What Exxon Knew About Climate Change in the 1970s

November 13, 2015

In 1980, climate change was only just emerging as a political and scientific issue. But at least one big energy company knew way back then that burning fossil fuels could change the atmosphere. In fact, a recent investigation by InsideClimate News found that ExxonMobil knew about climate change as early as the 1970s. Recently, the Allegheny Front’s Kara Holsopple spoke with Neela Banerjee, a reporter on the Exxon series about the story behind the story. Here are some highlights from the interview.

On how they discovered this story

"The first break came around February when my colleague found out that Exxon scientists had contributed to federal research into climate change. You know, in the 80s—a lot of people didn’t know about climate change, and Exxon was working on it? So that was interesting. And then finally, the next thing that really focused us on Exxon was that I got a copy of a Congressional transcript of a hearing on climate change from 1980. So I just started to search the PDF of the document for oil companies. Nobody there was from an oil company, except one man and he was from Exxon. His name was Henry Shaw, and he had participated in a very important report about climate change. And so I was, like, well, who is Henry Shaw and why is Exxon the only company looking at climate change?"

"So we started to tug on that thread. We found that Shaw was one of four co-authors on a paper about an Exxon supertanker that was being outfitted with equipment to measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and water along the tanker’s route. So they were deploying their resources—a supertanker, no less—to measure atmospheric and marine carbon dioxide. And that was a big deal."

On why Exxon was doing research into climate change

"The reason Exxon did this research was not only to understand a scientific phenomenon that could be an existential threat for the oil industry and for Exxon; but also because they knew that if temperatures would be going up in the world because of higher carbon dioxide from fossil fuels, then there was going to be a policy response to that. There could be limits on fossil fuel consumption—there might even be a phasing out of fossil fuels. So Exxon wanted to have a voice in that process."

"And you also get the sense in reading documents that it was a moral choice. You have to remember that these were scientists who were working at a time when environmentalism wasn’t as polarized an issue as it is now. So we’ve spoken to people who worked at Exxon Research and Engineering then who are still alive. And they said many of [their] colleagues were environmentalists, and they cared about these issues. So it was a different time."

On how the story of this research got lost to history

"Exxon did not suppress it. It’s not like tobacco in that sense. One main reason is that the scientists who participated in the research, most of them were let go by 1986. Exxon went through massive cost-cutting through the 1980s because of the low price of oil. There was also a management change that thought a lot of this work was extraneous."

"Finally, the academics who worked with Exxon on this became disillusioned with Exxon. One of the reasons was that a top Exxon scientist named Brian Flannery was very much in the mainstream and accepted the work, but by the late 80s and early 90s, his position had shifted. He became the company’s chief scientist, and he  championed this argument that climate science was too uncertain to warrant any action—that what the U.N. and others were considering to cut fossil fuel emissions was too expensive given the certainty of the science."

How influential Exxon was in influencing policy on climate change

"Exxon was very influential at the beginning. In 1989, fossil fuel companies and major manufacturers formed this group called the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), which—despite its very green name—was created to fight the U.N.’s efforts to come up with a worldwide emissions reduction plan. The brains and drive behind the GCC came from the American Petroleum Institute and Exxon. Now others, over time, jumped on that bandwagon. But Exxon’s research—and the fact that they continued to do peer-reviewed science—gave them a credibility that few others had."

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Neela Banerjee is a reporter with InsideClimate News, which broke the story about ExxonMobil's buried climate research.