Massachusetts will join California and New York in investigating claims that Exxon Mobil knew about the effects of climate change due to the burning of fossil fuels and hid the information for decades.
In a press conference Tuesday, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said her state would investigate the claims as well. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has announced he is investigating what Exxon Mobil knew and when, and reports indicate California Attorney General Kamala Harris began doing the same in January.
Healey made the announcement at a press conference with attorneys general from around the country who pledged to work together on fighting climate change.
“The states represented here today have long been working to sound the alarm, to put smart policies in place to speed our transition to a clean energy future, and to stop power plants from emitting millions of tons of dangerous global warming pollution into our air,” she said.
At the same press conference, U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Earl Walker also signaled he would investigate the oil giant as well.
“The Virgin Islands, which is especially vulnerable to environmental threats, has a particular interest in making sure that companies are honest about what they know about climate change,” he said.
“We are committed to ensuring a fair and transparent market where consumers can make informed choices about what they buy and from whom. If Exxon Mobil has tried to cloud their judgment, we are determined to hold the company accountable.”
The investigations stem from media reports that Exxon Mobil 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.
After 10 years of exploring the problem, Exxon Mobil — then just Exxon — decided to “engage in a campaign of denial and disinformation,” the lawmakers wrote in their October letter.
In 1982, the company prepared an internal document on carbon dioxide and climate change that stated “major reduction” in fossil fuel use would be needed to avoid catastrophic events. While that was circulating, Exxon Mobil didn’t tell regulators about their findings, according to the Inside Climate News report.
Six years after the internal document was produced, Exxon Mobil 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.
At the same time, the company was building climate change projections into the company’s future plans. Among those plans was future drilling in the Arctic because the polar ice caps would melt.
Exxon Mobil has repeatedly denied the claims and has cast aspersions on the media reports, noting that Inside Climate News received funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which works against climate change.
Katie Brown, a spokeswoman for the pro-industry Energy In Depth, said her takeaway is that most of the attorneys general on stage Thursday didn’t join the investigation.
“The two big headlines coming out of this are that this entire issue continues to be based on a horrendously reported series of stories that rely on cherry-picked statements at every turn, and the vast majority of attorneys general that stood up on stage today have no interest at all in wasting their own state’s resources the way that New York has,” Brown said.
Suzanne McCarron, vice president of public and government affairs at Exxon Mobil, said the allegations made by the attorneys general are politically motivated and based on “discredited reporting.”
She called the claims made by the activists and attorneys general “preposterous” and it would assume Exxon Mobil knew about climate change before many world scientists. She said the company had no conclusions about what the company’s research into climate change showed.
“It should come as no surprise that Exxon’s scientists discussed the available scientific research at the time and sought to build upon it through their own studies. This free exchange of ideas is essential to productive scientific inquiry,” she said.
“If such deliberations are subject to legal scrutiny through the lens of later baseless allegations, what incentive do companies have to pursue further research? The investigations targeting our company threaten to have a chilling effect on private sector research.”
