governor Jerry Brown have all come out against Zinke's plan. Less discussed, though, is the fact that companies are already drilling offshore in southern California, an area perhaps better known for its popular beaches and oceanside resort cities.

Some of those offshore platforms are visible during a trip along Highway 1, the famed Pacific Coast Highway. More of those lease holdings are owned by ExxonMobil than any other company, according to a review of U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management leasing data for the Pacific region. However, Koch Industries is also already a player in drilling off the California coast.

In all, some 188,869 acres of offshore land are dedicated to drilling in the Golden State. Production occurs on 38 different lease holdings. All of these leasings were put in place before the federal government enacted a moratorium on new drilling in California in 1982. The ban arrived in the aftermath of a massive offshore oil spill near Santa Barbara in 1969. That spill, resulting from a well blowout under Union Oil Company's Platform A, spewed as much as 4.2 million gallons of crude into the Pacific Ocean.

After that oil spill, the California State Lands Commission, which has also come out against the Trump proposal, imposed a state ban on new leases in 1994 through the California Coastal Sanctuary Act. Drilling agreements on the books before 1982, however, have been allowed to continue, and that's where ExxonMobil, Koch, and other companies come into play.

Of the 38 leases, ExxonMobil is the lead designated operator on 16 of those. Koch, by comparison, is more of a minor player. The company owns a 10.4 percent stake in one offshore drilling operation run by Beta Offshore Company and a 3.7 percent stake in another operated by Freeport McMoran, both of which sit off the coast of Santa Barbara County.

...

WHOOHOO

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/07/12/alec-extreme-exxon-long-term-alec-board-member-dumps-alec-climate-denial-policy

armiak mb

ExxonMobil, the largest oil and gas company in the world, will not renew its membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) after a split within the corporate lobbying group over how to address climate change, Bloomberg reported earlier today.

Exxon’s exit follows a disagreement over a resolution introduced in December by the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank that denies climate change, that would have asked the federal government to reconsider its findings that greenhouse gasses are harmful to human health.

The EPA did its spadework and laid out the scientific foundation of the endangerment findings in over 200 pages of technical documentation in 2009. Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt failed to reconsider those findings, much to the disappointment of the Koch crowd.

Although large companies like Ford, Google, Microsoft, Coca-Cola and many others have cut ties with ALEC, few have given and supported ALEC as much as Exxon has. Exxon was listed as a “major contributor” to ALEC as far back as 1981 and has given ALEC millions over the years to promote its corporate agenda. Exxon has also consistently served on ALEC’s Private Enterprise Board.

REACTION TO THE ANNOUNCEMENT

“This is a major loss for ALEC. It’s not just the financial support that Exxon provides, which has been significant over the years. This also represents a growing split between oil and gas majors that are increasingly concerned about their public image, and groups like ALEC that still regularly promote debates about climate science on their agenda,” said Nick Surgey, co-director of Documented.

“Exxon’s departure should send a strong message to ALEC that it’s extreme agenda and undemocratic, secretive operations have no place in American politics,” said Jay Riestenberg, campaigns & media strategist at Common Cause.

“It’s very significant when a giant of the fossil fuels world thinks that ALEC ‘s denial of the existence of climate change is intolerable. I hope that other responsible corporations that are still members of ALEC will follow suit,” said Wisconsin State Rep. Chris Taylor, who has attended ALEC events and written about its climate denial positions.

With regard to ALEC and the Koch brothers’ hostility to renewable energy and public transportation, Taylor said, “Their positions belong in the dinosaur age. We need to be investing in transit and renewables, and they just keep throwing up road block after road block.”

“Other major oil companies, including BP, Royal Dutch Shell and ConocoPhillips, left ALEC years ago. It’s about time ExxonMobil finally did, too,” said Kathy Mulvey, fossil fuel accountability campaign director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, in a formal statement. “But the company has a lot more to do to set things straight.” Exxon continues to fund the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, both of which continue to do battle with groups and regulators attempting to address climate change, Mulvey said.

EXXON USED ALEC TO PROMOTE CLIMATE CHANGE DENIAL FOR DECADES

In October 2016, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and Common Cause filed additional evidence for their 2012 IRS whistleblower complaint against ALEC detailing how Exxon had pumped $1.7 million into the front group “to promote the oil giant’s climate denial policies and legislative agenda, in gross violation of ALEC’s 501(c)(3) charitable status.”

ALEC claims to spend zero dollars on lobbying but the complaint showed that Exxon had deliberately used ALEC over two decades as its lobbying arm to advance its position on cap-and-trade policies, the Keystone Pipeline, the Obama Clean Power Plan, and fracking.

CMD brought this concern to the attention of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in January 2017 when ExxonMobil’s former CEO, Rex Tillerson, was nominated to be President Trump’s Secretary of State.

“For years, Exxon used ALEC as a key asset in a fossil fuel industry campaign to sow uncertainty about climate science, undermine international climate treaties and block legislation to reduce emissions,” said Arn Pearson, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, who drafted the 2016 IRS complaint. “And New York and other states have been investigating Exxon for its role in hiding evidence of its climate impact from shareholders and the public. So it is ironic that ALEC’s anti-science stance has apparently become too extreme even for Exxon.”

Exxon did not respond to CMD requests for comment.

ExxonMobil

While CRC publications identify corporate funding of what they perceive as liberal non-profit groups, they do not disclose their own corporate sponsors. However, voluntary disclosures and documents revealed as a result of court actions provide a small window into how CRC interacts with corporations. In 2002, ExxonMobil donated $25,000 to the CRC for the Green Watch project with another $25,000 in 2003, according to corporate giving reports no longer available on Exxon's website, but still available via ExxonSecrets.org. "Capital Research Centerand Greenwatch has received $215,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998," and up to 2006, according to ExxonSecrets. ^[11] According to Exxon's website, the oil company gave another $50,000 in 2007, for "public information and policy research." ^[12]

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/corporations-may-take-credit-environmental-action-their-lobbying-shows-true-story

Today most large companies like Exxon Mobil, Ford and GM issue slick reports extolling their efforts to conserve resources, use renewable energy or fund clean water supplies in developing countries. This emphasis on efforts to curb environmental harm while benefiting society is called corporate sustainability.

Once uncommon but now mainstream, this show of support for a greener and kinder business model might seem like a clear step forward. But many of these same companies are quietly using their political clout, often through industry trade associations, to block or reverse policies that would make the economy more sustainable. And because public policy raises the bar for entire industries, requiring that all businesses meet minimum standards, lobbying to block sound public policies can outweigh the positive impact from internal company initiatives.

This kind of corporate hypocrisy – what we calltalking green while lobbying brown – is a form of greenwashing, in which companies trumpet their good deeds while hiding their efforts to block progress. As the past and present presidents of the Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability, we are concerned that this greenwashing may delay by years or even decades steps that might solve sustainability problems, such as slowing the pace of climate change or ending the ocean plastic pollution crisis.

