Top US oil executives were accused of decades-long industry efforts to spread disinformation over the role of fossil fuels in driving global warming during congressional hearings held on Thursday, days before pivotal UN climate talks.
Democratic legislators slammed the chief executives of American supermajors ExxonMobil and Chevron alongside the US heads of Royal Dutch Shell and BP for misleading the public over the companies’ contributions to climate change in a grilling that marked the beginning of a year-long investigation into the matter.
“For far too long, Big Oil has escaped accountability for its central role in bringing our planet to the brink of a climate catastrophe. That ends today,” said Carolyn Maloney, a New York congresswoman and chair of the House of Representatives oversight and reform committee.
The hearings marked the first time a group of senior executives from the country’s biggest oil groups had appeared jointly before Congress, albeit remotely, to testify over the roles of their companies in causing climate change. They were joined by the heads of lobby groups the American Petroleum Institute and the US Chamber of Commerce.
Democrats said the industry had expanded fossil fuel production despite being aware of the role of emissions in heating the planet as far back as the 1970s. They drew parallels with 1994 hearings in which cigarette industry executives appeared before Congress and denied nicotine was addictive, triggering a wider shift in public opinion against Big Tobacco.
Maloney said that Exxon scientists had told executives in the 1970s and ’80s that burning fossil fuel was altering the climate. Instead of responding by transitioning to cleaner energy sources, “Big Oil doubled down on fossil fuels”, she said.
“Working with the American Petroleum Institute and the Chamber of
Commerce and other front groups and [public relations] firms, the industry ran a co-ordinated campaign to mislead the public, hide the dangers of its own product and derail global efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions,” the