One of the six co-founders of Sunrise, Varshini Prakash said, "all of us were feeling the sense of unease and frustration that the hurricanes were getting bigger, the fires were getting bigger... But our movements weren't growing with them." (Carolyn Beeler, "The 'Green New Deal' started with six college grads. Now, they're recruiting an army of young people", January 14, 2019). So Prakash organized a successful fossil fuel divestment campaign at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In July 2017 the Sunrise Movement launched itself "with a big idea:
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the Green New Deal, a series of proposals to move America off fossil fuels fast by creating millions of green jobs.
"We really see it is not just a climate policy, but a socio-economic project to rival some of the greatest projects in American history," Prakash said (pri.org, January 14, 2019). The Green New Deal skyrocketed to fame when the Sunrise Movement staged a sit-in at the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Upon their invitation for support, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez showed up in person to join the Sunrise members in Pelosi's office. Immediately, the Green New Deal was put on the world map by the media who showed up. Interest in the group and the Green New Deal immediately skyrocketed.
GREEN NEW DEAL RESOLUTION
Introduced on February 7, 2019, outlined in a House Resolution (H.RES.109), authored by U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and co-sponsored by U.S. Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts, the Green New Deal states:
Exhibit 1-2
RESOLUTION
Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.
Whereas the October 2018 report entitled “Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 ºC” by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the November 2018 Fourth National Climate Assessment report found that—
(1) human activity is the dominant cause of observed climate change over the past century;
(2) a changing climate is causing sea levels to rise and an increase in wildfires, severe storms, droughts, and other
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extreme weather events that threaten human life, healthy communities, and critical infrastructure;
(3) global warming at or above 2 degrees Celsius beyond pre-industrialized levels will cause—
(A) mass migration from the regions most affected by climate change;
(B) more than $500,000,000,000 in lost annual economic output in the United States by the year 2100;
(C) wildfires that, by 2050, will annually burn at least twice as much forest area in the western United States than was typically burned by wildfires in the years preceding 2019;
(D) a loss of more than 99 percent of all coral reefs on Earth;
(E) more than 350,000,000 more people to be exposed globally to deadly heat stress by 2050; and
(F) a risk of damage to $1,000,000,000,000 of public infrastructure and coastal real estate in the United States; and
(4) global temperatures must be kept below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrialized levels to avoid the most severe impacts of a changing climate, which will require—
(A) global reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from human sources of 40 to 60 percent from 2010 levels by 2030; an
(B) net-zero global emissions by 2050;
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Whereas, because the United States has historically been responsible for a disproportionate amount of greenhouse gas emissions, having emitted 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions through 2014, and has a high technological capacity, the United States must take a leading role in reducing emissions through economic transformation;
Whereas the United States is currently experiencing several related crises, with—
(1) life expectancy declining while basic needs, such as clean air, clean water, healthy food, and adequate health care, housing, transportation, and education, are inaccessible to a significant portion of the United States population;
(2) a 4-decade trend of wage stagnation, deindustrialization, and antilabor policies that has led to—
(A) hourly wages overall stagnating since the 1970s despite increased worker productivity;
(B) the third-worst level of socioeconomic mobility in the developed world before the Great Recession;
(C) the erosion of the earning and bargaining power of workers in the United States; and
(D) inadequate resources for public sector workers to confront the challenges of climate change at local, State, and Federal levels; and
(3) the greatest income inequality since the 1920s, with—
(A) the top 1 percent of earners accruing 91 percent of
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gains in the first few years of economic recovery after the Great Recession;
(B) a large racial wealth divide amounting to a difference of 20 times more wealth between the average white family and the average black family; and
(C) a gender earnings gap that results in women earning approximately 80 percent as much as men, at the median;
Whereas climate change, pollution, and environmental destruction have exacerbated systemic racial, regional, social, environmental, and economic injustices (referred to in this preamble as “systemic injustices”) by disproportionately affecting indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (referred to in this preamble as “frontline and vulnerable communities”);
Whereas, climate change constitutes a direct threat to the national security of the United States—
(1) by impacting the economic, environmental, and social stability of countries and communities around the world; and
(2) by acting as a threat multiplier;
Whereas the Federal Government-led mobilizations during World War II and the New Deal created the greatest middle class that the United States has ever seen, but many members of frontline and vulnerable communities were
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excluded from many of the economic and societal benefits of those mobilizations; and