Sounding good yet lacking impact

We and our colleagues in the alliance have documented many business initiatives that fall short of the impact they claim. One of the best known was the chemical industry’s **Responsible Care**program, created after an explosion at Union Carbide’s plant in Bhopal, India,killed thousands of people in 1984. Strategy professors Andy King and Mike Lenox showed that participants actually made less progress in reducing their emissions of toxic chemicals than did nonparticipants. That prompted the industry to overhaul the program.

Or consider the Climate Challenge program. The Energy Department created this now-defunct partnership between business and government to encourage electric utilities to voluntarily reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. When one of us teamed up with Management Professor Maria Montes-Sancho to evaluate its track record, we found that there was no difference overall between participants and non-participants in their emissions reductions.

Both of thesevoluntary initiatives failed to solve environmental problems, so why were they created?

In the case of Responsible Care, chemical industry documents show that one of the program’s main goals was preempting tighter regulations. Likewise, public statements the electric utility industry and the Energy Department made indicate that they formed Climate Challenge to stave off new regulations.

Even though these and other voluntary initiatives accomplish little of substance, they help call attention to the good steps industries appear to be taking instead of the environmental damage they are causing – which is exactly how greenwashing works.And following the Trump administration’s plan to spike the Clean Power Plan, a federal rule that would have limited air pollution from power, utilities have essentially avoided federal climate regulation to date.

Talking green while lobbying brown

As we and our colleagues explain in an upcoming article in the business journal California Management Review, it is easy to get away with greenwashing in part because it’s hard to detect what companies lobby for in the U.S., as there is no requirement to disclose the positions they espouse.

“Despite the statements emitted from oil companies’ executive suites about taking climate change seriously and supporting a price on carbon, their lobbying presence in Congress is 100 percent opposed to any action,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, lamented in Harvard Business Review.

Exxon Mobil’s hypocrisy may not be surprising given the company’s long history of funding climate deniers. However, it is far from alone in talking green while lobbying brown. Indeed, even companies with much stronger records on sustainability than Exxon do this, often through industry trade groups.Exxon Mobil has clearly engaged in this doubletalk. The corporation declared in its 2016 Corporate Citizenship Report that “climate change risks warrant action by businesses, governments and consumers, and we support the Paris Agreement as an effective framework for addressing this global challenge.”Yet the nonprofit group InfluenceMap recently found that Exxon was one of the top three global corporations in lobbying against effective climate policy.

carbon top 50:

https://influencemap.org/report/Corporate-Carbon-Policy-Footprint-4274a464677481802bd502ffff008d74

New research from UK think tank InfluenceMap identifies the 50 companies most influential in shaping climate and energy policy around the world. Some of these (like ExxonMobil) are in opposition while others (like Apple and Unilever) are championing ambitious national-level policy to support their decarbonization plans. All, as major corporations, play a major role in policy-making globally both directly and through their trade associations, the research finds.

Estimating the impact a company has on climate change purely based on its greenhouse gas emissions may be incomplete, according to research. For some companies an equally, if not more, important impact could be their influencing of climate-related public discourse and policy from governments around the world. This may be the case for the politically powerful oil majors. For example, last month Harvard researchers found that ExxonMobil has misled the public over multiple decades on climate, a factor not currently reflected in mainstream financial climate metrics 35 of these of the 50 most influential are actively lobbying against climate policy. They include companies in the fossil fuel value chain, heavy energy users, electric utilities with large amounts of coal generating capacity.

On the other side, 15 of the 50 most influential are pushing for an ambitious climate policy agenda, favouring renewable power and electric vehicles. They include signatories to the RE100 initiative committing to buying 100% renewable power and renewable energy generators.

InfluenceMap's research shows the group of active and pro-climate companies has expanded noticeably in the last two years since the Paris Accord and the 2016 US election. This trend will likely continue as more large corporations around the world make the case to governments for an ambitious and consistent climate-related policy pathway to help them meet their decarbonisation goals cost effectively.]

For example, Ford said in its 2017 sustainability report that “we know climate change is real, and we remain committed to doing our part to address it by delivering on CO2 reductions consistent with the Paris Climate Accord.” stated that “General Motors is the only automaker on the 2017 Dow Jones Sustainability Index for North America, and is also on the World Index.”

Yet as Alliance for Automotive Manufacturers members, Ford and GM both lobbied the Trump administration to weaken fuel economy standards – a strong tool for reducing vehicle emissions.

More political transparency needed...

===

ref

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa815f/meta

Assessing ExxonMobil's climate change communications (1977–2014)

Geoffrey Supran1 and Naomi Oreskes

Environmental Research Letters, Volume 12, Number 8

Abstract

This paper assesses whether ExxonMobil Corporation has in the past misled the general public about climate change. We present an empirical document-by-document textual content analysis and comparison of 187 climate change communications from ExxonMobil, including peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed publications, internal company documents, and paid, editorial-style advertisements ('advertorials') in The New York Times. We examine whether these communications sent consistent messages about the state of climate science and its implications—specifically, we compare their positions on climate change as real, human-caused, serious, and solvable. In all four cases, we find that as documents become more publicly accessible, they increasingly communicate doubt. This discrepancy is most pronounced between advertorials and all other documents. For example, accounting for expressions of reasonable doubt, 83% of peer-reviewed papers and 80% of internal documents acknowledge that climate change is real and human-caused, yet only 12% of advertorials do so, with 81% 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. Our content analysis also examines ExxonMobil's discussion of the risks of stranded fossil fuel assets. We find the topic discussed and sometimes quantified in 24 documents of various types, but absent from advertorials. Finally, based on the available documents, we outline ExxonMobil's strategic approach to climate change research and communication, which helps to contextualize our findings.

....

1. Introduction

In 2016, Attorneys General (AGs) of 17 US states and territories announced that they 'are exploring working together on key climate change-related initiatives, such as ongoing and potential investigations' into whether ExxonMobil Corporation and other fossil fuel companies may have violated, variously, racketeering, consumer protection, or investor protection statutes through their communications regarding anthropogenic global warming (AGW) [1, 2]. (Unless specified otherwise, we refer to ExxonMobil Corporation, Exxon Corporation, and Mobil Oil Corporation as 'ExxonMobil'.) As part of a probe that began in 2015, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has issued multiple subpoenas to ExxonMobil under the state's Martin Act and alleged that the company's accounting of climate risk 'may be a sham' [3–6]. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey is simultaneously investigating ExxonMobil, stating, 'Fossil fuel companies that deceived investors and consumers about the dangers of climate change should be held accountable' [7, 8]. US Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker has said that he is investigating ExxonMobil for potentially violating the territory's anti-racketeering law [9]. Also in 2016, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) began a federal investigation into whether ExxonMobil appropriately discloses the business risks of AGW, and how it values its assets and reserves [10]. We offer no view on the legal issues raised by ongoing investigations.

