They knew. They lied. They need to pay for this.
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"Oil Giant Shell Knew About Climate Impacts Even Earlier"

Following explosive revelations about what ExxonMobil knew about fossil fuels driving global heating, investigations in 2017 and 2018 uncovered that Shell Oil's scientists privately warned about the impact of its products in the 1980s.

However, newly unveiled records show that "Shell began collecting knowledge about climate change in the 1960s. The company not only kept well abreast of climate science, but also funded research. As a result, Shell already knew in the 1970s that burning fossil fuels could lead to alarming climate change."

Faced with a global oil crisis, rather than using its climate information to publicly sound the alarm and shift to cleaner practices, the company "focused instead on a nonsustainable profit model."

The following year, a study Shell was involved with warned that "increases in the CO2 content of the atmosphere could lead to the so-called greenhouse effect... which would be enough to induce major climatic changes." Three years later, another report warned that "the continued burning of fossil fuels will lead to a manifold increase in the atmospheric CO2 concentration."

Duncan Meisel, executive director of the campaign Clean Creatives, which targets advertising and public relations firms that work for fossil fuel companies, declared Monday that "what these new documents show is incredibly disturbing."

"In the 1980s, Shell scientists laid out two pathways for the planet: one where energy companies undertook a smooth transition to clean energy and one where fossil fuel demand continued to rise, creating 'more storms, more droughts, more deluges,'" he summarized. "Since the publication of that forecast, Shell has pushed at every turn to create more fossil fuel demand, creating exactly the devastating outcomes they predicted."

The Center for Climate Integrity said the records provide the world "more damning evidence" that the company knew its business model was having disastrous impacts on the world and its people. As the group put it: "They knew. They lied. They need to pay."
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FULL STORY -- https://www.commondreams.org/news/shell-fossil-fuels-climate-1970s

#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateAction #ClimateEmergency #CO2 #Emissions #Shell

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