Saturday, July 25, 2015

Even Though Exxon Knew About Climate Change in 1981 It Spent Millions Funded Deniers for 27 Years


Earth from Space with Stars

Photo courtesy of DonkeyHotey Flickr   Page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/donkeyhotey/6143809369




The old button from the Environmental Club days which I just happened to find on Earth Day! It is a little beat up (particularly the ends of the ribbon), but no worse for the wear, I think. And it is one of the few items that I have left from those days, so it carries a lot of great memories for me! Nothing Changes Until You Do!



Here is a picture of a very similar logo, with the same message, that was on the t-shirt that I purchased from the BCC Environmental Club and, if memory serves me correctly, may even have helped to make. There were a few projects like that which club members, myself included, were regularly involved with. It has been so long, however, that I no longer recall specifically if I actually helped to make these or not, although I do believe so, since I remember seeing the process of the t-shirts being dyed. In any case, I loved this t-shirt, and have kept it ever since, even if I do not regularly wear it. Since it was part of my experience with the BCC Environmental Club days, as well as more generally having an environmental theme, it seemed appropriate to share it here. 



"Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's gred."

~Mahatma Gandhi


"Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future."
  
~John F. Kennedy  



According to a new report, Exxon was aware of climate change as  early as 1981, which was years before it really became a well-known issue to the general public. Yet, for more than a quarter of a century since, it spent millions of dollars promoting climate change denial. 

“Exxon first got interested in climate change in 1981 because it was seeking to develop the Natuna gas field off Indonesia,” Lenny Bernstein, a 30-year industry veteran and Exxon’s former in-house climate expert, wrote in the email. “This is an immense reserve of natural gas, but it is 70% CO2,” or carbon dioxide, the main driver of climate change.  

So yes, Exxon knew that climate change was real, but they worked laboriously for nearly thirty years to discredit global warming/climate change after being made aware of confirmations that climate change was real. 

Why would they do that? 

For profits, of course. Climate change, and action taken to reduce harmful carbon emissions that cause and/or exacerbate it, costs money. That would cut into Exxon's profits (and the profits of organizations like them), and remember that while the rest of the economy often struggled mightily, oil corporations kept recording record profits, year after year. It certainly has worked out for them to fund projects intent on denying climate change, even though they themselves knew better. After all, a classic component of propaganda is simply to convert everything in a more positive light, and to pain a different picture more to your liking. In that way, no matter how unfavorable it might be or how much it might discredit you, you manage to find a way of making things at least appear more in your favor. And is it any wonder that during these recent decades, we happened to see the rise of neocons praising the deregulation bug as the cure all for anything and everything, and the dismantling of laws meant to protect citizens from too powerful interests, such as corporations that increasingly extended their reach into both the government and the media. Is it really any wonder that there was a dramatic rise in neocon radio and television conservative commentators, screaming to anyone who would listen about this supposedly liberal conspiracy? Is it really any surprise that propaganda news such as Fox News, which is not real news at all, suddenly popped up from out of nowhere?

Suddenly, there was a seemingly legitimate news station (and others would stem from them) that effectively endorsed the small percentage of scientists who denied climate change (and later, they would change their arguments to accommodate the by then undeniable reality of climate change, but would focus instead on links to human activity), as well as prominent politicians who relied on these scientists in order to rather transparently protect the interests of powerful climate change denying corporations and interests. They also happened to attack unions, and not surprisingly, benefits and salaries stagnated, and the general quality of life that Westerners in general, and Americans in particular, had long enjoyed and benefited from, began to decrease dramatically. 

Deregulation became the buzz word, and it was seen only as a positive thing. Everyone seemed to agree all of a sudden that there had simply been too many regulations put into place, and so these regulations began to be dismantled, even when (perhaps especially when) they were designed to protect the public against very credible threats by powerful entities, such as corporations. Deregulation was seen as a great thing, responsible for the economic booms of the 1980's and 1990's, until it also happened to produce the Wall Street crash and near collapse of the economy in 2008. But so strong was momentum for deregulation by the point, that still, people were generally for further deregulation, thus leading to a return to the same practices that had led to the economic disaster of 2008, and an almost certain repeat of the economic collapse sometime in the future. All of this in the name of profits for the few.