Whereas the House of Representatives recognizes that a new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal era is a historic opportunity—
(1) to create millions of good, high-wage jobs in the United States;
(2) to provide unprecedented levels of prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States; and
(3) to counteract systemic injustices: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that—
(1) it is the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal—
(A) to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers;
(B) to create millions of good, high-wage jobs and ensure prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States;
(C) to invest in the infrastructure and industry of the United States to sustainably meet the challenges of the 21st century;
(D) to secure for all people of the United States for generations to come—
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(i) clean air and water;
(ii) climate and community resiliency;
(iii) healthy food;
(iv) access to nature; and
(v) a sustainable environment; and
(E) to promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (referred to in this resolution as “frontline and vulnerable communities”);
(2) the goals described in subparagraphs (A) through (E) of paragraph (1) (referred to in this resolution as the “Green New Deal goals”) should be accomplished through a 10-year national mobilization (referred to in this resolution as the “Green New Deal mobilization”) that will require the following goals and projects—
(A) building resiliency against climate change-related disasters, such as extreme weather, including by leveraging funding and providing investments for community-defined projects and strategies;
(B) repairing and upgrading the infrastructure in the United States, including—
(i) by eliminating pollution and greenhouse gas emissions as much as technologically feasible;
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(ii) by guaranteeing universal access to clean water;
(iii) by reducing the risks posed by climate impacts; and
(iv) by ensuring that any infrastructure bill considered by Congress addresses climate change;
(C) meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources, including—
(i) by dramatically expanding and upgrading renewable power sources; and
(ii) by deploying new capacity;
(D) building or upgrading to energy-efficient, distributed, and “smart” power grids, and ensuring affordable access to electricity;
(E) upgrading all existing buildings in the United States and building new buildings to achieve maximum energy efficiency, water efficiency, safety, affordability, comfort, and durability, including through electrification;
(F) spurring massive growth in clean manufacturing in the United States and removing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing and industry as much as is technologically feasible, including by expanding renewable energy manufacturing and investing in existing manufacturing and industry;
(G) working collaboratively with farmers and ranchers in the United States to remove pollution and greenhouse
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gas emissions from the agricultural sector as much as is technologically feasible, including—
(i) by supporting family farming;
(ii) by investing in sustainable farming and land use practices that increase soil health; and
(iii) by building a more sustainable food system that ensures universal access to healthy food;
(H) overhauling transportation systems in the United States to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector as much as is technologically feasible, including through investment in—
(i) zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing;
(ii) clean, affordable, and accessible public transit; and
(iii) high-speed rail;
(I) mitigating and managing the long-term adverse health, economic, and other effects of pollution and climate change, including by providing funding for community-defined projects and strategies;
(J) removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and reducing pollution by restoring natural ecosystems through proven low-tech solutions that increase soil carbon storage, such as land preservation and afforestation;
(K) restoring and protecting threatened, endangered, and fragile ecosystems through locally appropriate and
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science-based projects that enhance biodiversity and support climate resiliency;
(L) cleaning up existing hazardous waste and abandoned sites, ensuring economic development and sustainability on those sites;
(M) identifying other emission and pollution sources and creating solutions to remove them; and
(N) promoting the international exchange of technology, expertise, products, funding, and services, with the aim of making the United States the international leader on climate action, and to help other countries achieve a Green New Deal;
(3) a Green New Deal must be developed through transparent and inclusive consultation, collaboration, and partnership with frontline and vulnerable communities, labor unions, worker cooperatives, civil society groups, academia, and businesses; and
(4) to achieve the Green New Deal goals and mobilization, a Green New Deal will require the following goals and projects—
(A) providing and leveraging, in a way that ensures that the public receives appropriate ownership stakes and returns on investment, adequate capital (including through community grants, public banks, and other public financing), technical expertise, supporting policies, and other forms of assistance to communities, organizations, Federal, State, and local government agencies, and businesses working on the Green New Deal mobilization;
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(B) ensuring that the Federal Government takes into account the complete environmental and social costs and impacts of emissions through—
(i) existing laws;
(ii) new policies and programs; and
(iii) ensuring that frontline and vulnerable communities shall not be adversely affected;
