For 50 Years the Major Oil Companies Have Known They’re Destroying the Planet

For fifty years, the major oil companies have been aware of their destructive impact on the planet. In 1979, a year after the reporter was born in oil-boom Shetland, one of the world's largest oil tankers, the Esso Atlantic, was being fitted out with a climate-monitoring laboratory in a refinery dockyard on the island of Aruba. The ship belonged to Exxon, the oil giant.

Two years earlier, in 1977, a senior Exxon scientist, James Black, had presented a report to the company's management committee, stating that there was "general scientific agreement" that human activities, specifically the burning of fossil fuels, were leading to the warming of the global climate, which could ultimately threaten the future of humanity.

Black predicted that the doubling of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere could increase average global temperatures by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius, and possibly up to 10 degrees Celsius at the poles. He warned that while some countries might benefit, others could experience a reduction or destruction of their agricultural output.

He estimated that humans had a time window of five to ten years before critical decisions regarding energy strategies would become necessary. Exxon's science division equipped the Esso Atlantic with instruments to detect and measure oceanic and atmospheric CO2 concentrations over a three-year, $1 million research project. The ship transported oil between the Gulf of Mexico and the Persian Gulf while simultaneously gathering air and water samples. This project aimed to combine empirical data gathering with sophisticated climate modeling.