‘What we now know … they lied’: how big oil companies betrayed us all | Documentary | The Guardian

Source: ‘What we now know … they lied’: how big oil companies betrayed us all | Documentary | The Guardian

About this contentChris McGrealThu 21 Apr 2022 02.03 EDT

There is a moment in the revelatory PBS Frontline docuseries The Power of Big Oil, 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.

In 1997, Hagel joined with the Democratic senator Robert Byrd to promote a resolution opposing the international agreement to limit greenhouse gases, on the grounds that it was unfair to Americans. The measure passed the US Senate without a single dissenting vote, after a vigorous campaign by big oil to mischaracterise the Kyoto protocol as a threat to jobs and the economy while falsely claiming that China and India could go on polluting to their heart’s content.

The resolution effectively put a block on US ratification of any climate treaty ever since.

A quarter of a century later, Hagel acknowledges that the vote was wrong, and blames the oil industry for malignly claiming the science of climate change was not proved when companies such as Exxon and Shell already knew otherwise from their own research.

“What we now know about some of these large oil companies’ positions … they lied. And yes, I was misled. Others were misled when they had evidence in their own institutions that countered what they were saying publicly. I mean they, lied,” he told the documentary-makers.

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.

“Oh, absolutely. It would have created a whole different climate, a whole different political environment. I think it would have changed everything,” he said.