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Exxon Mobil Corp. used language to systematically blame the climate change from fossil fuel companies on consumers, according to a new article by researchers at Harvard University.
The article, published yesterday in the journal One Earth, could bolster efforts to hold the oil giant accountable in court for its alleged global warming deception.
“This is the first computational assessment of how Exxon Mobil has used language in subtle but systematic ways to shape the way the public talks and thinks about climate change,” said Geoffrey Supran, a researcher at Harvard and co. -author of the article, said in an interview with E&E News.
“One of our general conclusions is that Exxon Mobil has used tobacco industry-mimicking rhetoric to downplay the reality and severity of climate change and to shift responsibility for climate change to itself and to consumers,” he added.
An Exxon Mobil spokesperson disputed the document, calling it part of a coordinated legal campaign against the company.
Supran and his co-author Naomi Oreskes, professor of history of science at Harvard (and columnist for Scientific American), performed a computational analysis of 180 Exxon Mobil documents from 1972 to 2019, including peer-reviewed publications, New York Times infomercials and internal memos.
Using a series of algorithms, Harvard researchers found that Exxon Mobil privately relied on certain terms while publicly avoiding them.
For example, Exxon Mobil internal documents frequently described climate change as a problem caused by “burning fossil fuels”. But in public documents, the company called global warming a problem caused by “energy demand” by “consumers.”
The public communications were aimed at shifting responsibility for climate change away from the oil giant and onto the individual consumers who heat their homes and fill their cars with gasoline, the researchers wrote.
Following their merger in 1999, Exxon and Mobil also increasingly portrayed climate change as a “risk” rather than a reality, according to the analysis.
This language sought to minimize the dangers of global warming while not outright denying their existence, the newspaper said.
Judicial battles
The researchers drew a direct comparison between Exxon Mobil and the major tobacco companies, which they say have used similar tactics to shape the public discourse on cigarette smoking.
“These schemes mimic the tobacco industry’s documented strategy of shifting responsibility from companies – who have knowingly sold a deadly product while denying its wrongdoing – to consumers,” they wrote.
In the 1990s, the attorneys general of all 50 states sued America’s largest tobacco companies for their alleged deception regarding the harmful health effects of smoking and the addictive nature of nicotine. The lawsuits resulted in a $ 206 billion settlement framework agreement (Climatewire, March 10).
Since 2017, five states and more than a dozen municipalities have filed similar complaints alleging that America’s largest oil and gas companies have misled the public about the climate risks of burning fossil fuels. The complaints call on the oil industry to help cover the costs of fighting floods, forest fires and other disasters fueled by rising global temperatures.
Supran said that while he did not conduct the study with the climate liability litigation in mind, the findings may nonetheless shed light on legal battles.
“Obviously, we did it completely independently. I never spoke to any of the lawyers involved,” Supran said. “But certainly in hindsight, our ideas may be relevant, particularly to these more nascent cases alleging misleading marketing.”
Last month, New York City filed a lawsuit claiming that Exxon Mobil, BP PLC and Royal Dutch Shell PLC had violated the city’s consumer protection law by engaging in “green laundering”, or by doing so. so that their fossil fuel products look more environmentally friendly really are.
Exxon discharge
Asked for comment on the document, Exxon spokesperson Casey Norton said in an email to E&E News: “This research is clearly part of a litigation strategy against Exxon Mobil and other energy companies. “
Norton noted that Oreskes is engaged by Sher Edling LLP, a San Francisco-based law firm that represents a large number of challengers in climate liability lawsuits. “Oreskes did not disclose this blatant conflict of interest,” he said.
Norton also pointed to partial funding of the newspaper by the Rockefeller family, which Exxon accused of supporting a climate conspiracy against the company (Climatewire, May 4).
“The research was funded by the Rockefeller Family Fund, which helps fund climate change litigation against energy companies,” he said. “This follows a previous study attacking Exxon Mobil which used a similar discredited methodology.”
Norton was referring to a 2017 article by Supran and Oreskes in the journal Environmental Research Letters which found that Exxon’s communications from 1977 to 2014 misled the public about climate science.
Exxon vice president of research and development Vijay Swarup previously called the 2017 document “fundamentally flawed” in a commentary published last year in Environmental Research Letters.
Norton concluded by noting that Exxon supports climate action, noting that the oil giant recently proposed a massive carbon capture project in Houston (Energywire, April 20).
“Exxon Mobil supports the Paris climate agreement and works to reduce corporate emissions and help customers cut emissions while working on new low-emission technologies and advocating for effective policies.” , did he declare.
In a joint statement to E&E News, Supran and Oreskes rebuffed Norton’s claims.
“Sher Edling was not involved in the article we published today, nor in any other academic work that we have done. They did not fund any of our studies; they did not review our data. or interpretations prior to its peer-reviewed publication; and we have never discussed our work with them on ExxonMobil. Therefore, there is no conflict of interest and nothing to disclose, “the researchers said.
“For context, we note that over the past four years, ExxonMobil has attacked us and our work,” they added. “It’s become a familiar model. We publish science, ExxonMobil offers tricks and character assassinations. ExxonMobil is now misleading the public about its history of misleading the public.”
Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2021. E&E News provides essential information for energy and environment professionals.
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