Part One / How Climate Works

1.7 Why Didn’t They Act?

All online sources accessed on

  1. the many ways the fossil fuel industry spread disinformation Union of Concerned Scientists, Smoke, Mirrors and Hot Air: How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco’s Tactics to ‘Manufacture Uncertainty’ on Climate Change, 2007, https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/smoke-mirrors-hot-air; Oreskes, N., and Conway, E., Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (New York: Bloomsbury, 2010); Cook, J., et al., America Misled: How the Fossil Fuel Industry Deliberately Misled Americans about Climate Change, George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, 2019, https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/america-misled/; Mann, M. E., The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet (New York: PublicAffairs, 2021).

    focused on the industry Goliath ExxonMobil Banerjee, N., et al., Exxon: The Road Not Taken (New York: Inside Climate News, 2015); Rust, S., ‘Report details how Exxon Mobil and fossil fuel firms sowed seeds of doubt on climate change’,LA Times, 21 October 2019, https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2019-10-21/oil-companies-exxon-climate-change-denial-report; Columbia Journalism School, ‘Two-year-long investigation: what Exxon Knew about climate change’, 2017, https://journalism.columbia.edu/two-year-long-investigation-what-exxon-knew-about-climate-change; On, J., and Balkin, A., ExxonKnew https://www.sej.org/initiatives/sifting-disinformation/exxonsecretsorg.

    from the 1990s onward, the company promoted Supran, G., and Oreskes, N., ‘Assessing ExxonMobil’s climate change communications (1977–2014)’, Environmental Research Letters, 12 (8), 2017: Article 084019, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa815f; Supran, G., and Oreskes, N., ‘Rhetoric and frame analysis of ExxonMobil’s climate change communications’, One Earth, 4 (5), 2021: 696–719, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2021.04.014.

    They also deflected attention from their role Mitloehner, F., ‘Big oil distracts from their carbon footprint by tricking you to focus on yours’, CLEAR Center, 16 October 2020, https://clear.ucdavis.edu/blog/big-oil-distracts-their-carbon-footprint-tricking-you-focus-yours.

  2. front groups, such as the Global Climate Coalition Revkin, A. C., ‘Industry’s advisers on climate’, New York Times, 23 April 2009, https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/science/earth/24deny.html; Oreskes, N., ‘My facts are better than your facts: spreading good news about global warming’, in Howlett, P., and Morgan, MS., eds., How Well Do Facts Travel? The Dissemination of Reliable Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 136–66.

    In 2006 the UK Royal Society Ward, R., letter to Nick Thomas (Director, Corporate Affairs, Esso), 4 September 2006, https://royalsociety.org/~/media/royal_society_content/policy/publications/2006/8257.pdf.

    It seemed destined for success, until Weiss, D. J., ‘Anatomy of a Senate Climate Bill Death’, Center for American Progress, 12 October 2010, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/anatomy-of-a-senate-climate-bill-death/.

    Between 2000 and 2016, fossil fuel interests Brulle, R. J., ‘Institutionalizing delay: foundation funding and the creation of U.S. climate change counter-movement organizations’, Climatic Change, 122 (4), 2014: 681–94, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-013-1018-7; Brulle, R. J., personal email communication with the author, 14 October 2021. In both the study and the correspondence, ‘lobbying’ is not categorized as pro- or anti-climate, but it seems safe to assume that most if not all fossil fuel lobbying was against climate action.

    abetted by the wishful thinking of people Oreskes, N., ‘Wishful thinking about natural gas’, Le Monde diplomatique, 1 August 2014, https://mondediplo.com/openpage/wishful-thinking-about-natural-gas.

    could not ‘risk alienating and demonizing’ Bacow, L. S., ‘A message from President Bacow on climate change’, Harvard Office of the President, 21 April 2020, https://www.harvard.edu/president/news/2020/message-from-president-bacow-on-climate-change/.

    many of these ‘partners’ had demonized climate scientists Harvard also stressed that some of these partners had committed to ‘carbon neutrality’. But those commitments referred to emissions from their operations, not from the fuels that they intended to continue to sell for decades to come. Such claims were equivalent to cigarette manufacturers promising that their factories would be smoke-free while they continued to sell cigarettes around the globe. For example, in 2019, ExxonMobil projected no reductions in carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector through to 2040 – and no date at which emissions reach net zero, implying indefinite warming. ExxonMobil, Outlook for Energy: A Perspective to 2040, 2019, https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/-/media/Global/Files/outlook-for-energy/2019-Outlook-for-Energy_v4.pdf. See also Mulvey, K., et al., ‘Fossil fuel companies claim they’re helping fight climate change. The reality is different’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 17 December 2019, https://thebulletin.org/2019/12/fossil-fuel-companies-claim-theyre-helping-fight-climate-change-the-reality-is-different/.

    Most economists now recognize climate change as a market failure Steffen, W., et al., ‘The trajectory of the Anthropocene: the Great Acceleration’, Anthropocene Review, 2 (1), 2015: 81–98, https://doi.org/10.1177/2053019614564785; Stern, N., The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20100407172811/https:/www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/stern_review_report.htm; Benjamin, A., ‘Stern: climate change a “market failure”’, Guardian, 29 November 2007, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2007/nov/29/climatechange.carbonemissions.

  3. invisible ‘because it is not there’ Stiglitz, J., ‘There is no invisible hand’, Guardian, 20 December 2002, https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/dec/20/highereducation.uk1. Stiglitz actually said that the hand ‘is invisible, at least in part, because it’s not there’.

    ‘technological products are not neutral’ Pope Francis, ‘Encyclical letter Laudato si’ of the Holy Father Francis on care for our common home’, 24 May 2015, section 107, https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html.