ExxonMobil has responded stating, 'We unequivocally reject allegations that ExxonMobil suppressed climate change research contained in media reports that are inaccurate distortions of ExxonMobil's nearly 40 year history of climate research. We understand that climate risks are real. The company has continuously, publicly and openly researched and discussed the risks of climate change, carbon life cycle analysis and emissions reductions' [11]. In particular, ExxonMobil's website and statements offer 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' [11–15]. ExxonMobil argues that this list, entitled 'Exxon Mobil Contributed Publications', 'undercuts the allegation...that ExxonMobil sought to hide our research.' The company has also published some of its internal company documents, originally made public by journalists at InsideClimate News (ICN) [16, 17] (and simultaneously reported by Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and the Los Angeles Times [18]), to demonstrate that 'allegations are based on deliberately cherry-picked statements' [14]. 'Read all of these documents and make up your own mind,' ExxonMobil has challenged [14].

This paper takes up that challenge by analyzing the materials highlighted by the company, and comparing them with other publicly available ExxonMobil communications on AGW. The issue at stake is whether the corporation misled consumers, shareholders and/or the general public by making public statements that cast doubt on climate science and its implications, and which were at odds with available scientific information and with what the company knew. We stress that the question is not whether ExxonMobil 'suppressed climate change research,' but rather how they communicated about it [11].

Our analysis covers the publication period of the documents made available by ExxonMobil: 1977–2014. These documents include peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed publications (academic papers, conference proceedings, reports, company pamphlets, etc) and internal documents. Our analysis compares these documents with ExxonMobil's public outreach in the form of paid, editorial-style advertisements—known as 'advertorials'—published on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times(NYT) [19]. We focus on advertorials because they come directly from ExxonMobil and are an unequivocally public form of communication 'designed to affect public opinion or official opinion' [20]. Kollman has found that advertorializing is second only to mobilizing group members as the most commonly used outside lobbying technique [20, 21]. We examine whether these communications sent consistent messages about the state of climate science and its implications, or whether there is a discernable discrepancy between the company's public and private communications.

Our study offers the first empirical assessment and intercomparison of ExxonMobil's private and public statements on AGW2....

3.1.4. Advertorials

The predominant stance taken in ExxonMobil's advertorials is 'Doubt'. In essence, these public statements reflect only the 'Doubt' side of ExxonMobil's mixed internal dialogue. Figures 1(a) and 2(a) show that of the 72% (26/36) of climate change advertorials that take a position, 81% (21/26) take the position of 'Doubt', with the remainder split between 'Acknowledge' (3/26?=?11.5%) and 'Acknowledge and Doubt' (2/26?=?7.5%). A characteristic example is a 1997 Mobil advertorial (table 3), which stated: 'Let's face it: The science of climate change is too uncertain to mandate a plan of action that could plunge economies into turmoil...Scientists cannot predict with certainty if temperatures will increase, by how much and where changes will occur. We still don't know what role man-made greenhouse gases might play in warming the planet' [92]. Another, also from 1997, referred to a 'high degree of uncertainty,' 'debate,' and a 'knowledge gap,' and the need for further 'fact-finding' and 'additional knowledge' before UN negotiators in Kyoto could make decisions [94]. The advertorial stressed the goal 'of achieving a consensus view,' two years after the IPCC had presented one.

Our analysis is limited to advertorials in the NYT because those pertaining to climate change have already been compiled and are readily available. Brown et al report that ExxonMobil also ran advertorials in eight other major newspapers [19]. Some of these appear to have been the same or similar to those in the NYT. For example, in an advertorial in The Washington Post in 2000, ExxonMobil criticized a US National Assessment report on climate change as putting the 'political cart before a scientific horse' and being based 'on unreliable models' [101]. The advertorial was condemned by the former director of the National Assessment Coordination Office: 'To call ExxonMobil's position out of the mainstream is...a gross understatement' [102].

3.1.5. Contrast between advertorials and other documents

Our analysis shows that ExxonMobil's scientists and executives were, for the most part, aware and accepting of the evolving climate science from the 1970s onwards, but they painted a different picture in advertorials. The majority of ExxonMobil's peer-reviewed publications acknowledge that climate change is real and human-caused, and internal documents reflect this scientific framework. Uncertainties are mentioned or even highlighted, but usually in the context of broader scientific understandings and broadly consistent with the evolving science. In contrast, ExxonMobil's advertorials overwhelmingly focus on the uncertainties, casting doubt on the growing scientific consensus (e.g. peer-reviewed publications versus advertorials: p = 4.1?×?10-13, FET).

The contrast between advertorials and other documents is particularly evident in their accompanying figures.:{ For instance, in a chapter of a 1985 US Department of Energy report co-authored by Exxon scientist Brian Flannery :(style="font-weight:inherit"):}:[103:{], a graph (see }:https://perma.cc/A5WN-LKLS:{) presents the results of future warming modeled for different CO}::{2}::{ scenarios. 'The foregoing results, with all their caveats,' the report summarizes, 'can be construed as an approximate bracketing of the consensus of transient model predictions for the next century's CO}::{2}::{ greenhouse effect. In this restricted sense, they are consistent with the EPA's estimate of a 2?°C warming from fossil fuel CO}::{2}::{ and other greenhouse gases by the middle of the next century.' Their conclusion is entitled 'Consensus CO}::{2}::{ Warming.' Compare this with figures from ExxonMobil advertorials in 1997 and 2000 (see }:https://perma.cc/39CC-JTES:{and }:https://perma.cc/74BL-KL8A:{, respectively), which downplay the human contribution to AGW and emphasize natural variability instead :(style="font-weight:inherit"):}:[104:{, }:105:{]. Featured in an advertorial entitled 'Unsettled Science' in the }:NYT:{ and }:The Wall Street Journal:{, the latter figure was taken from an article in }:Science:{by Lloyd Keigwin of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution :(style="font-weight:inherit"):}:[105:{–}:107:{]. Keigwin called the use of his data 'very misleading' :(style="font-weight:inherit"):}:[106:{]. They were a historical reconstruction of sea-surface temperatures in the Sargasso Sea and, in his words, 'not representative of the planet as a whole [as the advertorial could be taken to imply]. To jump from the western North Atlantic Ocean to the globe is something no responsible scientist would do...There's really no way those results bear on the question of human-induced climate warming....'}:

The contrast across document categories is also clear when analyzed at a year-to-year scale (figure 1(a)). The majority of advertorials promoting doubt follow a decade of numerous acknowledgments in the other three document categories. Between 1977 and 1996, of all peer-reviewed, non-peer-reviewed, and internal documents that take a position, 83% fully or partly (81% and 2%, respectively) acknowledge that AGW is real and human-caused (if we remove our filter for reasonable doubt, still 83% fully or partly (43% and 40%, respectively) acknowledge this). Thereafter, in 1997 alone, we see nine advertorials promoting 'Doubt'. Significantly, throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, ExxonMobil peer-reviewed publications and advertorials in the same years contradict one another (figure 1(a)).

