2015-11-06
Senator Waters has written to the US Attorney General requesting an urgent investigation of ExxonMobil's long-running campaign of deception and misinformation on global warming.
Text and link below:
5 November 2015
Request for a formal investigation of ExxonMobil
Dear Attorney General Lynch,
I write as the climate change spokesperson for the Australian Greens and as a Senator in Australia’s Federal Parliament.
I write to urge that you consider initiating a formal investigation into allegations that ExxonMobil concealed its own research about the impact of burning fossil fuels on climate change and subsequently conducted a misinformation campaign to delay action on climate change.
Information revealed in investigations by the Los Angeles Times and Inside Climate News strongly suggests that as early as the 1980s ExxonMobil’s internal research supported the view that climate change is driven largely by the burning fossil fuels. Subsequently, ExxonMobil continued to fund climate denialist groups and systematically mislead the public for decades.
Inaction on global warming and continued fossil fuel pollution is already hurting Australians, especially my constituents in the State of Queensland. Global warming has contributed to the loss of more than half of the coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef in the last thirty years. Extreme weather, bushfires, droughts and floods are becoming more severe. Over 80 per cent of Queensland has been declared as currently in drought, and rainfall in southeast Australia has declined by 15 to 25 per cent since the mid-1990s.
The critical decades lost in the phoney ‘debate’ on the science of global warming have condemned Australia to a harsher, more dangerous future. Momentum for action on global warming is finally beginning to build, but ExxonMobil’s conduct during those critical decades has contributed to the serious damage we are facing today.
ExxonMobil’s reprehensible action in suppressing their own research and promoting uncertainty is reminiscent of the actions of the tobacco industry in concealing the truth about the health impacts of their own products. If proved, ExxonMobil’s conduct would amount to a grievous corporate fraud on the whole world on a far grander scale.
I am urging you to consider launching a formal investigation into the ExxonMobil’s reckless and immoral actions.
Yours sincerely,
Senator Larissa Waters
Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens and spokesperson for Climate Change
Senator for Queensland
| letter_to_us_attorney_general_re_exxon_scandal.pdf |