It has now been revealed Exxon Mobil knew about manmade climate change as early as 1981, but continued to fund denier institutes for decades after that to the tune of more than $30 million. This information was included in a large file of emails released by the Union of Concerned Scientists which they label as the Climate Deception Dossier.
This could be a devastating disclosure. A similar disclosure about the tobacco industry led to the Department of Justice filing a racketeering suit. Will we be seeing a racketeering lawsuit against the fossil fuel industry? We should. They have actively worked to deny the reality of climate change for the express purpose of preventing any actions to address the problem. Any such activities would certainly affect their profits. There has been considerable harm to millions (billions?) of people worldwide as a result.
Another thing I'm wondering about. Will this play out with as much attention as the doctored Climategate emails, which, even doctored, showed no misconduct but is still cited by deniers even today. Do you think any of those deniers will acknowledge these released (not stolen and altered) emails concerning activities by the fossil fuel industry?
It will be interesting to see if companies that willfully ignored environmental damage can be held financially accountable in the future.
ReplyDeleteThe Climategate emails oh man that is when you learn many climate change deniers will happily say black is white if it suits their agenda. I am continually told they were "leaked" and I have to explain that they were stolen, filtered and sorted, and distributed. This is no couple of photocopied documents that went out in someone's briefcase.
I am sure they will rationalise away UCS emails.