Exxon Mobil Chairman and CEO Darren Woods speaks during the CERAWeek oil summit in Houston, Texas, on March 18. Credit: Mark Felix/AFP via Getty Images
Congressional Democrats say newly released documents trace oil industry’s pivot from denial to deception.
In the wake of Inside Climate News’ 2015 stories on ExxonMobil’s research confirming fossil fuels’ role in global warming, the oil giant hit back with a #GetTheFacts social media campaign calling the reporting “misleading,” “baseless,” and “politically motivated.”
But in internal discussions, Exxon’s communications team grappled with how to respond when “we actually don’t dispute much of what these stories report,” according to one of 4,500 documents newly released by Congressional Democrats after a two-and-a-half-year investigation of industry disinformation on climate change.
At a hearing on Wednesday, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said that the new documents show the evolution of the oil industry’s response to climate change. Instead of an outright denial of the science, Whitehouse said the oil companies engaged in what he called “Climate Denial Lite.”
Big Oil, Whitehouse said, is now “pretending it is taking climate change seriously—while secretly undermining its own publicly stated goals.”
Upwards of $100trn of global spending on the green transition is typically estimated as being required by 2050. Credit: Thaiview/Shutterstock.
The Climate Damages Tax proposes a fee per tonne of CO2 embedded within the domestic extraction of coal, oil and gas.
A new report has claimed that a tax on the extraction of fossil fuels could raise $720bn by the end of the decade for to support the green transition in the world’s poorest countries.
Led by Stamp Out Poverty and backed by the likes of Greenpeace, Climate Action Network and Christian Aid, the Climate Damages Tax report, published earlier this week, examines the proposal that OECD countries, in particular members of the G7, should “lead in introducing a fee per tonne of CO2 embedded (CO2e) within the domestic extraction of coal, oil and gas.”
The report outlines that, if introduced in OECD countries in 2024 at a low initial rate of $5 per tonne of CO2e increasing by $5 per tonne each year, the tax would raise a total of $900bn by 2030. This, it says could be split so that 80% ($720bn) went to the newly established Loss and Damage Fund for helping developing countries with in responses to climate losses and damages and 20% ($180bn) was retained by countries for use domestically.
Certainly, ways to ensure money finds its way to transition efforts are necessary, with upwards of $100trn of global spending typically estimated as being required by 2050 – and some estimates being closer to $300trn.
David Hillman, director of Stamp Out Poverty and co-author of the Climate Damages Tax report said of the proposed tax: “This is surely the fairest way to boost revenues for the Loss and Damage Fund to ensure that it is sufficiently financed as to be fit for purpose.”
People collect plastic waste at a landfill in North Sumatra, Indonesia on March 27, 2024. (Photo: Kartik Byma/AFP via Getty Images)
“The question for every government now is this—will you negotiate a treaty to protect the health of your people; or will you negotiate a treaty to protect the profits of the fossil fuel industry?”
A report released Thursday estimates that countries worldwide are on pace to generate 220 million tonnes of total plastic waste this year, a finding that comes as governments are set to convene in Ottawa, Canada later this month to hash out a binding global treaty to limit the toxic pollution that is inundating waterways and communities across the planet.
The new report from EA – Earth Action (EA) projects that Plastic Overshoot Day—the point at which the amount of plastic waste produced exceeds the capacity of global management systems—will arrive on September 5 this year. Over a third of the total plastic waste created this year will end up in nature, according to the analysis.
On average, each person globally contributes 28 kilograms of plastic pollution per year. Previous research has shown that just 20 companies are responsible for more than half of the world’s total single-use plastic waste.
“The findings are unequivocal; improvements in waste management capacity are outpaced by rising plastic production, making progress almost invisible,” EA co-CEO Sarah Perreard said in a statement Thursday, criticizing the “assumption that recycling and waste management capacity will solve the plastics crisis.”
That assumption has been peddled for decades by the fossil fuel industry, which has a major interest in thwarting attempts to curb the production, use, and waste of plastics. Nearly all plastic is made from chemicals sourced from fossil fuels.
Sian Sutherland, co-founder of A Plastic Planet, said the new report underscores that “plastic pollution has set humanity on the road to ecological and humanitarian disaster.”
“We have a narrow window of opportunity this year to create a global plastics treaty that will protect not only our ocean, our air, our soil but our own children,” said Sutherland. “The question for every government now is this—will you negotiate a treaty to protect the health of your people; or will you negotiate a treaty to protect the profits of the fossil fuel industry? Viable solutions are already available at scale, giving us materials and systems that work in harmony with nature, not against it.”
“Close to 50% of the world’s population currently lives in areas where waste generated has already exceeded the capacity to manage it.”
Late last year, the third round of U.N. plastics treaty talks ended without a breakthrough as major oil-producing countries such as Saudi Arabia obstructed the proceedings, the fossil fuel industry worked to sabotage the negotiations, and the U.S. declined to forcefully push for a global pact that meaningfully curtails plastics production.
The U.S. is among the world’s leading generators of plastic waste, producing nearly 100 kilograms per capita each year. The U.S. and other rich nations also export tremendous amounts of plastic waste around the world, undercutting efforts to tackle the pollution crisis.
