Exposing the oil giant 'working at the forefront of climate denial'

Hey there,

This edition covers one of the biggest fossil fuel revelations in decades – the fact that oil giant ExxonMobil knew about the cataclysmic dangers of climate change as early as the 1970s.

I caught up with Neela to find out more about how the investigation came about, the story’s impact on her, and the lasting results of their reporting. 

Inside Climate News was a small organisation at the time, headed up by David Sassoon. Inspired by an article in Harvard Business Review about what BP’s own scientists were telling it about human-driven climate change back in the 1990s, the team decided to focus on the ambitious topic of just how much the fossil fuel industry knew about climate change – and, crucially, when it knew it. 

One of Neela’s colleagues spoke to a former United States federal scientist, who explained that oil and gas companies had worked alongside government scientists to try to figure out what was happening with climate change. They also said that Exxon was a leader of this work in the 1980s.

“The clock initially had started ticking in the 90s with BP – and now was set further back,” Neela told me.

A few important points crystallised at the same time. Neela came across a 700-page transcript of a congressional hearing about climate change back in the 1970s. “I started to search it to see if any representatives of oil and gas companies were there,” she said. “Nobody was [listed] except somebody from Exxon.” 

The company representative wasn’t present at the hearing but had helped produce a report which was being discussed. 

The story grew from there. “Conversations led to people, those people’s names led us to documents. Those documents led to more names,” Neela said.

Exxon was doing its own research on how quickly the oceans could absorb atmospheric carbon and developing models that predicted how emissions might affect rising temperatures. 

Perhaps the most striking thing about Inside Climate News’s revelations was just how accurate that science turned out to be. Decades later, when the documents from the 70s and 80s were made public, researchers checked Exxon’s original predictions. As Neela said: “They were spot on”. 

As early as 1982, the company was using words like “catastrophic” to describe atmospheric warming. And it said in company documents that to avert global warming “would require major reductions in fossil fuel combustion”.

“They understood that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels were changing the climate,” Neela explained, “and that there was going to be a policy response. And so they needed to have a credible voice at the table to shape that policy response.”

But in the late 1990s, when moves were being made to combat climate change with the Kyoto protocol, Exxon made a complete reversal and started to cast doubt on the science. In October 1997, its CEO Lee Raymond said: “Let’s agree there’s a lot we really don’t know about how climate will change in the 21st century and beyond”.

In the words of Inside Climate News, the company set about “working at the forefront of climate denial, manufacturing doubt about the scientific consensus that its own scientists had confirmed”.

This was the road not taken. It’s shocking when you stop to consider the alternative that might have been.

Nevertheless, the story prompted major impacts that are still playing out ten years on. Attorney Generals in various Democrat-led states responded fast, launching state-level lawsuits against Exxon. There have been several at the state and city level in the US – some are still going through the courts today.

The team won several awards and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. And their project prompted journalists across the world to look into what their country’s fossil fuel companies knew and when. 

“You just see it repeated over and over again that institutions know about harms, and for whatever reason they don't act to address them,” Neela said.

“As soon as this story came out, I knew it was important, and I didn’t want it to fade away with the news cycle. So I went up to our nearest city, Burlington [Vermont, USA], and chained myself to a gas pump holding a sign saying “This pump temporarily closed because ExxonMobil lied about climate.”

It just made me mad. I mean, I’ve spent my life fighting this fight, and they knew from the start it was true and then decided to lie anyhow. What a lot of wasted time for all of us!

I was arrested by Burlington police for trespassing and released later that day. I’m not sure anyone has ever been arrested for trying to spread someone’s news story, but that was my goal, and I think it played some part in the fact that it lived on.

Within the climate movement everyone knew the story was important immediately, though there was an unfortunate tendency among some to say “well, of course”. I kept explaining that having it on the record made all the difference – that now, among many other things, the legal case was much clearer. 

I mentioned the story over and over at rallies and protests, and the whole “Exxon Knew” movement started to arise. It also helped momentum ahead of the Paris climate talks later that year, mostly by temporarily undercutting the narrative force of the fossil fuel industry. If a student or a professor lied like this, it would be a violation of the honour code and they’d be booted out of their position. The same thing should happen to the oil companies.

When you think about what ‘the road taken’ could have looked like ... if, say, the night [leading climate scientist] Jim Hansen testified to Congress in 1988 about the climate changing, if the CEO of Exxon had gone on TV and said, “Our scientists are telling us pretty much the same thing”, the future would have been very different. Imagine a business-industry collaboration to take on the biggest problem our species ever faced.”

My conversations with Neela and Bill left me energised – and reminded me just how crucial it is to hold those driving climate change to account. That work feels especially urgent as the world prepares for the climate talks in Brazil later this year, marking a decade since the landmark Paris Agreement.

Our environment team is already digging deep ahead of Cop30, determined to uncover the truth about the biggest polluters and put it in front of leaders with the power to act. If you’d like to stand with us in this mission, consider becoming a Bureau Insider today.

We’ll be back with more next week. Watch this space!

Take care,