A 48 year old report recently unearthed reveals that oil executives knew about the effects that the extraction and burning of fossil fuels would have on the planet, but chose to do nothing. And not only did they do nothing about it, they covered it up for decades!
The Center for International Environmental Law is responsible for tracking this decades-long story all the way back to its source, and what they found was more disturbing than anyone would imagine.
Exxon Mobil – originally called Humble Oil if you can believe it – knew about the link between burning fossil fuels and climate change as early as the 1940’s when they began to distribute propaganda against early scientific links.
Fossil fuel companies in the mid-1940’s sponsored a great deal of research into the causes and effects of smog and other forms of air pollution, but rather than using that information to educate the public and prevent significant climate change, they used that information to devise ways to keep the public in the dark.
And the Center for International Environmental Law isn’t the only one to have uncovered this disgusting information; Studies and investigations have been performed multiple times, all of which reveal that executives knew about the link between fossil fuels and climate change in the 1980’s, 1970’s, and now the 1940’s. The New York attorney general even lodged an investigation into ExxonMobile in January to see exactly the extent of their lies to the public and investors.
All of the climate change deniers you see dominating the Republican party today were hand-fed this information by oil executives for decades. They knew the science supported climate change and pollution, but they purposefully hid and misrepresented that information.
The deliberate dishonesty is truly astounding.
A group of 21 young people, aged 8 to 19, are suing the president and the federal government over their role in ruining the planet for future generations. This information is all the proof we should need to know that these kids absolutely have a case. This revelation gives these young people concrete evidence that the government and the corporations who control it knew exactly what they were doing, and they chose to put massive profits over the well-being of the entire human population.
These companies are deliberately destroying our planet, poisoning our water, our air, and our bodies, and they knew it all along. It is the ultimate betrayal and we must make them pay for what they have willingly and maliciously done. We cannot continue to allow these corporate monsters to control our politics and our nation for their own gain. We have had enough.
