US Reps to Oil Giants: Did You Fund Climate Change Denial?

CEOs of major fossil fuel companies — including ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, ConocoPhillips, Peabody Energy and BP — have received letters from a group of US congress people asking them if they were involved in efforts to “spread disinformation about climate science.”

The letter, signed by 45 Democratic representatives, follows a series of reports by Inside Climate News that says Exxon scientists conducted cutting-edge climate research decades ago and then led efforts to block anti-climate change action.

Exxon called the reports “inaccurate and deliberately misleading.”

The letter sites the Inside Climate News investigation and others by the Los Angeles Times and Union of Concerned Scientists and asks the CEOs to answer a several questions including:

• When did your company first become aware the using fossil fuels could result in climate change and warming of the planet?
• What did your company do with this information?
• Did your company fund organizations that denies climate change or sought to spread uncertainty about climate change?

Additionally, 49 leaders from environmental, indigenous and civil rights groups have signed a public letter asking US Attorney General Loretta Lynch to launch a probe to determine whether Exxon “knew about the dangers of climate change even as it funded efforts at climate denial and systematically misled the public.”

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