3.2. Impact levels (ILs)—AGW as serious

Figure 1(b) is a timeline of the overall positions of all 187 documents on AGW as serious. For each category of document and for all documents that express a position, figure 2(b) shows the cumulative fraction of documents that take that position. Positions on AGW as serious vary significantly across document categories (p = 0.11, FET).

3.2.1. Peer-reviewed publications

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26062018/california-cities-climate-change-lawsuits-dismissed-fossil-fuels-industry-rising-sea-levels

6/25

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04042018/climate-change-fossil-fuel-company-lawsuits-timeline-exxon-children-california-cities-attorney-general

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22062018/exxon-climate-investor-fraud-investigation-new-york-attorney-general-proxy-costs-subpoena

ExxonMobil has yet to turn over key financial records subpoenaed by state investigators over a year ago in a climate fraud inquiry, New York's attorney general told a judge in new court filings.

New York Attorney General Barbara Underwoodasked Judge Barry Ostrager to order the oil giant to obey the state's subpoenas, saying that company employees had told investigators that the records are readily accessible.

At issue are records that document the company's estimates of how future limits on global warming pollution would affect its sales of oil and gas.

Known as "proxy costs," these estimates are thought to be laid out in the cash flow spreadsheets that Underwood's office is seeking. They could be crucial to understanding whether the assets that underlie Exxon's value as a company might be stranded if fossil fuels have to be left in the ground to stave off climate change

Exxon has steadfastly insisted in public documents and statements, including its filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, that none of its oil and gas reserves will become stranded. The Exxon investigation in New York and a similar investigation underway in Massachusetts seek to determine if the company misled investors and the public about risks related to climate change.

"Exxon has repeatedly assured investors that it is taking active steps to protect the company's value from the risk that climate change regulation poses to its business," the attorney general says in the30-page motion filed in the Supreme Court of New York in Manhattan.

Two Sets of Numbers?

State investigators suspect that the company used one set of numbers in describing risks to investors but used a secret set internally to calculate the impact of greenhouse gas regulations. The internal estimates are the ones the investigators want to see.

The evidence lies in records related to 26 of Exxon's largest projects, the investigators say.

"Cash flow spreadsheets likely provide the most direct evidence of what proxy costs, if any, Exxon used, as well as the financial impact of any failure to abide by the company's public representations," the motion, some of which was redacted, states.

Exxon has said that searching through hundreds of thousands of documents for the spreadsheets is too much of a burden to find what investigators are seeking. But the attorney general's office says that argument has been undermined by the testimony of Exxon's employees, who have said the company has the spreadsheets stored in an organized and readily accessible manner.

Exxon Says It's Taking Steps on Climate Risk

Underwood, who inherited the investigation after the abrupt resignation of former Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, asserts that the basis for the state's investigation has only grown stronger because the company continues to maintain it is taking steps to protect the company's value from climate change risks.

Exxon claims that it safeguards the company's assets, and consequently its investors, by considering a proxy cost for greenhouse gas emissions in the company's long-term projections that form the foundation of it internal planning.

The investigators say they doubt that the same information was presented to investors as required by law.

"The evidence obtained in the course of the OAG's investigation provides substantial reason to believe Exxon's representations were false and misleading," according to the motion.

The attorney general's office issued its first subpoena in 2015, three months after InsideClimate News published an investigative series of stories disclosing Exxon's early understanding of the link between burning fossil fuels and global warming in the late 1970s. The Los Angeles Times later published similar stories.

New York investigators later subpoenaed Exxon records held by company auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers, seeking internal records the company may have provided its accountants.

Exxon has faced a series of legal setbacks in the last few months. The company was rebuffed in New York federal court in its attempt to block investigations by both the New York Attorney General's office and the Massachusetts Attorney General's office. The company also failed to halt the Massachusetts investigation in that state's highest court.

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/4/20/earth_day_2018_ending_plastic_pollution

We speak to Marcus Eriksen of the 5 Gyres Institute, who has led 20 expeditions around the world to research plastic marine pollution, and Priscilla Villa of the #BreakFreeFromPlastics movement.

cracker EJ houston and gulf exxon

knew 3/18 update

https://www.desmogblog.com/2016/04/26/there-no-doubt-exxon-knew-co2-pollution-was-global-threat-late-1970s

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/03/10/exxon-accuses-california-cities-misleading-investors-climate-change

In January, ExxonMobil filed a legal petition seeking to depose more than a dozen city and county government officials in California, claiming that the municipal officials are defrauding investors by not fully disclosing the risks posed by climate change.

You read that right. Exxon is legally challenging cities and counties for not talking up the risks of climate change enough to the investors who purchase municipal bonds for those localities. Has Exxon had a change of heart and now become concerned about transparency and the impacts of climate change?

Let's take a closer look.

Exxon is responding to the municipalities which have filed lawsuitsseeking to hold Exxon and other oil companies accountable for the damages to their cities from sea level rise. Exxon's legal petition is calling those lawsuits a “conspiracy” because — according to its petition — “A collection of special interests and opportunistic politicians are abusing law enforcement authority and legal process to impose their viewpoint on climate change.”

The oil giant goes on to say: “ExxonMobil finds itself directly in that conspiracy’s crosshairs. Even though it has long acknowledged the risks presented by climate change …”

You have to give Exxon’s lawyers credit for the sheer audacity of this legal maneuver and the claims that Exxon “has long acknowledged the risks presented by climate change.”

According to its legal filing, Exxon just wants to be able to talk about climate change but claims its First Amendment rights are being taken away by the lawsuits the various municipalities have filed:

“Through abusive law enforcement tactics and litigation in California, Respondents and others are attempting to stifle ExxonMobil’s exercise, in Texas, of its First Amendment right to participate in the national dialogue about climate change and climate policy.”

How the lawsuits have stifled Exxon’s free speech is not clear from the legal document, but law experts say it certainly looks like an attempt to intimidate anyone considering holding Exxon and the industry accountable for the impacts of climate change.

“It’s an aggressive move,” Howard Erichson, a law professor at Fordham with expertise in the procedure and ethics of complex litigation, explained to Bloomberg. “Does Exxon really need these depositions or is Exxon seeking the depositions to harass mayors and city attorneys into dropping their lawsuits?”

