Exxon Didn't Doubt Global Warming Risk

[Dardedar]

DAR
Note: NOT from the Onion.

Exxon says it never doubted climate change threat

Thu Jun 14, 2007

By Gerard Wynn

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil company Exxon Mobil Corp. never in the past decade doubted the risk from climate change, its global spokesman Kenneth Cohen said on Thursday, in a latest attempt to improve its green credentials.

Exxon had simply firmed up, or "evolved," its understanding of the threat, said Cohen, the company's head of public affairs.

The world's most profitable company now accepted that a U.S. climate policy was inevitable and it preferred either a carbon market that would allocate carbon credits solely to suppliers of fossil fuels, such as oil companies, or else a carbon tax, Cohen added.

Under an existing European scheme, carbon credits have been given to utilities and will earn these companies tens of billions of euros in windfall profits.

The commonest greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, is made by burning fossil fuels like oil. Environmental groups have long accused Exxon of funding research groups that rubbished the threat of a manmade, climate change catastrophe.

"We're very much not a denier, very much at the table with our sleeves rolled up," Cohen told reporters.

Cohen also chairs the Exxon Mobil Foundation which last year, alongside Exxon, handed out $139 million to charities and research groups.

In 2005 the company withdrew support for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which the following year ran an advertising campaign promoting carbon dioxide, which said "we call it life."

It still funds groups such as the Heartland Institute, which describes global warming as "a prime example of the alarmism that characterizes much of the environmental movement."

The rest of the Exxon bullshit

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Nothing new. Deny global warming as long as they can get away with it, then deny denying global warming as long as they can get away with it. The Dems have a bill out to move oil subsidies to renewables (and also to get rid of the "royalty reprieves" left over from the $10/barrel days). Even some of the Rs are on board. Don't know if enough to override the veto our oil president is sure to do, but it would be nice. (The only problem I've been alerted to on this bill is money - not as much as in the past or that they'd like - but money to the coal industry for "clean coal" - and oxymoron if there ever was one - but that may be the thing that pushes it through. If they put so many strings on the coal money that the coal industry decides "never mind", then I don't have a problem with it being in the bill, if it allows the bill to become law.) Exxon is already making noises about how it will drive up prices and hurt the consumer (consumer apparently equals CEO paycheck in this context).