Rex Tillerson’s State of Denial
ExxonMobil has a long history of peddling misinformation on climate change. Lengthy investigations last year by the Los Angeles Times and Inside Climate News revealed that, in the nineteen-seventies and eighties, the company—then just Exxon—conducted its own extensive research on the subject. Its scientists found that the continued burning of fossil fuels would indeed alter the climate dramatically, and warned that “there are some potentially catastrophic events that must be considered.” But instead of considering the possibility of catastrophe—or perhaps in spite of such consideration—the company discontinued its own research efforts and began to try to undermine those of others. Behind the scenes, it attacked the work of government scientists and donated generously to groups that did the same. In public, it promoted the notion that climate change was a matter of debate.
“Currently, the scientific evidence is inconclusive,” Lee Raymond, the company’s chairman at the time, said in 1997, more than a decade after Exxon’s in-house scientists had concluded just the opposite.
.. ExxonMobil was still contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to groups promoting climate misinformation. These included the American Legislative Exchange Council, which, among other things, advocates teaching climate denial to schoolchildren, and the National Black Chamber of Commerce, which asserts on its Web site, “Actually, there is no sound science to support the claims of Global Warming.” ExxonMobil contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars more to what might be called the country’s most influential denialist group: the Republican majority in Congress.