Misleading Investors — Pot Meet Kettle

Exxon’s claim that these municipalities are misleading investors on climate change is interesting because that is — of course — exactly what Exxon has been accused of in multiple lawsuits and in the national dialogue over climate liability.

One recent example of Exxon’s failure to disclose the risks of climate change to investors is its 2018 Energy and Carbon Summary. This is the report in which Exxon says none of its oil and gas reserves are at risk of becoming stranded assets due to climate action and that all of those reserves can be produced and consumed as the world pursues efforts to limit global warming to 2°C (3.6°F).

Kathy Mulvey of the Union of Concerned Scientistshighlighted how she believes Exxon is misleading investors in a recent statement:

“Already facing liability from a rising number of climate-related lawsuits, the company has chosen to add another layer of risk by failing to disclose the challenges to its business model posed by assets that may not be profitable to extract in a carbon-constrained world, costly litigation, and climate impacts to its operations. ExxonMobil is leaving its shareholders in the dark as climate change barrels down the tracks.”

In an interesting turn of events, Exxon is using the tactic of accusing its opponents of what it appears to be guilty of when it comes to climate risks.

Panic in San Francisco

San Francisco is one of the cities targeted in Exxon's latest legal effort. The company makes the following claim:

“The San Francisco Complaint contains panicked allegations about the 'imminent threat of catastrophic storm surge flooding' that global warming purportedly poses to San Francisco.”

Yet earlier in the same legal document, Exxon said it had “long acknowledged the risks presented by climate change.” Bit of a change of tone.

As for the “panicked allegations” about the threat of flooding in San Francisco, a brand new peer-reviewed study from UCBerkeley and Arizona State University appears to give San Francisco reason to panic. The study notes that San Francisco is even more vulnerable to sea level rise than previously thought because — unfortunately — the city is sinking. When combined with rising seas, concern about the city's future seems to be warranted.

Considering sea level rise alone, models show that, on the low end, 20 square miles could be inundated by 2100. But factor in subsiding land and that estimate jumps to almost 50 square miles. The high end? The San Francisco Bay Area is looking at 165 square miles lost.

The image below shows various scenarios for San Francisco’s future. The colored sections represent areas that would be experiencing “significant inundation by 2100.” SFO is the city's main airport.

[maps]

Scenarios for local land subsidence only (top), sea level rise in 2100 under a business-as-usual emissions pathway (middle), and a combination of the two (bottom) for Foster City, Union City, and San Francisco International Airport (SFO). Credit: Shirzaei and Bürgmann 2018, Science Advances

Exxon Sticking to its Playbook

Exxon has known about the reality of climate change and its contribution to it for decadesand actively worked to mislead the public, both directly and by funding climate science-denying groups, about that reality ever since. However, 40 years ago when Exxon realized the impact its business was having on the world’s climate, it was much easier to deny the scientific evidence.

The idea of regular flooding in downtown Bostonprobably seemed like science fiction at the time. In all likelihood, no one used the phrase “sunny day flooding” back then. Major prosperous cities weren’t running out of water. No one was sailing through the Arcticwithout an icebreaker. Those were different times.

The stakes have been raised as today the very real impacts of climate change are much more difficult to deny. But after committing to decades of climate science denial, it appears that Exxon intends to continue that approach and is even upping the ante with aggressive legal actions.

Because even though Exxon fails to mention the company’s exposure to climate liability to its investors, the possibility remains that international efforts to address climate change could seriously cut into Exxon’s profits. It should be expected that as the impacts of climate change continue to intensify, Exxon’s attacks on those looking to hold them accountable will ramp up as well.

reined in alec ~ htland:

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22122017/big-oil-heartland-climate-science-misinformation-campaign-koch-api-trump-infographic

How Big Oil Lost Control of Its Climate Misinformation Machine

One of the longest and most consequential campaigns against science in modern history is becoming more extreme—and turning against its originators.

By Neela Banerjee

DEC 22, 2017

The Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank, launched a billboard campaign in 2012 to compare believers in global warming to "murderers and madmen" such as the Unabomber, Charles Manson and Osama bin Laden. The backlash was so severe that Heartland pulled the plug within 24 hours, but it still lost major donors and political allies and faced criticism that its fight against climate science was beyond extreme.

Five years later, on June 1, 2017, the group's chief executive, Joseph Bast, was a guest of Donald Trump in the White House Rose Garden as the president announced the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris climate agreement.

"We are winning in the global warming war," Bast declared later in an email to supporters.

Heartland's rebound is striking. Its ascent into the Trump administration's orbit, where it now advises the Environmental Protection Agency on climate change issues, marks the most dramatic success yet in a decades-long crusade, first funded by fossil fuel money, against the mainstream scientific conclusion that human activity is warming the planet and inviting disastrous consequences.

Choke Hold Series

Hundreds of millions of dollars from corporations such as ExxonMobil and wealthy individuals such as the billionaires Charles and David Koch have supported the development of a sprawling network, which includes Heartland and other think tanks, advocacy groups and political operatives. They have cast doubt on consensus science, confused public opinion and forestalled passage of laws and regulations that would address the global environmental crisis. It is one of the largest, longest and most consequential misinformation efforts mounted against mainstream science by an industry. Climate denial, thanks to the network's influence, has become a core message of the Republican Party, now in control of the White House and Congress.

"This didn't come out of nowhere. Trump was taught to say these things on climate by Heartland, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and other think tanks. They maintained this denial space in public policy dialogue," said Kert Davies, director of the Climate Investigations Center, a watchdog group. "And you can definitely credit Exxon and Koch brothers' money for giving the think tanks the megaphone to keep climate science denial in the world."

But now, just like the Republican upstarts that threaten the party establishment, Heartland is taking climate denial farther than many fossil fuel companies can support. While ExxonMobil today publicly accepts the reality of human-caused climate change and the need to address the problem, Heartland argues for the benefits of a warming world. The group is pushing the EPA to overturn its official conclusion—known as the endangerment finding—that excessive carbon dioxide is a danger to human health and welfare. The finding, affirmed by the Supreme Court, is what empowers the agency to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Climate Denial: The Long Campaign of Misinformation

This rift was on display at a recent meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group that influences state governments to adopt conservative priorities. Heartland wanted ALEC to approve a resolution calling on the EPA to withdraw the endangerment finding. But ExxonMobil, once at the forefront of climate denial, was among several corporations and utilities that convinced ALEC to shelve a vote on the resolution.

ExxonMobil had become just another member of "the discredited and anti-energy global warming movement," complained Heartland's president, Tim Huelskamp, a former Republican congressman from Kansas. "They've put their profits and 'green' virtue signaling above sound science."

ExxonMobil is among an early group of donors that slowed or ended its funding of climate denial. But the misinformation apparatus the corporations helped create is now so independent and robust, it no longer needs—or trusts—them.

