Exxon and its campaign of deceit

To those who watch BBC World regularly in India, the slick advertisements of the monstrously successful oil company Exxon Mobil come across as the reassuring statement of a socially conscious corporate.

Nothing could be farther from the truth, as those who have watched the oil lobby know. In fact, Exxon made a fantastic 40 billion dollars last year through ruinous burning of fossil fuels that have further warmed the world.

Here is a press release issued by those committed to exposing such fraud.

Exxon in Sheep's Clothing

Oil Giant Lies, Evades in Full-Page Ads Across the Country, Group Says

SANTA MONICA, Calif., Feb. 16 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In full-page
ads today in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, ExxonMobil
rewrites history, omits any pledges of actual change and blurs Exxon's long
opposition to action on global warming, said the Foundation for Taxpayer
and Consumer Rights.
"The ad is an obvious attempt to quiet public anger and prevent
government action," said Judy Dugan, research director of the nonprofit,
nonpartisan FTCR. "Exxon is trying to pretend that it is a now a good
global citizen and deny its decades-long dispute of global warming."
FTCR's examination of the ad found:
-- Rewriting history: The ad brags that "for 15 years, our scientists
have been participating directly in the preparation of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports." (The IPCC is the
respected UN body that recently raised new alarms over the "very likely"
human causes of global warming in an extensive report.)
The reality is that ExxonMobil secretly sought -- and got -- help from
the Bush White House in a 2002 attempt to oust the head of the IPPC, Dr.
Robert Watson, and other key scientists on the panel. Exxon memos obtained
by the National Resources Defense Council showed that Exxon's aim was to
replace respected scientists with, as the NRDC put it, "contrarians known
for disagreeing with the prevailing consensus that man-made pollution is
causing global warming."
Read the Exxon memo at: http://www.nrdc.org/media/docs/020403.pdf
-- Verbal acrobatics: Exxon never uses the phrase "global warming,"
which sounds dangerous, substituting "climate change," which could be a
good thing. It uses statistics that minimize what warming is, including
"The earth's climate has warmed about 0.7% in the last century." That seems
slow, of course. There's no mention that the 10 hottest years on record
have occurred since 1990.
-- Omissions: The ad contains no pledge to develop, much less market,
renewable fuels. That's because Exxon doesn't, and won't.
At a March 14, 2006 Senate hearing, Sen. Charles Schumer of New York
pressed Tillerson on Exxon's puny spending, less that one one-hundredth of
one percent of its 2005 profits, on alternative energy research.
Tillerson's response:
MR. TILLERSON: "Well, Senator, I think your question is are we
investing heavily in alternatives and ... --
SEN. SCHUMER: You're not.
MR. TILLERSON: We're not. We are investing in technology, and we are
investing heavily in conventional oil and natural gas, which is the
business we are in. We are not in those other businesses.
(Read the transcript at
http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/energy/rp/6137.pdf )
-- False choices: The ad concludes that the task of business and
government, working together, is "selecting policies that balance economic
growth and human development with the risks of climate change." In other
words, global warming can't be remedied without trashing economic
development.
That's the opposite of the truth, even from a hardheaded economic
perspective.
The global insurance giant Swiss Re warned in a 2005 report that
"Climate change will significantly affect the health of humans and
ecosystems and these impacts will have economic consequences."
"We found that impacts of climate change are likely to lead to
ramifications that overlap in several areas including our health, our
economy and the natural systems on which we depend," said Dr. Paul Epstein,
the study's lead author and associate director of the Center for Health and
the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School. "Analysis of the
potential ripple effects stemming from an unstable climate shows the need
for more sustainable practices to safeguard and insure a healthy future."
Read the story at
http://www.livescience.com/environment/051101_insurance_warming.html

Contact: Judy Dugan, +1-310-392-0522, ext. 305, or cell +1-213 280-0175



SOURCE The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights