The 65-page report<\/a> was the result of a three-year investigation and was made public hours before a Senate Budget Committee hearing about the role that oil and gas companies have played in global warming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cThey could\u2019ve been the environmental Paul Revere but, instead, they were more like Rip Van Winkle, wanting everyone to go to sleep,\u201d Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said about fossil fuel companies\u2019 efforts to mislead and distract the American public for more than 60 years. \u201cThe thing that gets me the most is thinking back to the decades when \u2018Big Oil and Gas\u2019 understood the problem in a way almost no one in the country or the world did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Democrats\u2019 investigation revealed research, transcripts and even video recordings that show the fossil fuel industry knew the consequences of its emissions since at least the 1960s. Their report also showed how oil and gas companies initially tried to hide that information but employed new tactics to downplay the urgency of eliminating emissions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Geoffrey Supran, an associate professor and director of the Climate Accountability Lab at the University of Miami, researches climate disinformation and propaganda from the fossil fuel industry. He said that oil and gas companies\u2019 claims of decarbonizing are just their latest strategy to delay climate action. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPutting spin before science continues at oil companies to this day,\u201d he said of his research into the tactics of the industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is greenwashing 101,\u201d Supran added. \u201cTalk green, act dirty.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Senate Republicans called the hearing purely partisan and attempted to refocus the discussion on the financial cost of rapidly transitioning away from oil and gas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe spend all this money, and we don\u2019t lower global temperatures one scintilla of a degree,\u201d said Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, one of the top oil and gas producing states in the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The American Petroleum Institute (API), a major lobbying group for the industry, was repeatedly blamed in the report and Senate hearing for helping oil and gas companies hide the truth about climate change. According to Senate Democrats, API both advised fossil fuel companies on public relations strategies, while also acting as a scapegoat for congressional scrutiny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a statement to NBC News, an API spokesperson said, \u201cAt a time of persistent inflation and geopolitical instability, our nation needs more American energy \u2014 including more oil and natural gas \u2014 and less unfounded election year rhetoric. America\u2019s energy workers are focused on delivering the reliable, affordable oil and natural gas Americans demand while scaling the next generation of low-carbon technologies like hydrogen and carbon capture, and any suggestion to the contrary is inaccurate.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Democrats reiterated that oil and gas companies have damaged the planet for decades without having to pay for the consequences. That led Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to ask what happens next. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf we have an industry that knowingly, and that\u2019s the point \u2026 knowingly understood that climate change would bring devastating destruction to the lives of billions of people, what are the legal grounds we can hold them accountable for?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nbcnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Major oil companies have misled Americans for decades about the threat of human-caused climate change, according to a new report released Tuesday by Democrats in Congress. The 65-page report was the result of a three-year investigation and was made public hours before a Senate Budget Committee hearing about the role that oil and gas companies have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":26771,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5780],"tags":[28171,4148,2710],"class_list":["post-26770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-livehood","tag-big-oil","tag-climate-change","tag-threats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26770"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26772,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26770\/revisions\/26772"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}