Petroleum & curious decisions: Episode 3/3 (true story)
This third and last episode of this series tells the true story of the climate change denial strategy led by the petroleum industry (the American Petroleum Institute as well as companies such as Exxon and Shell) since the years 1990s. The industry created a Global Climate Coalition designed to deny the link between fossil fuel and global warming. The coalition hired economists, created grassroots organizations and media relation programs in order to undercut the conventional wisdom on climate science and defeat the Kyoto protocol.
Click here for previous episodes: Episode 1 & Episode 2
This comic was done in collaboration with Dr. Benjamin Franta, a researcher at Stanford University investigating the history of fossil fuel producers and climate science. Several of his articles were used as references for this comic series:
- The Guardian, On its 100th birthday in 1959, Edward Teller warned the oil industry about global warming, 2018
- Early oil industry knowledge of CO2 and global warming, 2018
- The Guardian, Shell and Exxon’s secret 1980s climate change warnings, 2018
Other references:
- Exxon’s Oil Industry Peers Knew About Climate Dangers in the 1970s, Too (by Neela Banerjee, InsideClimate News)
- Shell foresaw climate dangers in 1988 and understood Big Oil’s big role (by Steven Mufson and Chris Mooney, Washington Post
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