(C) providing resources, training, and high-quality education, including higher education, to all people of the United States, with a focus on frontline and vulnerable communities, so that all people of the United States may be full and equal participants in the Green New Deal mobilization;
(D) making public investments in the research and development of new clean and renewable energy technologies and industries;
(E) directing investments to spur economic development, deepen and diversify industry and business in local and regional economies, and build wealth and community ownership, while prioritizing high-quality job creation and economic, social, and environmental benefits in frontline and vulnerable communities, and deindustrialized communities, that may otherwise struggle with the transition away from greenhouse gas intensive industries;
(F) ensuring the use of democratic and participatory processes that are inclusive of and led by frontline and vulnerable communities and workers to plan, implement, and administer the Green New Deal
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mobilization at the local level;
(G) ensuring that the Green New Deal mobilization creates high-quality union jobs that pay prevailing wages, hires local workers, offers training and advancement opportunities, and guarantees wage and benefit parity for workers affected by the transition;
(H) guaranteeing a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States;
(I) strengthening and protecting the right of all workers to organize, unionize, and collectively bargain free of coercion, intimidation, and harassment;
(J) strengthening and enforcing labor, workplace health and safety, antidiscrimination, and wage and hour standards across all employers, industries, and sectors;
(K) enacting and enforcing trade rules, procurement standards, and border adjustments with strong labor and environmental protections—
(i) to stop the transfer of jobs and pollution overseas; and
(ii) to grow domestic manufacturing in the United States;
(L) ensuring that public lands, waters, and oceans are protected and that eminent domain is not abused;
(M) obtaining the free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous peoples for all decisions that affect indigenous peoples and their traditional territories,
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honoring all treaties and agreements with indigenous peoples, and protecting and enforcing the sovereignty and land rights of indigenous peoples;
(N) ensuring a commercial environment where every businessperson is free from unfair competition and domination by domestic or international monopolies; and
(O) providing all people of the United States with—
(i) high-quality health care;
(ii) affordable, safe, and adequate housing;
(iii) economic security; and
(iv) clean water, clean air, healthy and affordable food, and access to nature.
Widespread Oil and Gas Campaign Contributions Make Congressional Leadership Lukewarm or Hostile to the Green New Deal
After eight long years in the wilderness Democrats recaptured the majority in the House of Representatives in November 2018. The overwhelming majority of them were incumbents who had received corporate oil and gas money for their campaigns over the years. Several progressive Democratic challengers such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib, had strong grassroots support and refused corporate money. They won impressively and are fighting for progressive policies in Congress. They have been strong leaders in the fight for the Green New Deal. In fact, Congresswoman
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Ocasio-Cortez is the lead sponsor of the Green New Deal resolution (H.Res.109) in the House and has been the bold, national leader and public face of the Green New Deal ever since.
With the Democratic sweep of the House and the victory of several high-profile progressives, such as Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Pressley, and Tlaib, many environmental activists thought that House Democrats would take bold climate action immediately. However since the November, 2018 midterm election the House Democratic leadership has shown a lack of urgency on the climate change issue despite new alarming scientific information showing that the climate crisis is getting much worse at a faster rate than what was thought previously (thinkprogress.org, "New House climate committee even weaker than panel from more than a decade ago," January 4, 2019, by Mark Hand). Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive climate leaders had asked for the establishment of a powerful House Select Committee for a Green New Deal, that would have subpoena power and the power to write legislation. The select committee established by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was given neither power, unlike the previous select committee on climate in 2007, during Pelosi's previous Speakership, which did have subpoena power. This new and much weaker House Select Committee on Climate Crisis will allow its members to accept campaign contributions from fossil fuel companies and will have no language on racial and economic justice, which are important elements of the Green New Deal.
The Senate Republican leadership headed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been even more hostile to and critical of the Green New Deal. McConnell called it "socialism" and a "crippling proposal." In a blatant attempt to shame and divide the Senate Democrats, Majority Leader McConnell scheduled a procedural vote with no time for discussion or debate of this thought-provoking and far reaching resolution. It was voted down by 57 Senators, all Republicans joined by three Democrats and one Independent. 43 Senators, one independent and the rest Democrats voted "present." All 57 Senators who voted "no" on the Green New Deal have received more than $55,000,000 in contributions from fossil fuel companies, according to Oil Change United States. (ecowatch.com).
