, about the industry’s long campaign to stall action on the climate crisis, in which the former Republican senator Chuck Hagel reflects on his part in killing US ratification of the Kyoto climate treaty.
Asked if the planet would be better placed to confront the climate crisis if the oil industry had been honest about the damage fossil fuels were causing, Hagel did not flinch. Some of those interviewed shamefacedly admit their part in the decades-long campaign to hide the evidence of climate change, discredit scientists and delay action that threatened big oil’s profits. Others almost boast about how easy it was to dupe the American public and politicians, with consequences not just for the US but every country on the planet.
The New York Times reported the testimony on its front page. It seemed a turning point to Wirth and Hansen. Now the country would have to face reality. Instead the hearing served as a warning to the oil industry to intensify its campaign of denialism. Frontline shows that key to that shift was a little known company in the 1990s, Koch Industries, which specialised in refining and distributing some of the heaviest and dirtiest oil. The firm was run by brothers Charles and David Koch. Charles also founded a libertarian thinktank, the Cato Institute in Washington.
“They basically said: if we can get David Boren to flip, we win. So, they said, we’re gonna do whatever it takes,” he said.
we choose to believe them against better knowledge, so we are to blame. Simple
We’ve known for years they’ve been lying. Just like the tobacco giants did.