Hundreds of previously unpublished documents have just been released, detailing how US oil giant Exxon funded thinktanks across Latin America to spread climate change denial from the late 1990s to early 2000s. The documents reveal a coordinated campaign orchestrated by the company and Atlas Network to make the global south “less inclined” to support the UN-led climate treaty process. Atlas Network is a US-based coalition consisting of over 500 free-market thinktanks worldwide, and the documents released by DeSmog—a global organization dedicated to providing information regarding global warming misinformation campaigns—show years of correspondence between Atlas and Exxon.
The documents released also include internal documents, along with copies of cheques Exxon sent to Atlas that helped finance Spanish and Chinese translations of climate-denying books; flights to Latin American cities for American climate deniers; and public events that allowed climate-deniers to reach local media and network with politicians. One clearly stated goal, per the documentation, was to convince the developing world of “the adverse effects of global climate change treaties.”Â
The campaign picked up at an instrumental time in climate action history. Just a couple of years earlier, in 1987, the Montreal Protocol became a model for future environmental diplomacy. Then, in 1992, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change became the first global treaty to directly address climate change, establishing the annual Conference of the Parties, aimed at facilitating international discussion on the stabilization of greenhouse gases. This accord then produced both the Kyoto Protocol (2005) and the Paris Agreement (1997), legally binding climate treaties to combat climate change. At such a pivotal moment, when global climate treaties were—for the first time—being seriously discussed, Exxon launched a massive misinformation campaign, despite knowing the causes and dangers of climate change since the 70s.
Despite the severity of this offense, Atlas has continued to downplay its lasting impacts. When asked about the released documents, an Atlas spokesperson responded that they were “drafted by former employees from more than a quarter century ago, addressed to a corporation that was never an important donor to our organisation, and which indeed has not been a donor at all for close to two decades.”
This, however, is obviously not indicative of the effects actually perpetrated by Exxon and Atlas’s harmful rhetoric from this crucial time period. Carlos Milani, a professor of international relations at Rio de Janeiro State University’s Institute of Social and Political Studies, said in response to the statement given that “the atmosphere has a huge historical memory when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions…What happened 30 years ago matters very much.”
Atlas’s response also fails to mention or account for the massive amount of money Exxon gave Atlas to spread this narrative. DeSmog’s documents include cheques ranging from $15,000 to $50,000 at a time. Moreover, in a 1997 strategy plan sent to Exxon by Atlas, the network requested $75,000, saying that “this investment in market-oriented public policies is a vital key to our future prosperity and well-being — and to continued strong returns to Exxon’s investors.” Which, for reference, would be roughly $153,000 today adjusted for inflation.
The uncovering of this calculated orchestration reveals the extent to which those in power will go in order to protect their own interests. This, though, may—and often does—come at the cost of the public good. Looking to the future, we must continue to stay vigilant in the face of mass misinformation campaigns. It also leads us to consider what other narratives we have been fed at the hands of multi-billion-dollar corporations that seek to maintain and exert their power, influence, and investment.