As for how deregulation impacted the environment and the whole global warming debate, since everyone now seemed to agree that there was just too much government regulation, and that government was inherently evil and intrusive, it essentially disarmed government services, such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), from doing their job and maintaining environmental standards intended to protect the American people. The results speak for themselves. Not long ago, drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people from fracking was seriously polluted in West Virginia. But that was not all. Over the course of recent decades, we have seen how corporations responsible for pollution that affects the health of people living in nearby communities get away with it time and time again. Some examples of this would be Love Canal, Times Beach, and Rocky Flats, to name but a few. These are only the most famous examples, for that matter. There are plenty of others that qualify as Superfund sites for the EPA, although since funding has been attacked as part of the whole "wasteful government spending" spirit pervading the nation, people affected in such areas (and there are far more of them than you probably assume there are) are more or less on their own. Watch the movie Erin Brockovich, which is based on real life events, as an example of just how difficult, and really nary impossible, it is for regular people to truly fight back against a huge corporate entity responsible for irreparable harm in their lives. If you want an example of just how common it is for such episodes to occur, or if you want to check if there are serious contamination areas near you, I recommend visiting the EPA's Superfund website at:
http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/

Despite this being just one of the very serious issues that kept growing worse and worse, there was generally a lack of news media covering these issues in recent decades, except for the most famous and dramatic examples. You might live in an area and never know that there was a site that was either so polluted or contaminated that it threatened the health and, in some cases, the lives of local residents, to the point that these areas were in dire need of cleaning up. But not only do they exist, there are a ton of them - probably hundreds across the United States alone. Since the major news media did not report on these things (and why not?), it was all too easy to miss out on this real bit of news that could very well affect you and your loved ones personally. The supposedly responsible major news media, by and large, opted not to cover these. That leads to questions about why they would choose not to cover such stories.

However, there was a dramatic increase on the emphasis of entertainment value, even in (or perhaps, especially in) the news. We have personalities giving us entertaining banter, rather than serious individuals like Walter Cronkite providing us with "just the facts," and letting the public make up their own minds. We have news anchors that are essentially celebrities these days, and that is in keeping with our increasingly celebrity obsessed culture. Celebrities increasingly were seen as real news, as well as other things that really do not matter in the everyday lives of most people. Do we really need the morning news to show us cute videos of cats and dogs and babies, all doing adorable things? They may be cute, but how is this news, exactly? 

At exactly the point when the news around the world was growing more dire and worsening pretty much around the globe, and the potential impact of this news becoming far more serious for us all, we got a more cartoonish version of the news that keep us entertained, rather than informed. And when it came to climate change, these "news" sources seemed to give as much weight and credibility to the small percentage of the scientific community, as well as political figures, who denied climate change (and now increasingly just deny a link to human activity causing climate change) as to the vast majority of the scientific community that sees the connection. We keep hearing about the global warming "theory" instead of all of the facts that overwhelmingly show that there is more than just a little something to this whole thing. It has reached the point where now, we have a Speaker of the House who actively mocks those concerned with protecting the Earth, and who mocks Earth Day and all that it represents. And he is supposed to be among the most responsible, respected, and even esteemed political figures in the country!

Comparisons between the oil industry (particularly Exxon) and other industries that actively promote climate change denial science with the tobacco industry that continually denied a link between tobacco and cancer are growing. 

Why?

Because for the most part, the science on climate change seems clear, and there is also a general consensus among the scientific community that human activity has been the primary cause of rising global temperatures, and the changes towards more extreme weather seen around the world have their roots in human activity.


Yet, a lot of people (particularly within the United States) somehow feel that the science behind this is shady. They tend to lean on that tiny sliver of the scientific community that denies the human activity causes climate change. This, despite the fact that the research for these projects and the counter arguments to climate change that they produce is funded heavily from corporations and rich and powerful individuals that rake in tons of money specifically by denying climate change. If Exxon-Mobil, BP, Monsanto, and the Koch brothers, among some of the most prominent names that deny that climate change is caused by human activity, were as closely scrutinized by the general public as the scientific community has been regarding this whole debate, the debate would probably be settled by now, even among Americans. There might be a few voices in the wind hollering that it is not so, but you always have at least a few dissenting voices no matter what you are arguing, right?

Remember, not all that long ago, opponents of climate change action based their opposition on the lack of scientific evidence to suggest that climate change/global warming was real in the first place. After watching temperatures rise rather dramatically, year after year, decade after decade, and then watching the first truly inflated natural disasters begin to grow in numbers around the world, while also producing record damage, they were kind of forced, even while kicking and screaming, to acknowledge that climate change was indeed real. After record floods occurred simultaneously with record droughts around the world, and record hot temperatures recorded in various parts of the world, and visible melting of glaciers and ice in arctic regions and in high mountain ranges, and other natural disasters like never before, from the tsunami in Asia in 2004, to Hurricane Katrina's devastation in and around the Gulf of Mexico, to record heat waves and cold stretches in North America and Europe, to the earthquake in Japan that led to flooding that itself led to the biggest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, to Hurricane Sandy devastating coastal New York and New Jersey, opponents of climate change/global warming itself had to reluctantly admit that maybe there really was something to this whole global warming thing. 

Some were still denying it, of course. You will always get people who, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, believe what they want to believe. But they could no longer really use the science that they had relied on before to deny that global warming was real, because it had been largely discredited, and even the staunchest political opponents, like the administration of George W. Bush, began to admit that climate change apparently was real. Of course, that did not mean that they magically saw the light, and began to work to protect the planet. That would be too easy. No, they simply conformed their science so that now, the emphasis was not on denying climate change, but instead, denying the link to human activity. Their science was wrong then, and it is wrong now, period. 

