Foul play from Exxon Mobil

That Exxon Mobil earns its money spewing out greenhouse gasses and other dirty stuff shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone these days. It is a little more surprising that the same company actually spends quite a lot of money spewing out another sort of pollution: Doubt, uncertainty and lies.

According to The Independent, it has long been known that Exxon has spent millions of dollars to fund climate sceptics.

– ExxonMobil invests significant amounts in letting think-tanks, seemingly respectable sources, sow doubts about the need for EU governments to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Olivier Hoedeman, of the Corporate Europe Observatory told The Independent.

– Covert funding for climate sceptics is deeply hypocritical because ExxonMobil spends major sums on advertising to present itself as an environmentally responsible company, Hoedemann added.

Enemies of truth

Hoedemann is not the only one who finds Exxon’s funding of lies morally suspect. Earlier this year the Royal Society, considered Britain’s leading scientific academy, wrote to Exxon asking that the company stop funding groups that have “misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence”.

And the evidence is plenty. No one in their right mind actually doubts the links between emission of CO2 and global warming these days. Not even the people at Exxon Mobil. The very fact that they find it necessary to spend millions of dollars suggest that deep down they know this: there is no enemy as powerful as the truth.