Democrats call oil giants to testify on climate campaign

WASHINGTON – Congressional Democrats are calling apical executives astatine ExxonMobil and different lipid giants to attest astatine a House proceeding arsenic lawmakers analyse what they accidental is simply a long-running, industry-wide run to dispersed disinformation astir the relation of fossil fuels successful causing planetary warming.

The House Oversight Committee connected Thursday requested that executives astatine ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron and Shell attest astatine a proceeding adjacent month, on with leaders of the American Petroleum Institute, the lipid industry's apical lobbying group, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

“We are profoundly acrophobic that the fossil substance manufacture has reaped monolithic profits for decades portion contributing to clime alteration that is devastating American communities, costing taxpayers billions of dollars and ravaging the earthy world,” Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., wrote successful a missive to lipid executives.

Ad

“We are besides acrophobic that to support those profits, the manufacture has reportedly led a coordinated effort to dispersed disinformation to mislead the nationalist and forestall important enactment to code clime change,” they wrote. Khanna, president of Oversight's situation subcommittee, has been pressing the lipid manufacture for months for documents and different accusation connected its relation successful stopping clime action.

Khanna has been focusing connected Exxon aft a elder lobbyist for the institution was caught successful a concealed video bragging that Exxon had fought clime subject done “shadow groups” and had targeted influential senators successful an effort to weaken President Joe Biden’s clime agenda.

The comments by Washington-based lobbyist Keith McCoy were made nationalist successful June by the biology radical Greenpeace UK, which secretly recorded McCoy and different lobbyist successful Zoom interviews.

Darren Woods, Exxon’s president and main executive, condemned McCoy's statements and said the institution stands by its committedness to enactment connected uncovering solutions to clime change.

Ad

Woods is among the executives the House sheet hopes to question astatine an Oct. 28 hearing, on with BP America CEO David Lawler, Chevron CEO Michael Wirth and Shell president Gretchen Watkins.

Maloney and Khanna said successful a connection that ExxonMobil and different lipid companies “have worked to forestall superior enactment connected planetary warming by generating uncertainty astir the documented dangers of fossil fuels and misrepresenting the standard of their efforts to make alternate vigor technologies.'' They compared the tactics to those deployed by the baccy manufacture to defy regularisation "while selling products that termination hundreds of thousands of Americans.''

The lipid industry's “strategies of obfuscation and distraction span decades and inactive proceed today,'' Khanna and Maloney said. The 5 largest publically traded lipid and state companies reportedly spent astatine slightest $1 cardinal from 2015 to 2018 "to beforehand clime disinformation done ‘branding and lobbying,' ” the lawmakers wrote.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This worldly whitethorn not beryllium published, broadcast, rewritten oregon redistributed without permission.