A Greenpeace International survey released earlier this month found that two-thirds of the U.S. public wants a global plastics treaty that bans single-use plastic packaging. A separate poll commissioned by WWF and the Plastic Free Foundation showed that 88% of global citizens support banning “unnecessary single-use plastic products” such as shopping bags.
In an op-ed for Euronews Green on Thursday, Perreard of EA wrote that “whilst policy has been mooted, schemes devised, and initiatives launched, plastic has continued to rise, and our planet and its people have sat under an ever-darkening cloud of pollution that showers its toxic consequences upon us.”
“Close to 50% of the world’s population currently lives in areas where waste generated has already exceeded the capacity to manage it, with the figure projected to rise to 66% by 5 September,” Perreard noted. “With the fourth round of negotiations in Ottawa at the end of this month, we can no longer ignore the facts, we can no longer afford to resist the change that should be set in motion through the treaty.”
A young woman protects herself from the sun in São Paulo, Brazil, on 14 November 2023. Photograph: Sebastião Moreira/EPA
Global concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide climbed to unseen levels in 2023, underlining climate crisis
The levels of the three most important heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere reached new record highs again last year, US scientists have confirmed, underlining the escalating challenge posed by the climate crisis.
The global concentration of carbon dioxide, the most important and prevalent of the greenhouse gases emitted by human activity, rose to an average of 419 parts per million in the atmosphere in 2023 while methane, a powerful if shorter-lasting greenhouse gas, rose to an average of 1922 parts per billion. Levels of nitrous oxide, the third most significant human-caused warming emission, climbed slightly to 336 parts per billion.
Through the burning of fossil fuels, animal agriculture and deforestation, the world’s CO2 levels are now more than 50% higher than they were before the era of mass industrialization. Methane, which comes from sources including oil and gas drilling and livestock, has surged even more dramatically in recent years, Noaa said, and now has atmospheric concentrations 160% larger than in pre-industrial times.
Noaa said the onward march of greenhouse gas levels was due to the continued use of fossil fuels, as well as the impact of wildfires, which spew carbon-laden smoke into the air. Nitrous oxide, meanwhile, has risen due to the widespread use of nitrogen fertilizer and the intensification of agriculture.
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Because of a lag between CO2 levels and their impact, as well as the hundreds of years that the emissions remain in the atmosphere, the timescale of the climate crisis is enormous. Scientists have warned that governments need to rapidly slash emissions to net zero, and then start removing carbon from the atmosphere to bring down future temperature increases.
The Institute of Economic Affairs has its headquarters on Lord North Street, Westminster. Credit: Des Blenkinsopp (CC BY-SA 2.0)
A senior figure at the influential Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) think tank contributed to a new documentary that spread numerous myths about climate change.
Stephen Davies, an academic who has worked in educational outreach roles at the IEA since 2010, appeared several times in Climate The Movie: The Cold Truth – a new film directed by climate science denier Martin Durkin.
In the documentary, Davies claims that climate activists want to impose an “austere” life on ordinary people. “Behind all the talk about a climate emergency, climate crisis” is “an animus and hostility towards” working-class people, “their lifestyle, their beliefs and a desire to change it by force if necessary,” he says.
According to the website Skeptical Science, which debunks climate misinformation, Climate The Movie contains more than two dozen myths about climate change. The film suggests that we shouldn’t be worried about greenhouse gas emissions, because plants need carbon dioxide. “We’re in a CO2 famine,” one interviewee claims.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s foremost climate science body, has stated that carbon dioxide “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought”.
Climate The Movie producer Thomas Nelson told DeSmog that “I see the misguided fight against carbon dioxide as being as crazy as fighting against oxygen or water vapour, and I think scaring innocent children about this is deeply evil”.
The IEA said that “Steve firmly believes that climate change is happening and carbon emissions are having an impact. His view that climate policy imposes costs, particularly on working-class communities, is entirely mainstream. IEA publications and spokespeople have supported action on climate change, including carbon pricing.”
A screenshot of Stephen Davies of the Institute of Economic Affairs in Climate The Movie: The Cold Truth. Credit: Climate The Movie / YouTube
In 2018, Greenpeace’s investigative journalism unit Unearthed revealed that the IEA had received funding from oil major BP every year since 1967. In response to the story, an IEA spokeswoman said: “It is surely uncontroversial that the IEA’s principles coincide with the interests of our donors.”
The IEA also received a £21,000 grant from U.S. oil major ExxonMobil in 2005.
The IEA has extensive influence in politics and the media. It was pivotal to Liz Truss’s short-lived premiership as prime minister, and has boasted of its access to Conservative ministers and MPs. During the year ending March 2023, the IEA appeared in the media on 5,265 occasions, a figure 43 percent higher than its previous peak in 2019.
The group has also received donations from a number of philanthropic trusts accused of channelling funds from the fossil fuel industry and helping to support climate science denial groups. The IEA is a member of the Atlas Network – an international collaboration of “extreme” free market groups that have been accused of promoting the interests of fossil fuel companies and other large corporations.