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Here's where the dirty little secret of Dollar Democracy shows its face: in the House of Representatives, the oil and gas industry, in the 2018 election cycle, had donated a total of $14,553,123 to 237 Republicans, an average contribution of $61,405 each; the oil and gas industry had donated a total of $2,357,732 to 161 House Democrats, for an average of $14,644 each. In the Senate the oil and gas industry had donated a total of $3,699,149 to 51 Republicans for an average of $72,532 each; the oil and gas industry had donated a total of $1,331,302 to 47 Democrats for a average of $28,325 each. Two independent senators received a total of $36,598 total for an average of $18,299 each, from the oil and gas industry (OpenSecrets.org). It would surprise many people to know that 92% of the members of the U.S. House of Representatives had taken campaign money from the oil and gas industry; and 100% of the members of the U.S. Senate had received money for their campaigns from the oil and gas industry. This money includes donations from owners, investors, and employees of the corporation.
Those donations were only for one election cycle. Imagine how much more money these elected officials have received for all of their other previous campaigns. Can they truly vote independently on behalf of the public interest and for the American people, not for the oil corporations?
Congressional leaders also receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from the oil and gas industry. For example, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House received $126,315 in oil and gas money contributions from 1998 to 2018. Democrat Steny Hoyer, the House Majority Leader received $355,195 during the same period. Republican Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader received $181,374 from 1998 to 2018. Republican Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader received $6,046,751 from the oil and gas industry from 1998 to 2018. Democrat Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader received $819,400 from the oil and gas industry during the same period.
Given the millions of dollars donated to the vast majority of Members of Congress is it any wonder that the Green New Deal's
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momentum has being slowed by corporate-funded Congressional leaders as well as most rank-and-file Members of Congress?
Dollar Democracy in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election Gave Us Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican President Donald Trump
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy for the U.S. Presidency in April 2015. She was immediately considered the front runner by the establishment media, the political establishment, and most of the so-called pundits, or political analysts. They based their judgment not only on her long visibility and service in public life, but just as importantly on her ability to raise tremendous amounts of campaign money, which enabled her to establish a nationwide state-by-state presidential campaign organization. After serving as First Lady of Arkansas, she served as First Lady of the U.S. and had a prominent leadership role in the Bill Clinton Administration's healthcare reform. She was then elected U.S. Senator from New York. After losing a high profile Democratic Presidential primary election contest against Senator Barack Obama in 2012, she proceeded to serve as President Obama's U.S. Secretary of State.
In addition to these personal political achievements, Secretary Clinton had at her disposal a juggernaut political fundraising machine built by her and her husband U.S. President Bill Clinton. Through the June 2016 primary elections Hillary's campaign and pro-Hillary super PACs raised $386.1 million and spent $301.4 million. Secretary Clinton's main rival in the Democratic primaries was U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders who raised just over $228 million. Sanders refused, on principle and in practice, to allow super PACs to aid his campaign.
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Early Money is Like Yeast, It Makes the Dough Rise!
There is a saying in American politics: "Early Money is like yeast, it makes the dough rise." This was never more true than with Hillary Clinton. Hillary's early money, much of it from wealthy individuals and political action committees, baked her a lot of bread which allowed her to capture the support of more big donors and political action committees from corporate interests, labor, Wall Street, from some small donors, and even from some environmental groups. Just as it takes money to make money in a deregulated capitalist system, it takes early campaign money to attract early support and more campaign money. This is how the Clinton political–financial juggernaut was able to capture the support of the majority of the Democratic Party insiders, organized interest groups, big donors and primary election super-delegates. The Democratic Party super-delegates were elected officials, Democratic members of Congress, Governors and party leaders, and were overwhelmingly supporters of the establishment candidate, Hillary Clinton. The vast majority of super-delegates pledged their support early on to the Hillary for President campaign. Whenever the news media reported primary election or caucus results on the TV screen, the public could see a huge numerical advantage in delegates for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders based on the boost that her super-delegate numbers gave her. Due to reforms championed by the Sanders/Progressive wing of the Democratic Party, the power of super-delegates has somewhat been reduced: super-delegates will not be allowed to vote on the first round at the national convention.
Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton were the exact polar opposites of each other as candidates in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary elections. Bernie refused to accept corporate PAC money while Hillary welcomed it and raised a lot of it; Bernie hailed from the small rural state of Vermont and was relatively unknown nationally despite being in the U.S. Senate and House for a couple of decades; Hillary was already a national figure when she was elected U.S. Senator from New York, a large diverse state with the biggest urban financial center of New York City, the home of the huge Wall Street investment banks, whose
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members and investors provided a great campaign-finance base for her. Hillary was widely criticized for making three private speeches to Wall Street audiences for $250,000 each in personal income. Bernie railed against the big banks and other corporate interests that he felt had bought the American government. His campaign stressed the need to fight for the 99%, not the elite corporate 1%. While refusing their corporate-generated money for his campaign, he relied primarily on campaign money from small individual donors. He had over 2.5 million individual donors in the primary elections; in contrast Hillary had 467,230 individual donors, over half were large donors giving over $200 each, in both the primary and general elections. Sanders relished the chance to remind people that his average donation was $27. Federal Election Commission records show that the majority of his donors were small donors who gave less than $200 each to his campaign (opensecrets.org).
In the 2016 Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton's early and big-money advantage and fame over Bernie Sanders allowed her to garner early support from Democratic Party and financial donor elites. This enabled her to win a majority of votes cast in the early first-half of the Democratic primaries, which together with her large super-delegate lead, provided her the momentum to win the Democratic presidential nomination. Bernie's remarkable grassroots campaign, despite being outspent by Hillary, galvanized enough support, particularly among young voters, to provide him with a majority of popular votes in the second half of the Democratic presidential primary season. However, this was inadequate to put Bernie over the top in the end. Bernie had other headwinds that he faced: the Democratic Party elite and establishment favored Hillary throughout the primaries. Besides Bernie being a registered Independent voter all his life, until he ran for president in 2016, the Democratic Party and financial elite did not favor his position on the issues such as single-payer Medicare for All healthcare, tuition free college education, and a financial transaction tax on Wall Street to pay for it. The Democratic Party elite also did not like Bernie Sanders' criticism of big money in politics, which they of course accepted and favored. The Democratic Party elite were heavily tied to Wall Street. Just visit opensecrets.org to learn more about campaign contributions from the Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (FIRE) industries to both the
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Democratic and Republican Parties and their candidates for office.
In the 2016 presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Dollar Democracy was on steroids: Hillary's campaign committee and super PACs that supported her from the outside raised and spent approximately $794,875,608 in the 2016 election cycle. Donald Trump's campaign committee and super PACs that supported them from the outside raised and spent approximately $408,396,207. In addition, Donald Trump was a well-known television personality, a real estate multibillionaire, and a candidate for president. Also, he received approximately $1 billion worth of free airtime from the various television networks, particularly during the Republican primary election season. As pre-election polling data predicted, Hillary Clinton won almost 3 million more popular votes than Donald Trump. Yet she lost the presidential election in the Electoral College. Most of the data from polling after the primary election showed that Hillary Clinton would beat Donald Trump in the November general election by 5 to 7 percentage points. Data from the same polls showed that Bernie Sanders would beat Donald Trump by 8 or 9 percentage points, if he had been the Democratic Nominee. On November 3, 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump in the nationwide popular vote by two percentage points, 48% to 45.9%. She lost the electoral college votes 232 to 306, and lost the presidential election to Donald Trump. (nytimes.com, August 9, 2017).
The American Petroleum Institute, Exxon, and Other Major Multinational Oil and Gas Corporations Knew About Climate Change/Global Warming Over 40 Years Ago, and Concealed It from the Public
The biggest and most prominent lobbying group for the multinational oil and gas corporations is the American Petroleum Institute (API). At the time, its leading members such as Exxon, Mobil, Amoco, Philips, Texaco, Shell, Sunoco, Sohio, as well as Standard Oil of California, and Gulf Oil, Chevron's predecessors, created and used a
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task force to monitor and share climate research between 1979 and 1983. James J. Nelson, a former career Air Force pilot and director of the first air quality monitoring system in Fairfax County, Virginia served as director of this Climate and Energy Task Force. The task force members included senior scientists and engineers from these oil and gas corporations. This indicates that the oil industry, including Exxon, was aware of the possible impact on the world's climate of its activity of producing fossil fuels, the burning of which, produced global warming greenhouse gases. According to a memo by an Exxon task force representative, a background paper on CO2 informed API members in 1979 that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was rising steadily and it predicted when the first clearest effects of climate change might be felt. An investigation by the Pulitzer prize-winning nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization, Inside Climate News, found that Exxon "launched its own cutting-edge CO2 sampling program in 1978 in order to understand a phenomenon it suspected could harm its business. About a decade later, Exxon spearheaded campaigns to cast doubt on climate science and stall regulation of greenhouse gases." (insideclimatenews.org, December 22,2015).
