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The magazine Complément d’Enquête revealed the faulty attitude of Total in the last century. The French tanker would have tried to minimize the role of oil exploitation in global warming while he was alerted in 1971.
Gas and oil are among the major sources of greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change. But since when do French oil companies know this? How did they react when they found out? First response in an internal document from 1985, written by the environment department of Elf, then a public company. The problem is recognized there in black and white. “All the models are unanimous in predicting a warming there”, can we read there.
However, in the years that followed, the company held the opposite view. “We had this schizophrenia, there is a gap between what was said internally and the discourse that was brought to the outside”, analysis Christophe Bonneil, historian and research director at CNRS. In 1993, a confidential document presented to management was entitled “greenhouse effect, proposal for an action plan” – he advises to say “there are scientific doubts about the greenhouse effect” and invites to show that “ecology is more destructive than creating jobs.”