Jerry Taylor bio

"Robespierre beheading Danton is pretty apt here," said Jerry Taylor, president of the bipartisan, pro-climate action think tank Niskanen Center, referring to French revolutionaries executing the moderates among them during the Reign of Terror. "There used to be some degree of interest in projecting an image of seriousness, of expertise and evenhandedness on climate, and there isn't anymore."

The new goal is making sure that denial is "part of the ideological catechism of the conservative base," Taylor said. "They are trying to keep the hard Right animated."

Taylor knows this universe from the inside. Once a prominent climate skeptic, he worked at ALEC as staff director for energy and environment issues early in his career. From 1991 to 2014, he was a vice president at the Cato Institute, focusing on energy and climate issues. And, his brother, James Taylor, is a senior environmental fellow at Heartland.

Whatever their differences today, corporations such as ExxonMobil were crucial to getting the denial network up and running.

According to climate watchdogs Greenpeace/ExxonSecrets, ExxonMobil led corporate donations to think tanks, giving nearly $31 million between 1998 and 2014 to 69 groups that spread climate misinformation. The Koch brothers, whose conservative ideology dovetails with their petrochemical business interests, led giving among individual magnates, donating more than $100 million since 1997 to 84 groups.

The Heartland Institute rejects suggestions that it was ever part of any group fostered by corporations. "Heartland has long supported and promoted scientists skeptical of man-caused global warming on principle," Jim Lakely, the organization's spokesman, told InsideClimate News.

Data from Greenpeace/ExxonSecrets shows the organization received $650,000 from ExxonMobil between 1998 and 2006. Heartland points out that it ramped up its work on climate after its Exxon funding ended, and that the only Koch-connected contribution it received in the past 15 years, of $25,000, supported its work on health care issues.

ExxonMobil and Koch Industries did not respond to requests for comment.

As Money Flowed, Strategies Passed Like a Baton

Social scientists are still trying to gauge the full breadth of spending on climate denial because of the large number of players involved, the growth of money from secretive sources, and the wide range of public relations tactics fossil fuel companies use to delay action, according to Robert Brulle, professor of sociology at Drexel University.

Brulle mined IRS and other public filings to show that between 2003 and 2010, 91 groups promulgating climate denial received more than a half-billion dollars from 140 foundations. Corporations such as ExxonMobil pared back their funding in that decade; most of the money came from financial vehicles such as Donors' Trust, which shields funders' identities.

As the money flowed through and nurtured the network over the decades, its misinformation strategies passed like a baton to a shifting array of coalitions and initiatives that protected fossil fuel interests in the climate debate. Some groups produced reports that cast doubt on the accumulating evidence of manmade climate change, and others amplified the alternative findings. Think tanks in the network held conferences, sponsored panels, wrote op-eds and letters, and created an echo chamber loud enough to command equal time in the mainstream media.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was Exxon's CEO from 2006 to 2016, after working his way up in the oil company. Credit: Eric Piermont/AFP/Getty Images

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was Exxon's CEO from 2006 to 2016, after working his way up in the oil company. According to climate watchdogs Greenpeace/ExxonSecrets, ExxonMobil gave nearly $31 million between 1998 and 2014 to 69 groups that spread climate misinformation. Credit: Eric Piermont/AFP/Getty Images

Still, in 2007, under pressure from its shareholders, ExxonMobil announced in its Corporate Citizenship report that it would stop funding a number of climate denial groups. The following year, the presidential nominees of both major political parties felt safe promising voters they would address the threat of climate change if elected.

Then in 2010 the equilibrium changed. The Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United vs. FEC removed caps on corporate and nonprofit political donations and opened the floodgates on campaign spending. Billionaires such as the Kochs moved millions of dollars to support the rise of the Tea Party movement and ultra-conservative candidates who saw climate denial as the bedrock of party orthodoxy. Soon, few Republicans running for federal office would admit to accepting the reality of manmade climate change. After conservative populism put Donald Trump in office, the hard-right's social media ecosystem, empowered by a president eager to tweet, has accelerated the spread of false climate narratives, making them more difficult to counter, much less uproot.

"They decided that if they have to choose between an argument that is solid and serious and one that is dodgy but easily understandable by the base, they'll go with the latter," Taylor said. "Anything that moves the needle for the Fox News or Breitbart reader."

The machinery of climate misinformation has gone global and now runs itself. A false story that appeared last February in the Daily Mail, a British tabloid, got pushed by right-wing outlets and social media deep into the halls of Congress. "Exposed: How world leaders were duped into investing billions over manipulated global warming data," its headline said. The story claimed that American government scientists had manipulated climate research to advance the Paris accord.

Ten days later, Texas Republican Lamar Smith, a fossil fuel champion and chair of the powerful House Committee on Science and Technology, pressed the government to release the data the scientists had allegedly misused. The story of scientific deception was fake news. A British media oversight body forced the Daily Mail to retract the story, but that was six months after it was published.

'Delay and Defeat': A Strategy Evolves

Oil companies began developing strategies to sow doubt about science that could lead to regulation long before global warming became an issue.

Caltech scientist Arie Haagen-Smit discovered in the early 1950s that oil was the cause of dangerous smog shrouding Los Angeles. The industry then conducted its own research to try to discredit his findings. Credit: California Institute of Technology

Biochemist Arie Haagen-Smit discovered in the early 1950s that oil was the cause of dangerous smog shrouding Los Angeles. The industry tried to discredit his findings. Credit: California Institute of Technology

Beginning in the 1940s, smog routinely choked Los Angeles, fueling a public health crisis. The city hired Arie Haagen-Smit, a biochemist from the California Institute of Technology, to investigate the cause. He quickly identified oil as the culprit, showing that nitrogen oxide emissions and uncombusted hydrocarbons from car tailpipes and refineries formed smog when exposed to sunlight.

The Smoke and Fumes committee at the American Petroleum Institute (API), the industry's main lobbyist, counter-attacked. It funded scientists who rebutted Haagen-Smit and disparaged him personally. The industry asserted that the science of smog was too uncertain to justify new laws or expensive pollution-control equipment.

By the mid-1950s, industry's own researchers confirmed Haagen-Smit's findings. And the first Clean Air Act, in 1963, soon put industry in the crosshairs of federal regulators. Oil companies began campaigns claiming smog controls would cripple the economy.

Smoggy L.A. day in 1955. Credit: Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection

A smoggy day in Los Angeles in 1955. Credit: Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection

API has continued the decades-long fight against stricter smog limits, with new rules delayed along the way by Republican and Democratic administrations alike. The 1970 Clean Air Act, meanwhile, has provided trillions of dollars in health and economic benefits, far exceeding the cost of regulations. One Environmental Protection Agency study calculated that the benefits of the 1990 amendments to the law would amount to $2 trillion a year by 2020.

