Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined the other Democratic candidates for president in calling for the Department of Justice to investigate ExxonMobil over allegations the oil giant actively worked against climate scientists.
Clinton, in an appearance at White Mountains Community College in New Hampshire, was asked if she supported a possible investigation by the Justice Department into ExxonMobil.
“Yes, yes they should,” Clinton said in a video posted by 350 Action, an anti-fossil fuels group.
“There’s a lot of evidence they misled people,” she added.
The Los Angeles Times and Inside Climate News reported in a story earlier this month that the company knew in July 1977 that carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels would warm the planet. After 10 years of exploring the problem, ExxonMobil — then just Exxon — decided to actively support researchers who would refute global warming.
According to the report, ExxonMobil learned in 1977 from a senior scientist that burning fossil fuels would warm the planet. A year later, the company began researching how carbon dioxide released from the burning of fossil fuels would affect the planet.
In 1982, the company prepared an internal document on carbon dioxide and climate change that said “major reduction” in fossil fuel use would be needed to avoid catastrophic events. While that was circulating, ExxonMobil didn’t tell regulators about the findings.
Six years after the internal document was produced, ExxonMobil went on the offensive, according to the report. The company began paying for efforts that would cast doubt on climate change, including founding the Global Climate Coalition.
Most scientists blame the burning of fossil fuels for releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, causing global temperatures to rise.
Last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders, running second to Clinton in the primary race for the Democratic presidential nomination, sent a formal letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch requesting an investigation into the claims in the report.
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley also has called on Justice to investigate ExxonMobil.
ExxonMobil spokesman Alan Jeffers has repeatedly denied the allegations.
“We unequivocally reject [the] allegations, which are based on media reports that are inaccurate distortions of ExxonMobil’s more than 30-year history of climate research that was conducted in conjunction with the Department of Energy, academics and the UN International Panel on Climate Change,” Jeffers said last week. “Suggestions that ExxonMobil suppressed climate research are completely without merit.”
