Throughout Exxon’s global operations, the company knew that CO2 was a harmful pollutant in the atmosphere years earlier than previously reported.

DeSmog has uncovered Exxon corporate documents from the late 1970s stating unequivocally “there is no doubt” that CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels was a growing “problem” well understood within the company.

“It is assumed that the major contributors of CO2 are the burning of fossil fuels… There is no doubt that increases in fossil fuel usage and decreases of forest cover are aggravating the potential problem of increased CO2 in the atmosphere. Technology exists to remove CO2 from stack gases but removal of only 50% of the CO2 would double the cost of power generation." [emphasis added]

Those lines appeared in a 1980 report, “Review of Environmental Protection Activities for 1978-1979,” produced by Imperial Oil, Exxon’s Canadian subsidiary.

[click on any of the screenshots in this story to see a PDF of the full document]

A distribution list included with the report indicates that it was disseminated to managers across Exxon’s international corporate offices, including in Europe.

The next report in the series, “Review of Environmental Protection Activities for 1980-81,” noted in an appendix covering “Key Environmental Affairs Issues and Concerns” that: CO2 / GREENHOUSE EFFECT RECEIVING INCREASED MEDIA ATTENTION.

InsideClimate News unveiled much new information in its Exxon: The Road Not Taken series clearly demonstrating the depth of climate science knowledge among Exxon’s U.S. operations. Additional revelations about the company's early climate research were published by the Los Angeles Times in collaboration with the Columbia School of Journalism. 

A 1980 Exxon report explained the company’s plans:

“CO2 Greenhouse Effect:  Exxon-supported work is already underway to help define the seriousness of this problem. Such information is needed to assess the implications for future fossil fuel use. Government funding will be sought to expand the use of Exxon tankers in determining the capacity of the ocean to store CO2."

Now DeSmog’s research confirms that the knowledge of the carbon dioxide pollution threat was indeed global across Exxon’s worldwide operations, earlier than previously known, and considered a major challenge for the company’s future operations. The new documents revealed today were found by DeSmog researchers in an Imperial Oil (TSE:IMO) archival collection housed at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta. We first learned of the existence of the collection in one of the articles published in the Los Angeles Times in collaboration with the Columbia School of Journalism.

"Since Pollution Means Disaster…"

A document discovered by DeSmog reveals that Exxon was aware as early as the late 1960s that global emissions of CO2 from combustion was a chief pollution concern affecting global ecology.

Those details were found in a 1970 report, “Pollution Is Everybody’s Business,” authored by H.R. Holland, a Chemical Engineer responsible for environmental protection in Imperial Oil’s engineering division. [click to download PDF of "Pollution is Everybody's Business]

Holland wrote:

“Since pollution means disaster to the affected species, the only satisfactory course of action is to prevent it — to maintain the addition of foreign matter at such levels that it can be diluted, assimilated or destroyed by natural processes — to protect man’s environment from man.”

Included in Holland's report is a table of the "Estimated Global Emissions of Some Air Pollutants." One of those "air pollutants" on the table is carbon dioxide with the listed sources as "oxidation of plant and animal matter" and "combustion."

Holland emphasized the need to control all forms of pollution through regulatory action, noting that “a problem of such size, complexity and importance cannot be dealt with on a voluntary basis.” Yet the fossil fuel industry has long argued that its voluntary programs are sufficient, and that regulations are unneeded.

Exxon Understood Climate Science, Yet Funded Decades of Climate Science Denial

Despite Exxon’s advanced scientific understanding of the role of CO2 pollution from fossil fuel burning causing atmospheric disruption, the company shelved its internal concerns and launched a sophisticated, global campaign to sow doubt and create public distrust of climate science. This included extensive lobbying and advertising activities, publishing weekly op-eds in The New York Times for years, and other tactics.

Exxon and Mobil were both founding members of the Global Climate Coalition, an industry front group created in 1989 to sow doubt — despite the GCC's internal understanding of the certainty.

While the GCC distributed a "backgrounder" to politicians and media in the early 1990s claiming “The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood,” a 1995 GCC internal memo drafted by Mobil Oil (which merged with Exxon in 1998) stated that: “The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied.”

And the most obvious evidence of Exxon’s pervasive efforts to attack science and pollution control regulations lies in the more than $30 million traced by Greenpeace researchers to several dozen think tanks and front groups working to confuse the public about the need to curb CO2 pollution.

As the science grew stronger, Exxon’s embrace of its global, multi-million dollar denial campaign grew more intense. 

Imperial Oil's Public Denial Grew Stronger In 1990s Despite Its Own Prior Scientific Certainty

Imperial Oil, Exxon's Canadian subsidiary, as these documents demonstrate, had a clear understanding of the environmental and climate consequences of CO2 pollution from fossil fuel combution, yet its public denial of these links grew stronger throughout the 1990s.  Imperial Oil chairman and CEO Robert Peterson wrote in "A Cleaner Canada" in 1998: "Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but an essential ingredient of life on this planet."  

(DeSmog will take a deeper look at Imperial Oil's conflicting CO2 positioning in public vs. its internal communications in future coverage.)

Reached for comment, Imperial Oil did not respond by press time. ExxonMobil media relations manager Alan Jeffers provided the following response: 

"Your conclusions are inaccurate but not surprising since you work with extreme environmental activists who are paying for fake journalism to misrepresent ExxonMobil’s nearly 40-year history of climate research. To suggest that we had reached definitive conclusions, decades before the world’s experts and while climate science was in an early stage of development, is not credible."

Legal Implications of Fossil Fuel Industry’s Knowledge of CO2 Pollution and Climate Impacts

Calls are growing louder to hold Exxon and other fossil fuel interests accountable for funding climate denial campaigns given their advanced understanding of climate science and the implications of CO2 pollution for the atmosphere going back many decades.

