BIG oil could one day be in the dock with big tobacco, as the environment group Friends of the Earth International claims to have assembled data that it says could one day help convict one of the industry giants of violating the global climate.
A study of the corporate history of ExxonMobil, the world’s second largest oil company, concludes that over the past 120 years the company and its predecessors have been responsible for a remarkable 5 per cent of global emissions of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. In that time, the company’s production and use of gasoline, diesel, heavy fuels and other fossil fuels amounts to more than 20 billion tonnes of carbon, says the study’s author, Richard Heede, an independent researcher based in Colorado commissioned by FoE.
ExxonMobil’s total emissions dwarf those of all but a handful of nations, and are equivalent to three times today’s global annual emissions, says the report.
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Heede told 91av he relied on published data for his report, released on 29 January. He did not approach the company for fear of alerting it to the enterprise. ExxonMobil reacted angrily to the report, claiming that the allegations “do not merit a detailed rebuttal”. But FoE spokesman Jon Sohn said “ExxonMobil is sticking its head in the sand, just like tobacco companies that knew the harmful impact of their products. We believe ExxonMobil is at risk of litigation.”
