Big Oil companies could have helped stop climate change not 30 but 63 years ago

Instead, they engaged in climate denial. So now, extreme weather disasters from a 63-year-old denial of climate change has cost the world an estimated $220 billion in 2021, up 24% on 2020

Credit; Earth Policy Institute

Exxon could have helped stop climate change thirty years ago in 1992, but the stoppage should have happened even earlier. At the Energy and Man symposium held at the Columbia University in New York in 1959, famous scientist Edward Teller warned Big Oil companies about climate change. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose two percent over normal in 1959, but by 1970, Teller said, it may rise by four percent, eight percent by 1980, sixteen percent by 1990s, with the planet warming during the process.

Six years later, President Lyndon Johnson made reference to the report by the Science Advisory Committee.  Carbon dioxide was being added to the earth’s atmosphere through the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas at the rate of six billion tons a year, the report said. Fossil fuel combustion was the only major new producer of carbon dioxide, increasing the quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the ocean from roughly 1860 to 1960 by seven percent, the report continued, with atmospheric carbon dioxide rising  from 1958 to 1963 through a 1.36 percent increase. Melting icecaps, rising sea levels, acidification of water sources could be the result of the development. By the year 2,000, the increase in carbon dioxide would be close to 25 percent. It may be sufficient to produce a measurable and perhaps marked change in the climate, Johnson said, echoing the committee’s report.

Keeling Curve; Credit, National Geographic Society

Carbon dioxide levels rose every year, according to Charles Keeling in 1960, using Mauna Loa as a point of reference through his curve. The first measurement of carbon dioxide delivered by the curve showed  an average concentration of 315 parts per million, the figure reaching 403 parts per million in 1960, with the graph rising upwards to 2005,  the development of rising carbon dioxide level around the world caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuel.

So by the 1992, Big Oil executives knew that fossil fuel caused the rising carbon dioxide levels around the world, because they listened to Edward Telller at the Energy and Man symposium. They listened to Johnson’s statements in 1965, and saw the statistics in Keeling’s curve. Shell in the 1980s knew it played a big role in global warming, as a research determined that it generated four percent of the world’s carbon emissions in 1984 through its exploration of oil and gas.

Credit; Cifi.it

Standard Oil (later Esso then Exxon),  Royal Dutch Shell, and Gulf Oil (later Chevron) belonged to the group of big oil companies at the time Teller spoke at the Energy and Man symposium. The first quarter 1959 earnings of Standard Oil (New Jersey) stood at 14 percent above the corresponding period of 1958.

Earnings held steady for Royal Dutch Shell, as its net income in the first quarter of 1959 stood at $104,009,000, compared with $103,155,000 for the previous year. This prevailed even after it provided $118,308,000 for taxes and $$87,531,000 a year before.  Its sales and operating income rose to $1,657,020,000 from $1,582,815,000 the previous year.

As for Gulf Oil, it raised earnings by 22 percent at $141,814,000 profit in half compared with the 1958 level of $115,737,000. Its earnings proved equivalent to $4.38 each on the 32,396,443 shares outstanding by June 30, 1959.

The big oil companies in 1959 ignored Teller’s warnings over carbon dioxide emissions because they wanted to continue enjoying outstanding years in making profits through the exploration of fossil fuel.  Other Big Oil companies such as Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now BP) and Texaco (now merged into Chevron) found themselves in the same situation. Not unlike today’s versions of Big Oil, they preferred to enjoy colossal gains at the expense of a rapidly warming world, not concerned about the predictions of rising seas, the melting icecaps, and rising temperatures.

Spending on lobbying against climate change; Credit, DeSmog

Rather than implement measures to make the earth a livable planet, Big Oil’s reactions to people like Teller involved spending billions designed to contain, stop, or complicate climate-motivated policies in the following years. So now, BP spends yearly about $53 million on climate lobbying, followed by Shell with $49 million, and Exxon with $41 million. Chevron and Total each spend around $29 million every year, with all five companies listing support for their lobbying expenditure they support with an outlay of $195 million annually to suggest they support action against climate change.

In response to calls to make the world a livable space, Big Oil companies increased their expansion programs yearly since 1959, even when they knew the risks. For instance, Exxon announced big drilling expansion plans for 2022, boasting capital spending up to 45 percent to $24 billion. Shell plans to drill 10 wells a year offshore the U.K., as well as join QuatarEnergy’s $29 billion project for the expansion of natural gas fields. Eni and ConocoPhillips join TotalEnergy as partners with QatarEnergy for the expansion of the North Field East.

Big Oil’s refusal to listen to Teller sixty-three years ago intensifies climate change tragedies worldwide.  Extreme weather disasters cost the U.S. more than $742 billion from 2017 through 2021, with tax payers footing the bill, not the oil companies. A whooping 31 extreme weather events hit the U.K. between 2018 and the end of 2019, and now, they cost home owners billions in repairs. Nigerians will get hit with between six to 30 percent loss of income by 2050, equivalent to a loss of $100 to $400 billion. Globally, extreme weather events cost the world an estimated $220 in 2021, up 24 percent on 2020.

With climate change disasters allowing nations to be hit by as much as 30 percent loss in income by 2050, the refusal of oil companies to listen to people like Teller 63-years ago proves a big mistake. The expansion of drilling activities by Big Oil companies worsens the situation, a condition further complicated by the billions of dollars spent in the past years on lobbying to block binding climate-motivated policies.

Ideas such as Nick Dowson’s  public power and public should characterize oil exploration, as means to bring Big Oil companies to their knees, before nations start to build their clean energy. Sixty-three years of mistakes must be redressed,  and now is the time to act.

 How to tackle Big Oil companies over climate change

Big Oil companies; Credit, Energy now.com

A few strategies to transform the energy system. Read this.

What it will take to break up big oil? Read this.

In an age in which climate crisis is becoming a reality, shareholder activism is bound to happen. Read this.

Options for big oil at a time of climate change. Read this.    

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A Somali diet; Credit, Only Gluten Free Recipe