If there was a year the world began waking up to climate change, it might have been 1988. That June, the NASA climatologist James Hansen testified to Congress that the climate was warming and would continue to do so as long as humans pumped fossil fuel pollution into the atmosphere. Months later, the United Nations established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
And, just weeks before the U.N. vote, Frank Sprow of Exxon’s corporate research department warned his colleaguesin an internal memo, “If a worldwide consensus emerges that action is needed to mitigate against Greenhouse gas effects, substantial negative impacts on Exxon could occur.”
Sprow’s memo is part of a batch of previously undisclosed documents released earlier this year without fanfare as part of an ongoing lawsuit Massachusetts filed against ExxonMobil in 2019. While the memo was quoted in a2023 article by The Wall Street Journal, it has not been published in full. Several other documents included in the filings are being reported on here for the first time, including more recent statements from Exxon scientists challenging the company’s climate-solution claims about its work on biofuels and carbon capture and storage.
While the documents align with hundreds of confidential files that have previously come to light throughreporting by Inside Climate Newsand other news organizations, as well as lawsuits and other sources, experts say they provide new details on internal deliberations at Exxon from the 1980s to the 2010s.
The release of the documents comes at a pivotal time for the oil industry and for efforts to hold it accountable for its role fueling climate change. This week, the U.S.Supreme Court heard argumentsfrom Exxon and oil producer Suncor Energy that a lawsuit filed by the city and county of Boulder, Colorado, should be halted. The outcome of that decision could decide whether more than two dozen other claims against oil companies proceed.
