A study exposed Exxon for the liars they are. Why didn’t the media stay with this truth? Why didn’t they more prominently highlight reports on the necessary transition to renewable energy?
Derelict Media
A recent peer-reviewed study is a final nail in the coffin for the belief that Exxon did not know definitively that its products damaged our climate. CommonDreams reported the following.
“This is the nail in the coffin of ExxonMobil’s claims that it has been falsely accused of climate malfeasance.”
That’s what University of Miami associate professor Geoffrey Supran said about a peer-reviewed study on the fossil fuel giant’s global warming projections published Thursday in the journal Science, which he began work on as a Harvard University research fellow.
“Our analysis shows that ExxonMobil’s own data contradicted its public statements, which included exaggerating uncertainties, criticizing climate models, mythologizing global cooling, and feigning ignorance about when—or if—human-caused global warming would be measurable, all while staying silent on the threat of stranded fossil fuel assets,” said Supran, the study’s lead author.’
Exxon—and the fossil fuel industry overall—has faced scrutiny from campaigners, journalists, lawmakers, and scientists for spending decades hugely profiting off of its planet-wrecking products while spreading climate misinformation.
The new study from Supran, Harvard professor Naomi Oreskes, and University of Potsdam professor Stefan Rahmstorf—who is also a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research—comes as policymakers worldwide continue to allow major corporations to cash in on fossil fuels, despite the increasingly devastating impacts of heating the planet.
Supran and Oreskes have previously published peer-reviewed research on the “discrepancy between what ExxonMobil’s scientists and executives discussed about climate change privately and in academic circles, and what it presented to the general public,” confirming the findings from 2015 reports by Inside Climate News and The Los Angeles Times.
The study used the data from Exxon’s scientists between 1977 and 2003 and found their accuracy spot-on. So as they lied to us about the uncertainty of the data, their scientists knew better.
The question is, for something as existential as our atmosphere and environment, why wasn’t our fourth estate, the mainstream media, more inquisitive and more curious? Deep inside, we know the answer. Our mainstream media is just another business that exists by the prevalent business model, an unsustainable economic system that will take us all down unchecked.
As I wrote this, I came across Steve Schmidt’s excellent Substack article titled “The Collapse of the American media,” which was apropos. His first three paragraphs were on point.
The United States of America is the most complex society in world history. Among the most important foundational principles of American society is the First Amendment, which establishes the inviolate American birthrights of the freedoms of speech, religion, assembly and the press. The free press is fundamental toward the functioning of any democratic form of government, but like the powerful institutions it covers, the media is also prone to the vices that produce corruption.
The American media is profoundly broken. The collapse of local newspapers and television coverage at a local level has allowed for impostors like George Santos to con their way through an election without fear of investigation or scrutiny.
At a national level, the overwhelming majority of the US political media has become economically dependent on their political partners. It is a symbiotic relationship that has spawned a vast “access economy.”
While Steve mainly highlighted the media’s failure in politics, the same applies to their failure in calling out our corporations who, over the decade, have used coercive techniques to keep a media more favorable to their flawed positions. Professors and other scientists consistently knock deserving major corporations for the ills they lay upon us, the oil industry, the healthcare industry, the defense industrial complex, and others. Yet, they are never highlighted in the appropriate depth to ensure they keep Americans sufficiently educated to make the right choices in the politicians they support and the products and services they buy.
Most agree that we must get to negative carbon to mitigate dramatic climate change. The data is out there for most to see. The International Energy Agency (IEA) released a comprehensive report titled “Mineral requirements for clean energy transition.” I key in on the report because many in the fossil industry have convinced Americans that transition to zero carbon would have insurmountable headwinds. Specifically, they want you to believe that shortages of materials used in batteries, solar panels, transmission, and wind turbines are unavoidable. Even under a business model predicated on the greed of the few, the transition is possible. Imagine if worldwide, we found a collective worldwide economic model for the renewable sector, The question would no longer be how can we profit from it but how can we build it to ensure all countries can have the energy requirements to ensure their own economic models, whatever it may be, is not held hostage to the few.
Where is the mainstream media that should be highlighting reports like this one from the IEA? It is not hard to understand why. It is time for a paradigm shift in how we get and consume news. Lying corporations and derelict media are ultimately fatal to our society. Imagine if we could feel assured that we had mainstream media that enlightened us in a manner that would allow reports like this IEA report to take hold.
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