ExxonMobil

Climate Change Denial Business ExxonMobil

ExxonMobil is one of the world’s largest oil and chemical producers and the largest refiner of petroleum products. They began as a regional petroleum supplier in 1859, and have grown to produce about 2,300 thousand barrels of oil per day. ExxonMobil is notorious for funding climate change denial groups, violating human rights, and buying political influence.

Climate Change:

ExxonMobil started research on climate change around 1977, 11 years before it became known to the public. Scientist James Black warned, “doubling CO2 gases in the atmosphere would increase average global temperatures by two or three degrees,” which ExxonMobil deliberately ignored. In 1989, Exxonmobil helped create a Global Climate Coalition to discourage the US, China, and India from joining the Kyoto Protocol, which would have set limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

In the 2000s, ExxonMobil published an ad “Unsettled Science,” which misused data to argue that “fossil fuels may not be causing global warming.”

ExxonMobil is notorious for using language that “downplays its role in the climate crisis… and undermines climate litigation, regulation, and activism.” This language includes calling on consumers to heat their homes efficiently, be smart about energy use, and improve their gas mileage. This rhetoric deflects responsibility to consumers and blames fossil fuel use on demand, rather than the supplier.

Outreach:

ExxonMobil has spent “more than $37 million on climate science denier organizations from 1998 through 2019.” In 2008, ExxonMobil declared they would stop giving money to climate denial agendas, but they donated almost $3 million in the 2020 cycle. ExxonMobil gives congress members incentive to vote against green policies, sues environmental groups, and fund gas and oil lobbyists.

In 2019 ExxonMobil gave $690,000 to 8 climate denial groups, including $110,000 to the American Enterprise Institute. They have also given money to the Manhattan Institute, Center for American and International Law, Hoover Institution, and others.

Alaska:

ExxonMobil is the largest holder of gas in Alaska. In 2008, a Native Alaskan village filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil and other gas companies claiming “the defendants’ contribution to global warming through their emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses substantially and unreasonably interferes with the plaintiffs’ rights to use and enjoy public and private property in Kivalina.” ExxonMobil successfully got the lawsuit dismissed on claims that the lawsuit was a political, not legal matter.

In 1977 ExxonMobil constructed an 800 mile oil pipeline that spans from northern to southern Alaska. The pipeline is still in use, but less oil is being transported which creates the risk of the pipeline freezing and bursting.