It’s not known if the IEA has received funding from BP since 2018.
The IEA is a prominent supporter of the continued and extended use of fossil fuels. The group has advocated for the ban to be lifted on fracking for shale gas, calling it the “moral and economic choice”. The IEA has also said that a ban on new North Sea oil and gas would be “madness”, has criticised the windfall tax imposed on North Sea oil and gas firms, and said that the government’s commitment to “max out” the UK’s fossil fuel reserves is a “welcome step”.
The IEA is part of the Tufton Street network – a cluster of libertarian think tanks and pressure groups that are in favour of more fossil fuel extraction and are opposed to state-led climate action. These groups are characterised by a lack of transparency over their sources of funding. The IEA does not publicly declare the names of its donors.
“From Brexit to Trussonomics, the IEA has consistently peddled and promoted destructive and damaging policies,” Green Party MP Caroline Lucas told DeSmog. “Yet perhaps nothing will prove more dangerous long term than the stream of climate denialism and calls to delay action that have been pouring out of Tufton Street for many years.
“Clearly the IEA is now ramping up its climate culture war and the Conservative Party has been following suit. The cross-party consensus on climate action we used to have in Parliament is under strain like never before.”
The IEA and Stephen Davies were approached for comment.
Climate The Movie
During the documentary, Davies suggests that action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is being used to limit the freedom of individuals. He claims that climate activists want to impose “a much more austere simple kind of lifestyle” on people “in which the consumption choices of the great bulk of the population are controlled or even prohibited.”
Davies adds that: “What you have here is a classic example of class hypocrisy and self-interest masquerading as public spirited concern. You could take these kinds of green socialist more seriously if they lived off grid, they cut their own consumption down to the minimum, they never flew. Instead you get constant talk about how human consumption is destroying the planet but the people making all this talk show absolutely no signs of reducing their own.”
The documentary also features an interview with Benny Peiser, the director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) – the UK’s leading climate science denial group. Peiser has previously claimed that it would be “extraordinary anyone should think there is a climate crisis”, while the GWPF has expressed the view that carbon dioxide has been mischaracterised as pollution, when in fact it is a “benefit to the planet”.
The film was favourably reviewed by commentator Toby Young in The Spectator magazine, who described it as “a phenomenon”. Young has previously said that he’s sceptical about the idea of human-caused climate change.
The IPCC has stated it is “unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land”, while scientists at NASA have found that the last 10 years were the hottest on record. Earth’s average surface temperature in 2023 was the warmest since records began in 1880.
The IPCC has also warned that false and misleading information “undermines climate science and disregards risk and urgency” of climate action.
The documentary also features Claire Fox, a member of the House of Lords who was nominated for a peerage by former prime minister Boris Johnson in 2020.
Fox used the documentary to claim that, by tackling climate change, people will be forced to pay more “to simply live the lives that they were leading”.
She suggests that supporters of climate action are trying to “take away what we consider to be not luxuries but necessities.”
The UK’s Climate Change Committee, which advises the government on measures to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, estimates that the combined policies will cost less than one percent of the country’s national output.
The Office for Budget Responsibility, the UK’s independent economic forecaster, has also said that “the costs of failing to get climate change under control would be much larger than those of bringing emissions down to net zero”.
Claire Fox and the GWPF were approached for comment.
A Charitable Cause?
The IEA is a registered charity, meaning that it receives generous tax breaks.
The group justifies this charitable status partly on the basis of its educational outreach programme, which aims to “equip tomorrow’s leaders with a deep understanding of free market economics”.
The IEA claims that: “Our aim is to change the climate of opinion in the long term and our work with students is a key part of this.”
In the year ending March 2023, the group claimed to have engaged with 3,500 students and 1,200 teachers via its seminars, internships and summer schools.
Formerly the IEA’s head of education and now a senior education fellow, Davies is a senior member of the group’s outreach programme. He is the first person listed in the IEA’s student speakers brochure, which advertises the IEA staff members who are available to speak at schools or universities.
The brochure also lists the IEA’s chief operating officer Andy Mayer, who has said that the government should “get rid of” its target of achieving net zero emissions by 2050, which he called a “very hard left, socialist, central-planning model”.
The non-profit Good Law Project recently made a complaint to the Charity Commission about the IEA, claiming that the libertarian group had breached charity rules. Namely, the Good Law Project claims that the IEA is in breach of rules stating that charities must avoid presenting “biased and selective information in support of a preconceived point of view”.
The Charity Commission rejected this complaint, stating that: “We have assessed the concerns raised and have not identified concerns that the charity is acting outside of its objects or the Commission’s published guidance.”
Good Law Project campaigns manager Hannah Greer told DeSmog: “It won’t be a surprise to anyone that the IEA is cementing its role as a major mouthpiece for climate change scepticism. It’s a huge scandal that the IEA is still allowed to peddle fringe views under the guise of being an ‘educational charity’ while benefiting from taxpayer subsidies.
“This has been allowed to happen because we have seen alarming and unambiguous regulatory failure from the Charity Commission – who have been presented with evidence of how the IEA is flouting charity law, but have chosen to look the other way.”