Louis McCabe, Los Angeles's first smog regulator, summarized in 1949 what would become an enduring industry strategy: "Why have we generally failed in our efforts to control air pollution?" he asked. "We have failed because industry believed that air pollution control cost too much. Smoke and dusts were the wages of a prosperous industrial community...There were 'cooperative' programs with the dual objectives of delay and defeat."

The Corporate Pivot to Uncertainty

As the oil industry bolstered its own research into air pollution in the 1950s, some of its scientists began conducting basic research into carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, following work published by leading academics. In 1968, the industry's main pollution-control consultants warned API that it should pay close attention to carbon dioxide emissions.

By the mid-1970s, Exxon began to take carbon pollution seriously. In July 1977, James Black, a senior scientist at Exxon, told top executives that carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels would warm the atmosphere and endanger human life. Company leaders knew that if fossil fuel emissions made the planet hotter, politicians would likely take steps to cut pollution. So Exxon launched its own sampling of carbon dioxide in the air and oceans and conducted rigorous climate modeling to better understand how the planet was warming, when temperatures might rise, and the effect on human life. Exxon believed that its own peer-reviewed research would give it a credible voice in policymaking if the government decided to regulate emissions. Other fossil fuel companies followed Exxon's lead.

Exxon scientists measure carbon dioxide in the oceans and atmosphere from aboard the tanker Esso Atlantic. Credit: Richard Werthamer

Exxon scientists led research into carbon dioxide changes in the oceans and atmosphere in the early 1980s, but then the corporate tone shifted. Credit: Richard Werthamer

But the industry's forthright approach started to shift toward denial after landmark events in 1988. NASA's James Hansen, a leading climate expert, raised alarm bells in Congress with his testimony that the warming trend was driven by carbon dioxide emissions. The United Nations that year established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide assessments of evolving climate science. More than 300 scientists and policymakers met at a climate conference in Toronto, declaring, "it is imperative to act now." They called for cutting greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent over two decades. Regulation of carbon pollution went from a distant possibility to an imminent threat to fossil fuel businesses.

In December 1988, API helped sponsor a conference on preparing for climate change. And the oil industry and utility companies began to pivot to a new narrative: There was uncertainty and, thus, no urgency to heed the emerging science. In late 1995, Leonard S. Bernstein, a scientist for Mobil Oil Corp., drafted a primer about climate science for the industry's Global Climate Coalition (GCC). In it, Bernstein wrote: "the potential for human impact on climate is based on well-established scientific fact, and should not be denied." But he later added, "It is still not possible to accurately predict the magnitude (if any), timing or impact of climate change."

Lee Raymond bio

As the international community moved in 1997 to curb emissions with the Kyoto Protocol, Exxon's Chairman and CEO Lee Raymond focused on amplifying scientific doubt.

"Let's agree there's a lot we really don't know about how climate will change in the 21st century and beyond," Raymond said in a 1997 speech. "We need to understand the issue better, and fortunately, we have time."

Doubts about climate change were echoed by think tanks that the corporations nurtured with donations starting in the 1990s. Boosted by a grant from Exxon, the Competitive Enterprise Institute organized the Cooler Heads Coalition in 1998, which over time has brought together more than 30 conservative groups into an influential echo chamber of climate denial. The group still exists.

Halting climate action has been a leading priority of this coalition and its allies, not reluctant to promote questionable information if it supports their cause.

In one instance, the Spanish economist Gabriel Calzada Alvarez published a study in 2009 that said Spain's push to develop renewable energy had hurt employment, costing 2.2 jobs for every clean energy job created. The Spanish government and the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory showed that Calzada's methodology was flawed. But this did not stop deniers from embracing his narrative.

Calzada was a fellow at the Center for the New Europe, a free-market think tank funded in part by ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers. Koch-supported advocacy organizations spread Calzada's findings through blog posts and friendly media. Calzada delivered testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives. Three years later, Kenneth Green of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI), another conservative think tank, cited the Spanish study in House testimony against federal support of green jobs. AEI received nearly $5 million from the Kochs and ExxonMobil from 1998 to 2012.

Fossil Fuel Fingerprints on Contrarian Research

Think tanks needed support from science, which proved tricky to get, because 97 percent of peer-reviewed articles published about climate change show that it is driven by human activity. So, industry directly funded the work of contrarians within the climate science community.

Among the best known is Willie Soon, a proponent of the theory that solar cycles drive climate change. His notion has been discredited by mainstream science, which determined that the influence of solar fluctuations has been too small to account for the magnitude of modern warming. Yet deniers and politicians cite his papers as evidence that scientists are divided about what causes climate change.

In 2015, it emerged that Soon's research had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants from 2003 to 2015 from API, ExxonMobil, the Charles Koch Foundation and the Southern Company, one of the country's largest coal-burning electric utilities. He called his papers "deliverables" in return for the funding.

"I have a big super-duper paper soon to be accepted on how the sun affects the climate system," Soon wrote in a 2009 email to a research specialist with Southern.

Willie Soon, In His Own Words

Denialist think tanks and politicians convinced many Americans that scientists such as Soon are as numerous as those whose work shows fossil fuel consumption to be the main driver of climate change. A 2016 survey by the Pew Research Center quantified the success of their effort. Fewer than 30 percent of Americans know that the vast majority of climate scientists and the peer-reviewed literature support the conclusion that global warming is manmade.

'The Earth Is Greening'

The Heartland Institute's rise to policy prominence marks a break from previous brokers of climate denial, because it promotes a narrative that was once rejected as too extreme and divorced from accepted climate science.

Kathleen Hartnett White bio

The narrative—that excessive carbon dioxide is beneficial for the Earth—is now backed by some in the EPA and the White House and is deployed as a weapon against the endangerment finding. One of Heartland's policy experts, Kathleen Hartnett White, who has called carbon dioxide "the gas of life," was nominated by the administration to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

The EPA and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.

In his email to supporters, dated Oct. 12, 2017, and leaked to E&E News, Heartland's CEO Bast detailed plans for how to "market" the positive narrative about excessive carbon dioxide. For instance, he suggests convincing the EPA and the courts that doubling atmospheric CO2 would increase crop yields, and suing companies for not increasing emissions.

Surveys show "we are winning the public opinion battle, since most Americans don't believe global warming is a problem that merits the attention being given to it by the media and politicians," Bast wrote. "The best messages are positive: CO2 increases crop yields, the earth is greening."

Heartland rejects claims that it "denies science." Rather, it asserts that the idea of a scientific consensus that climate change is human-caused is without merit. "The scientists we work with have looked at the data and have concluded climate change is not driven by human activity," Lakely told InsideClimate News. "And the consequences of our uncontrollable warming world are not universally bad, but have a lot of positives, according to the scientists and other experts Heartland communicates and work with."

