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Monday, October 12th, 2015

What Exxon knew about the Earth’s melting Arctic

Author:     Sara Jerving, Katie Jennings, Masako Melissa Hirsch and Susanne Rust
Source:     Los Angeles Times
Publication Date:     Oct. 9, 2015
 Link: What Exxon knew about the Earth’s melting Arctic
Stephan:   Virtual corporate states operate with no particular consideration for anything other than their own profit. Here is the story of Exxon and climate change, well researched and documented. This will inevitably be compared to the Tobacco companies withholding health information on smoking. But I think it is a much bigger deal. This is a company knowing that something it was doing was literally putting the stability of the planet at risk, and doing it anyway, and saying just the opposite. I can't think of an equivalent. Its bigger even than Monsanto and the glyphosates. This is why I say that the real centers of power in this century, unless enough social progressive Americans vote to stop the trend, will be multinational corporations which function as virtual states.

la-exxon-arctic-gallery-20151007-008Back in 1990, as the debate over climate change was heating up, a dissident shareholder petitioned the board of Exxon, one of the world’s largest oil companies, imploring it to develop a plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from its production plants and facilities.

The board’s response: Exxon had studied the science of global warming and concluded it was too murky to warrant action. The company’s “examination of the issue supports the conclusions that the facts today and the projection of future effects are very unclear.”

Yet in the far northern regions of Canada’s Arctic frontier, researchers and engineers at Exxon and Imperial Oil were quietly incorporating climate change projections into the company’s planning and closely studying how to adapt the company’s Arctic operations to a warming planet.

Ken Croasdale, senior ice researcher for Exxon’s Canadian subsidiary, was leading a Calgary-based team of researchers and engineers that was trying to determine how global warming could affect Exxon’s Arctic operations and its bottom line.

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