![]() But we are embedded in a system of their creation – a political, economic and physical infrastructure that creates an illusion of choice while, in reality, closing it down. In response to the Guardian’s questions, some of the oil companies argued that they are not responsible for our decisions to use their products. It is committed to ecocide.īut the biggest and most successful lie it tells is this: that the first great extermination is a matter of consumer choice. Instead the industry intends to accelerate production, spending nearly $5tn in the next 10 years on developing new reserves. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty ImagesĪ paper published in Nature shows that we have little chance of preventing more than 1.5C of global heating unless existing fossil fuel infrastructure is retired. Nor was the company able to do so when I challenged it.īP’s oil refinery complex in Grangemouth, central Scotland. But it provides no figure for its much-trumpeted investments in low-carbon technologies. In reality, Shell’s annual report reveals that it invested $25bn in oil and gas last year. ![]() These efforts continue today, with advertisements by Shell and Exxon that create the misleading impression that they’re switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy. ![]() They invested heavily in greenwashing their public image. They sponsored politicians, particularly in the US Congress, to block international attempts to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. They funded thinktanks and paid retired scientists and fake grassroots organisations to pour doubt and scorn on climate science. They knew what they were doing.Įven as their own scientists warned that the continued extraction of fossil fuels could cause “catastrophic” consequences, the oil companies pumped billions of dollars into thwarting government action. This was the year in which the president of the American Petroleum Institute told his members that the carbon dioxide they produced could cause “marked changes in climate” by the year 2000. The Guardian’s polluters series reports that just 20 fossil fuel companies, some owned by states, some by shareholders, have produced 35% of the carbon dioxide and methane released by human activities since 1965. ![]() We are guided by an ideology so familiar and pervasive that we do not even recognise it as an ideology. ![]()
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