Before President George W. Bush handed the fossil fuel industry a major victory by withdrawing the U.S. from the Kyoto Protocol, a worldwide agreement to reduce greenhouse gases, the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) authority was growing as early as 1983, and oil companies felt that the EPA was silencing them. It was getting harder for corporations to get scientific papers published or to gain favorable attention from the media. Oil company leaders were worried that this would bring government overregulation. So, the American Petroleum Institute decided that it would not be enough to have scientists meeting in a task force on climate change or other pollution issues. It was going to need lobbyists to influence politicians on environmental issues! (insideclimatenews.org).
By the 1990s the American Petroleum Institute (API) joined Exxon, other fossil fuel companies and major manufacturers in the Global Climate Coalition (GCC). The GCC was a lobbying group with the objective of blocking international efforts to curtail heat trapping emissions. The year after the Kyoto Protocol was adopted by countries
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to cut back on fossil fuel emissions, in 1998 the API created a campaign to convince American lawmakers and the public that climate science was too uncertain for the U.S. to ratify the treaty. The GCC and the API could declare victory when U.S. President George W. Bush pulled the U.S. out of the Kyoto agreement. A top State Department official is recorded in a June 2001 briefing memorandum, thanking the GCC because Bush "rejected the Kyoto Protocol in part based on input from you."(insideclimatenews.org, December 22, 2015).
ExxonMobil: A Case Study in Dollar Democracy and the Politics of Climate Disaster
ExxonMobil's extensive research on the causes and effects of climate change on its business and profitability began even before the research done by the American Petroleum Institute. Exxon's climate change studies were published from 1977 to 2014. Two Harvard researchers, Naomi Oreskes, a professor of the history of science whose work has focused on the energy and tobacco industries, and Geoffrey Supran, a postdoctoral fellow, reviewed nearly 200 documents representing Exxon's research and its public statements. They concluded that the corporation "misled the public about climate change even as its own scientists were recognizing greenhouse gas emissions as a risk to the planet.” (New York Times, August 23, 2017, "Exxon Misled the Public on Climate Change, Study Says", by John Schwartz). Oraskes and Supran published their peer-reviewed paper in the journal Environmental Research Letters. They also published their findings in an opinion article in the New York Times. They found that Exxon's climate change studies paralleled the scientific thinking at the time. 80% of the company's research and internal communications concluded that "climate change was real and caused by humans. But 80% of Exxon statements to the broader public, which reached a much larger audience, expressed doubt about climate change."(New York Times, August 23, 2017, "Exxon Misled the Public on Climate Change, Study Says", by John Schwartz).
Investigative reporting by the Pulitzer prize-winning Inside Climate
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News, the Los Angeles Times, and the Columbia Journalism School revealed that top Exxon officials had known everything about climate change that was to be known in the 1980s. Senior company scientist James Black told Exxon's management committee in 1977 "In the first place there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels." To verify this, Exxon outfitted an oil tanker with carbon dioxide sensors to measure concentrations of the gas over the ocean, and then funded elaborate computer models to help predict what temperatures would do in the future.(grist.org, February 19, 2016, "It's Not Just What Exxon Did – It's What the Oil Company Is Still Doing", by Bill McKibben).
As Bill McKibben points out, by 1982, in an internal corporate primer, Exxon leaders were told that, despite lingering unknowns, dealing with climate change "would require major reductions in fossil fuel combustion." Unless that happened the primer said, citing independent experts "there are some potentially catastrophic events that must be considered... Once the effects are measurable, they might not be reversible." But that document, "given wide circulation" within Exxon, was also stamped "not to be distributed externally."(grist.org, February 19, 2016). Bill McKibben, environmentalist and author, who has written extensively on the impact of global warming, is the founder of 350.org. McKibben puts it very well:
