Oil Industry Executives Privately Contradicted Their Public Statements on Climate, Files Show

"Documents obtained by congressional investigators show that oil industry executives privately downplayed their companies' own public messages about efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," reports the New York Times, "and weakened industrywide commitments to push for climate policies...." At Royal Dutch Shell, an October 2020 email sent by an employee, discussing talking points for Shell's president for the United States, said that the company's announcement of a pathway to "net zero" emissions — the point at which the world would no longer be pumping planet-warming gases into the atmosphere — "has nothing to do with our business plans." These and other documents, reviewed by The New York Times, come from a cache of hundreds of thousands of pages of corporate emails, memos and other files obtained under subpoena as part of an examination by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform into the fossil fuel industry's efforts over the decades to mislead the public about its role in climate change, dismissing evidence that the burning of fossil fuels was driving an increase in global temperatures even as their own scientists warned of a clear link.... "It's well established that these companies actively misled the American public for decades about the risks of climate change," said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who spearheaded the investigation with Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., who leads the House committee. "The problem is that they continue to mislead," Khanna said. The article also points out that at a government hearing last year, oil industry executives "acknowledged that the burning of their products was driving climate change, although none pledged to end their financial support for efforts to block action on climate change, and they said that fossil fuels were here to stay."

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