Covering Up the Truth about Climate Change Was, in a Word, Wrong

Exxon covered up its knowledge about climate change

IMO, one of the great discussions in human history took place in 1973 during the Watergate years, which I paraphrase as follows:

Richard Nixon: We need $X million to buy the silence of …. (someone who knew about the cover-up).  John, could we do that?  

John Dean (White House Counsel): Yes. We could do that.  But it would be wrong.

Unfortunately, honesty didn’t prevail, and the rest is history.

It’s also unfortunate that we don’t have a transcript of the discussion that took place in ExxonMobil’s headquarters when the decision was made to bury the truth about global warming and embark on a vast effort to mislead the public about what was quite clearly about to happen to our planet’s atmosphere.  The subject is discussed in this very informative video.

We commonly see comparisons to Big Tobacco, i.e., a disinformation campaign of global scale, though the parallels aren’t exact.

Big Tobacco lied, purely to make money by selling the only legal product that, when used as directed, causes death. Yes, of course, not all smokers get cancer.

In the case of Exxon, the vast majority of the people who live or will live on Earth are or will be injured by global climate change.  Of course, it needs to be said that fossil energy (unlike cigarettes) has provided us with numerous gifts.

Again, it’s impossible to make a precise comparison.

Be this as it may, it will be very interesting to see what happens to the oil companies in terms of civil litigation and criminal prosecution as a result of their conspiracy to make it difficult, or perhaps impossible, for humankind to mitigate climate change successfully.  But at the end of the day, one thing will be clear.  What they did was wrong.