In multiple U.S. states and territories — including New York, California, Massachusetts and the Virgin Islands — state Attorneys General are investigating Exxon’s depth of knowledge regarding the climate impacts of burning fossil fuels, and whether the company broke the law by fueling anti-science campaigns through corporate contributions to organizations and individuals working to sow doubt and confusion about global warming. [DeSmog coverage: State Investigations Into What Exxon Knew Double, and Exxon Gets Defensive]

Climate activists and even presidential candidate Hillary Clinton are urging the Department of Justice and other relevant government agencies to investigate the fossil fuel industry’s deliberate efforts to delay policy action to address the climate threat.

Democratic U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Ed Markey (MA) and Brian Schatz (HI) introduced an amendment to the energy bill expressing Congress’s disapproval of the use of industry-funded think tanks and misinformation tactics aimed at sowing doubt about climate change science. But it remains to be seen what action Congress might take to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for delaying policy solutions and confusing the public on this critical issue.

Imagine where the world would be had Exxon continued to pursue and embrace its advanced scientific understanding of climate change decades ago, rather than pivoting antagonistically against the science by funding decades of denial?

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

A tax loophole exempting tar sands pipeline operators from paying an eight-cent tax per barrel of oil they transport in the US is costing the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund millions of dollars every year. With expected increases in tar sands oil production over the next five years, this loophole may have deprived US citizens of $400-million dollars worth of critical oil-spill protection funds come 2017.

According to a report by the US Natural Resources Committee the federal government pays for immediate oil-spill response from the Liability Trust Fund which is supported by an excise tax on all crude oil and gas products in the US.

But in 2011 the Internal Revenue Service exempted tar sands oil from the tax, saying the substance did not fit the characterization of crude oil.

This exemption has come under scrutiny this week after Exxon Mobil's Pegasus pipeline ruptured in Mayflower, Arkansas, releasing 300,000 litres of tar sands oil and water into a residential neighbourhood and surrounding wetlands. Because the line carried tar sands-derived oil from Alberta, Exxon was exempt from paying into the spill liability fund for the corrosive fuel's potential cleanup.

The Pegasus pipeline was built in the 1940s to carry regular crude north from the Gulf Coast. In 2006, Exxon reversed the flow of the 1300 kilometre line in order to transport tar sands diluted bitumen from Illinois to the coast.

According to the Natural Resources Committee, "the spill response fund is currently at risk from running out of money because of the combined costs of BP's Deepwater Horizon spill and Enbridge's Kalamazoo spill of tar sands oil…And Enbridge could still file a claim against the fund to recoup some of its costs because the company has spent well over the liability cap of $350 million for such spills."

The Enbridge disaster in Michigan's Kalamazoo river has cost over $820 million, making it the most expensive onshore cleanup in US history.

Enbridge, the company currently vying to build a 1172 kilometre-long pipeline from Alberta to the British Columbia coast, currently has no spill-response plan – for either onshore or offshore spills – prepared for the project.

During cross-examination in the Northern Gateway Pipeline hearings in BC, Enbridge admitted they will have no spill response plan until six months before the proposed tar sands line will begin operation. 

An investigation in the Enbridge Kalamazoo disaster found the company – due to "pervasive organizational failures" – improperly respond to the pipeline breach. The US National Transportation Safety Board likened Enbridge employees to the Keystone Kops – a clumsy, incompetent troups of cops from the silent films of the early 20th century.

The estimated cleanup cost for conventional oil run at about $2000 per barrel of oil. Tar sands diluted bitumen cleanup is estimated to cost an average $29,000 per barrel of spilled oil.

The Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund was established in the wake of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, when the enormous costs of oil spill recovery were first understood on a grand scale, to ensure adequate cleanup funds were available to protect local residents and ecosystems.

As Climate Progress reported in 2010, Exxon refused to shoulder the cost of cleanup in the Valdez, where more than 11 million gallons of crude oil contaminated almost 3000 kilometres of shoreline.

"Exxon fought paying damages and appealed court decisions multiple times, and they have still not paid in full. Years of fighting and court appeals on Exxon’s part finally concluded with a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2008 that found that Exxon only had to pay $507.5 million of the original 1994 court decree for $5 billion in punitive damages. And as of 2009, Exxon had paid only $383 million of this $507.5 million to those who sued, stalling on the rest and fighting the $500 million in interest owed to fishermen and other small businesses from more than 12 years of litigation.

Twenty years later, some of the original plaintiffs are no longer alive to receive, or continue fighting for, their damages. An estimated 8,000 of the original Exxon Valdez plaintiffs have died since the spill while waiting for their compensation as Exxon fought them in court."

And as DeSmogBlog's Ben Jervey reports, Exxon has a long and litigious history of evading cleanup costs.

The US is facing a dramatic increase of tar sands oil imports. As the National Resource Committee estimates, production in the Alberta tar sands is projected to rise to over 2.7 million barrels per day in 2017. The tar sands industry projects figures as high as 5 million barrels per day in 2030 and 6 million per day in 2035. Currently approved projects have the capacity to produce 5.2 million barrels per day. 

“Tar sands is already the dirtiest, riskiest oil around. It shouldn’t get a free ride from the U.S. taxpayer when it comes to paying into this vital spill response fund,” said Rep. Markey, the Ranking Member of the Natural Resources Committee. “Oil companies already receive outrageous tax subsidies that total billions of dollars and there is no defensible reason for this oil spill free ride to be added to that dubious list of loopholes.”

Regardless of how many barrels of tar sands oil will be traversing US soil, none of them should be exempt from spill liability taxes. If anything, corrosive diluted bitumen should be taxed more for the inherent dangers it present to local ecologies and communities during its production, refining, and transport. 

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.