When the Global Climate Coalition disbanded in early 2002, its members said their work was done because they had succeeded in keeping the United States out of the Kyoto Protocol, the first global climate treaty that paved the way for the Paris Agreement. Now, a dozen years later, climate misinformation is emanating directly from the White House. The administration has orchestrated a rollback of regulatory measures on climate change adopted during the Obama years, and the exit from the Paris accord that President Trump announced with much fanfare from the Rose Garden.

"The basic parameters of the long-term threat posed by climate change were well described and known by 1979," Brulle of Drexel said, referring to a major report on climate change issued by the National Academy of Sciences. "But here we are, coming up on nearly 40 years, and there still is confusion and a lack of willingness to act. So I guess in that sense, the effort to stop climate action has won, as if this is a winning position in any sense of the term."

Read more about the Heartland Institute's outreach to educators.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05022018/exxon-climate-risk-report-oil-reserves-paris-climate-goals-electric-vehicles

In a new climate risk report that had been requested by its investors, ExxonMobil writes that keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius might mean cutting the use of oil by 20 percent between now and the year 2040.

But the oil giant also makes clear that it doesn't expect anything of the kind to happen.

Instead, Exxon's climate risk report and its annual Energy Outlook for 2018 maintain the company's long-standing view that both the use of its products and the resulting emissions of carbon dioxide will continue to rise until reaching a peak in 2040. It doesn't address what happens after that date.

The climate report—"2018 Energy and Carbon Summary: Positioning for a Lower-Carbon Energy Future"—ostensibly describes the risks to the oil giant's business plan in a world where governments impose restrictions on the use of fossil fuels in line with the targets of the Paris climate agreement, signed in 2015.

"We believe society will continue moving towards a lower carbon energy system," Exxon avows, saying that "the beginnings of a shift" can already be observed.

But even under "daunting" scenarios that would make it possible to meet the Paris targets—implying a clean energy revolution in the next few decades—Exxon insists it would be able to produce all the oil in its existing fields and to keep investing in new reserves, while also benefiting from growing use of natural gas. It says it would also seek to profit from novel approaches, like capturing carbon dioxide for storage, or producing biofuels from algae. And it would try to make its own plants more efficient, lowering its internal carbon footprint.

But nothing suggests the end of fossil fuels, Exxon argues.

Even if every car in the world's fleet were electric by the year 2040, which the company doesn't expect, Exxon says liquid fuel demand in 2040 would be as high as it was in 2013, largely due to commercial transporation. (Exxon reckons that for every 100 million additional electric vehicles on the road, demand for fuel would drop by 1.2 million barrels a day.)

Neither the energy efficiency of the global economy, nor the carbon intensity of the energy produced to drive that growth, is likely to improve fast enough to stop emissions from rising steadily until 2040, the company says.

At that point, emissions would be 10 percent higher than they are today.

At that rate, the world would soon bust its carbon budget, the amount of additional emissions scientists say can go into the atmosphere without driving temperatures beyond the 2 degree threshold by the end of the century. Keeping emissions below that mark, and even trying to stay within 1.5 degrees of warming, is the goal of the Paris agreement, which Exxon has said it supports.

Patrick Doherty, co-director for corporate governance forNew York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli, a leader of the shareholder call for climate risk reporting, said that the report was lacking and that his office would discuss Exxon's response with company officials.

"The company offers too many generalizations and too few specifics on how it plans to participate in a low carbon economy," Doherty said. "The reports rely on optimistic assumptions of undiminished growth in demand for fossil fuels in certain economic sectors, and lack a discussion of the company's goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions."

Adam Scott, a policy adviser to the green advocacy group Oil Change International, said the doubletalk is just the latest shade of climate denial. "They are predicting a future where we would have a global climate catastrophe, and saying, 'We are OK with that—deal with it,' " he said. (The group last year published a report, Forecasting Failure, that dissected the prognostications of Exxon, Shell and BP.)

Already, average global surface temperatures have gone up about 1 degree Celsius since the start of the industrial era, and they are expected to pass the 1.5 degree benchmark before long.

What If the World Meets Its Paris Pledges?

But what if the world did step up and enforce the Paris goals—including the United States, which under President Trump is the only country to abandon its pledge, but also other major economies like Europe's and China's, and developing nations as well?

Even then, Exxon says, it would be able to stay on a profitable financial track, continuing to produce essentially all of its current fossil fuel reserves and to invest heavily in replacing them. Oil and gas use would not fall off a cliff, it says, although there would be a pronounced shift toward gas. Refineries might emphasize other products in place of gasoline and diesel fuel.

Oil demand might decline from 95 million barrels a day in 2016 to 78 million barrels a day in 2040, Exxon says—maybe, under the most bearish of scenarios, dropping even to 53 million barrels a day. Demand for natural gas is harder to predict—it might go up or down significantly, but the likeliest outlook presents "even less risk" to reserves, and hence to Exxon's fortune.

"The more than 90 percent of our proved reserves that are projected to be produced by 2040 are clearly supported by ample demand," Exxon says.

In other words, forget about leaving it in the ground—the prescription favored over the long run by climate hawks, who say that the world needs to move rapidly to bring emissions from energy down to zero by 2060 or so to meet the 2 degree goal, let alone the even more ambitious aspiration of keeping warming to 1.5 degrees.

'A Significant Gap'

For its "what-if" exercise, Exxon adopted modeling done by an accomplished international team of experts who gathered at Stanford University and published their results in 2014. They published an ensemble of illustrative pathways depicting how the world might get warming down to below 2 degrees. As is well understood by climate experts, that implies reducing net emissions of greenhouse gases to zero some time in the latter half of this century.

Despite the urgency, Exxon doesn't suggest that this is likely or even prudent. Indeed, it makes no attempt to predict energy trends or global temperatures beyond the year 2040.

"The long-term objective of effective policy should be to reduce the risks of climate change at the lowest societal cost, in balance with other priorities such as meeting increased demand for affordable energy and better addressing poverty," it says—reciting a formula it has adopted for the past decade or so.

Exxon describes the Stanford project's pathways as "a stark and fairly rapid transition" toward zero emissions.

The difference between Exxon's own projections and the 2 degree scenarios in the Stanford work are spelled out in a section of Exxon's 2018 Energy Outlook that focuses on the climate challenge: "There remains a significant gap," the company says.

To hit the Paris target, that report says, emissions would have to peak soon enough and fall steadily, coming close to the 1980 level by 2040. Instead, Exxon's outlook is for emissions to peak at twice the level of 1980 by 2040.

PUBLISHED UNDER:

face="Times New Roman">BUSINESS AND ACCOUNTABILITY

NATURAL GAS AND FRACKING

OIL/TAR SANDS

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Abstract

1. Introduction

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3.1.5. Contrast between advertorials and other documents

3.2. Impact levels (ILs)—AGW as serious

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