Pressure Builds to Probe Exxon Climate Claims

The Hill ^ | Monday, November 9, 2015 | Timothy Cama

[kristinn]

The Obama administration is under increasing pressure to investigate allegations that Exxon Mobil Corp. misled the public about its knowledge of climate change.

All of the Democratic candidates for president have called on the Justice Department to launch an investigation, joining a number of Dem lawmakers and major environmental groups.

Some are also pushing for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to probe whether the company broke federal law.

The pressure on the feds to act only intensified on Nov. 5 when it was revealed that New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman had launched his own probe. The allegations are creating a headache for the country's largest oil and natural gas company.

Exxon's problems started in September, when news website InsideClimate News started publishing a multi-part investigation alleging that Exxon knew in great detail as early as the 1970s that carbon dioxide, produced mainly by burning fossil fuels like oil and gas, was warming the planet.

The company, before its 1999 merger with Mobil, invested millions of dollars into its own research on the subject, reasoning that climate change could pose a great risk to its future.

But executives later steered the company’s climate activities toward sowing doubt about climate science and the role of fossil fuels in global warming, InsideClimate alleges. Only in the last decade or so did Exxon go back to agreeing with the mainstream science on climate.

The Los Angeles Times soon released the findings of its own investigation that made similar charges.

Now, more than 40 environmental groups, along with Democrats in Congress and on the campaign trail, are calling on Attorney General Loretta Lynch or SEC Chairwoman Mary Jo White to investigate.

[FreedomPoster]

That very much depends on who appointed the judge, now, doesn’t it?

[Bob434]

[[They have to convince a jury of that.]]

A carefully chosen jury- and government as a lot of people convinced man is causing climate change- I hear people all around me who discuss the issue and think man is causing it- they are shocked when I speak up against it and look at me like I have three heads

[piasa]

And exactly one year later the SEC’s head Mary Jo White announces she’s leaving the SEC....