Subcommittee laid out four decades of evidence just a day after oil behemoth began a trial over misleading investors

This article is more than 10 months old

This article is more than 10 months old

House Democrats on Wednesday laid out four decades of evidence that oil behemoth Exxon knew since the 1970s that the burning of fossil fuels was heating the planet and intentionally sowed doubt about the climate crisis.

The testimony came in a hearing in a House oversight subcommittee on civil rights just a day after ExxonMobil began a trial in New York City over misleading investors on the business risks from government rules meant to address the climate crisis.

Exxon’s role in hiding the mounting emergency has been widely publicized for four years, since the publication of an investigation by InsideClimate News, the Los Angeles Times and the Columbia Journalism School. Court proceedings and additional reporting have found more proof of Exxon’s longtime knowledge of the problem.

Exxon has misled Americans on climate change for decades. Here’s how to fight back Read more

“What they did was wrong. They spread doubt about the dangers of climate change,” testified Martin Hoffert, who was a scientist consultant for Exxon Research and Engineering in the 1980s. “The effect of this disinformation was to delay action internally and externally … As a result, in my opinion, homes and livelihoods will likely be destroyed and lives lost.”

ExxonMobil is one of the top 20 companies responsible for a third of carbon dioxide emissions since 1965, an investigation by the Guardian has revealed.

Hoffert testified that in 1982, Exxon scientists predicted how carbon dioxide levels would rise and heat the planet as humans burned more and more fossil fuels.

The New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has advocated for a Green New Deal to fight global heating, called the projections from that time “startlingly accurate”.

“In 1982, seven years before I was even born, Exxon accurately predicted that by this year, 2019, the Earth would hit a carbon dioxide concentration of 415 parts per million and a temperature increase of 1C. Dr Hoffert, is that correct?”

“We were excellent scientists,” Hoffert said to laughter from the audience.

“Yes you were, yes you were,” Ocasio-Cortez responded. “So they knew.”

After the hearing, Hoffert lamented that Exxon could have taken a different path, merging its knowledge of the climate crisis with its science on battery storage that will be critical to shifting away from fossil fuels. “They could have initiated a huge program” Hoffert said.

Lawmakers heard from other experts and lawyers, including another former Exxon scientist.

Republicans invited one witness, a lawyer who was a political appointee to Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has rescinded all US efforts to reduce heat-trapping pollution.

The lawyer, Mandy Gunasekara, works with a pro-fossil fuel group associated with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which Ocasio-Cortez pointed out is funded by the conservative billionaire Koch brothers, who are invested in fossil energy. Gunasekara testified that the hearing is part of a “politically-motivated campaign” to smear an entire industry and argued any warming will be manageable.

Exxon and other oil companies did not participate in the hearing.

Republicans on the subcommittee insisted that fossil fuels are essential to powering the US and lifting people out of poverty worldwide.

Scientists have found the opposite: that the escalating crisis caused largely by those fossil fuels will force millions into poverty, through droughts that trigger food insecurity and extreme weather that disrupts society.

Chip Roy, the ranking Republican congressman on the subcommittee, from Texas, criticized climate advocates for “demonizing companies” that provide jobs and power the country including, as he noted, incubators for babies.

Roy said he was puzzled why the subcommittee on civil rights would discuss the climate crisis.

“Let’s talk about the massive violations of civil liberties that will occur if we do as Elizabeth Warren has said and ban fracking,” Roy said.

Roy’s top campaign supporters are in the oil and gas sector, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Air pollution and the impacts of the climate crisis from fossil fuels disproportionately harm people of color, as Democrats noted in stories from their districts.