And “big lie” : the UN Secretary General called on Wednesday January 18 to prosecute the oil majors, as the tobacco companies have been, for having hidden for years the information they had on global warming.
“Some fossil fuel producers were well aware in the 1970s that their flagship product was going to burn the planet”said Antonio Guterres during a speech at the Forum in Davos, Switzerland. ‘But like the tobacco industry, they’ve ignored their own science’he added, deducing that “some oil giants have peddled the big lie”.
As early as the 1980s, oil giant ExxonMobil had predictions of global warming, made by its own scientists, that turned out to be precisely what happened decades later, a study published Thursday in the prestigious review Science.
However, the company has for years publicly cast doubt on the state of scientific knowledge in this area, this publication also pointed out.
Double speech
After publication in the journal Sciencea spokesman for the company told AFP that “This question has surfaced several times in recent years”adding that“Each time, our answer is the same: those who evoke what “Exxon knew” are wrong in their conclusions”.
According to Antonio Guterres, “those responsible must be prosecuted” as the tobacco companies have been. A reference to the 246 billion dollars that the tobacco giants in the United States had agreed to pay in 1998 to 46 States over a period of twenty-five years, in order to cover the costs incurred to treat former smokers.
For several years now, ExxonMobil has been accused of having held a double discourse on climate change caused by the immense quantities of greenhouse gases released by humanity into the atmosphere, in particular through the combustion of coal or oil to produce energy.
“Stop the lies of the oil giants”
“We must put an end to the lies of the oil, gas and coal giants, and take collective action to phase them out”reacted the initiative of the non-proliferation treaty of fossil fuels, in a press release welcoming the speech of the boss of the UN.
According to this organization, which campaigns for more supervision of fossil fuel producers, the slow progress of governments in combating the effects on the climate of the oil giants is due to “the influence of fossil industry lobbyists”.