Which brings us back to Exxon. Really, Exxon is only the most famous and powerful of many corporations that profit from actively supporting the pseudoscience of climate change denial. They know the facts, and have known for quite some time. Yet, they chose to ignore this, because this was, indeed, an inconvenient truth. It got in the way of them raking in enormous, record profits. So, the Exxons of the world that had a stake in profiting from climate change denial began a widespread campaign of disinformation that essentially successfully got Americans to view anything to do with climate change, or unbelievably, the health of the planet in general, with an automatic, knee jerk skepticism. Serious skepticism, reflected in the results of election after election. All of this happened to coincide with the similar (if not outright related, even) campaign of disinformation to discredit unions and increased wages and benefits for normal, everyday Americans. All of this has led to the most serious decline in the overall quality of life that Americans have seen in their history, to the point that now, for the first time in our lifetimes, the younger generations are not only expected to not live as comfortably as their parents and improve upon their standard of living, but are expected to see and feel a significant decline in their quality of life. 

There is a general discontent among Americans today, and all sides are feeling it. A sense that we lost our way, and that too much is going too wrong in too many areas. A lot of people feel it, but too many people seem incapable of putting their finger on what, exactly, it is that is wrong in our clearly sick society. 

Indeed, the problems seem huge, and it sometimes feels like these problems are lining up to take their best shot at ordinary people, like us. But a lot of these problems - perhaps even the majority, and maybe even the vast majority - can be traced back to corporations like Exxon who knowingly mislead the public in order to profit from the pain that they create. 

We, the general public, need to understand this, to know and understand the facts, and then to fight back. To be aware, and to be active. If we are to take back our communities, and our world, and fight to have a chance at restoring it and nursing it back to health, to once again do something that we can feel proud of and which will give us a long lost confidence for our future, the time is now. We cannot afford to wait, and the need for informed action is urgent. 

So, let us understand that the enemy is not always the one we are led to believe it is. I do not fear ISIS, honestly, as much as I fear a corporation like Exxon. Why? Because I have never personally seen ISIS, and they have not presented a threat to my everyday life, although Exxon, and other corporations like them, certainly have. 

Yes, I understand that ISIS consists of bad people who do tremendous damage. But I also understand that Exxon seems to be run by bad people who also do tremendous damage, and that Exxon and other oil corporations did tremendous damage by leading us into a war in Iraq, the country and region where ISIS thrives. In destabilizing Iraq after waging a war on false premises, there are now, once again, calls for us to engage in yet another war in this oil-rich nation and region. ISIS is the newest threat, the latest immediate threat to world peace, and polls have showed that a majority of Americans favor a war there to rid the world of the threat from ISIS. 

Exxon and the rest of the oil industry, as well as other irresponsible corporate entities, have pushed such wars in order to obtain more oil to profit from, even when we know that there are better energy alternatives than oil. Exxon and the other corporations of the oil industry know this too, believe me. That is why they fight so intensely, waging their campaign of disinformation, so that they continue to profit from the pain that they themselves create. And if we are ever to stop this ridiculous cycle, we had best get informed and start pushing back, and the time to do so is NOW.






Here is the link to the article on Exxon sponsoring climate change denial pseudoscience, even when they had long known that climate change was real:



Exxon knew of climate change in 1981, email says – but it funded deniers for 27 more years by Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent, July 8, 2015:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/08/exxon-climate-change-1981-climate-denier-funding



Big Oil’s decades of deception: Report reveals that Exxon’s known the truth about climate science since 1981 by LINDSAY ABRAMS, July 8, 2015:




Here are some other sites related to climate change that serve to illustrate just how detrimental climate change would be, if we continue to do nothing:

Dire Climate Warning by NASA Scientist Raises Questions by Brian Kahn, ClimateCentral   |   July 21, 2015:


http://www.livescience.com/51619-dire-climate-warning-by-nasa-scientist.html?cmpid=514627_20150721_49517756&adbid=10152886995641761&adbpl=fb&adbpr=30478646760



10 Images Show What Coastal Cities Will Look Like After Sea Levels Rise:




To his credit, here is an article on former Republican California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who to his credit, took a proactive approach on the fight against climate change, even when this went against the wishes of his party:

Arnold Schwarzenegger Stands Up For Science In A Speech Sure To Outrage Fellow Republicans (VIDEO) AUTHOR: JAMESON PARKER JULY 22, 2015:
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/07/22/arnold-schwarzenegger-stands-up-for-science-in-a-speech-sure-to-outrage-fellow-republicans-video/



Here are a couple of links that can help you to use the government's own statistics to keep you a bit more informed about unnatural disasters and the frankly sorry state of environmental legislation and action here in the United States:

EPA: Using maps to make sense of water pollution data by Frank Konkel, March 17, 2014:


EPA website:

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