The multinational oil company Total already knew, 50 years ago, that the use of fossil fuels would cause global warming, concludes a new study published on Wednesday. Despite this, the company has helped to maintain doubts about the climate crisis which threatens the future of humanity today.
The study published in the journal Global Environmental Change is based in particular on an official company publication entitled Total Information and dated 1971. In the context of this publication, the oil company notes that the use of fossil fuels since the beginning of the industrial era has released “enormous quantities” of CO2, which has increased the concentration of this greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
The text published 50 years ago emphasizes above all that the increase in the concentration of CO2 is “worrying”, since this gas “plays a major role in the thermal equilibrium of the atmosphere” and that an increase in its concentration will lead to warming.
Total adds that it is “possible” that the rise in temperatures is “to be feared”, citing a warming of 1 ° C to 1.5 ° C. The text estimates that if this warming is “small”, it could nevertheless have “significant impacts”. This could in particular modify the circulation of air masses and lead in part to a “melting” of the ice of the poles, “which would lead to a significant rise in the level of the oceans”. “The catastrophic consequences are easy to imagine,” notes Total.
In this 6,000-copy publication aimed at employees and external communications, the company even estimates that the concentration of CO2 could reach 400 parts per million (PPM) in 2010. However, this prediction was very close to reality, since this concentration was reached in 2015. The calculations carried out by Total experts in the early 1970s were therefore already very precise. .
Climate denial?
In the years that followed this publication, the multinational refined its expertise on the impacts of our dependence on fossil fuels, while maintaining doubt in the public sphere for several years, underlines the research. This was conducted by Christophe Bonneuil, research director at the National Center for Scientific Research, in France, but also by Pierre-Louis Choquet, sociologist at Sciences Po Paris, and by Benjamin Franta, researcher in history at Stanford University. in the USA.
This is not the first time that research has pointed to an oil company claiming that it has been aware of the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on global warming for decades.
“The novelty is that we thought that only Exxon and the American groups were in duplicity”, but “we realize that our French oil champions participated in this phenomenon at least between 1987 and 1994”, explained to the Agence France-Presse Christophe Bonneuil, speaking of a “factory of ignorance”.
Exxon knew
A 2017 study showed that the American oil group ExxonMobil had known since the 1980s that climate change was real and caused by human activities. British daily The Guardian in particular revealed that in 1982, the company predicted, thanks to internal studies, that because of the emissions emitted by fossil fuels, the levels of CO2 would reach 560 ppm in 2060, which would increase global temperatures by at least 2 ° C. This climate trajectory is also on the way to materialize, according to the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
However, Exxon has worked for years to maintain doubt about this reality, thus deceiving its shareholders and citizens. As early as 1980, an Exxon official, Henry Shaw, insisted on the need to fight against all restrictions imposed on the oil companies. “We have every interest in launching a very ambitious defensive program. Because there is a good chance that legislation will be put in place, which will affect our activities, ”he wrote in an internal note cited in Loosing Earth), an investigation carried out by the journalist of New York Times Nathaniel Rich.
Exxon then put forward an argument still raised today by the promoters of projects for the development of fossil resources. “I believe in a period of transition”, underlined Henry Shaw, since 1980, always quoted in Losing the Earth. “We’re not going to stop burning fossil fuels overnight, and suddenly turn to solar or nuclear fusion and so on. We are going to make a very reasonable and gradual transition from fossil fuels to renewable energies. “
None of this has happened since in 40 years, the share of fossil fuels has still not declined substantially. According to the most recent edition of the Production Gap Report, published on Wednesday, the major fossil fuel producing countries are even forecasting production growth over the next few years. However, all new coal, oil and natural gas development projects should be canceled to avoid climate sinking, according to the International Energy Agency.
In 2018, the Royal Dutch Shell company was also targeted by these accusations. In 1988, internal documents from the Dutch oil company ensured that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere could double by 2050, or that sea levels could rise by one meter. The company also noted the possibility of “the disappearance of specific ecosystems”, the increase in “destructive floods”, and an increase in air temperature that could “drastically change the living conditions of people. “. All these observations were subsequently confirmed by scientists specializing in climate and biodiversity.
Like Exxon or Total, Shell however kept its studies secret knowing that its activities contributed to the realization of these scenarios.
Fossil lobbying
In the mid-1980s, Exxon, via the International Environmental Association of the Petroleum Industry (IPIECA), had also led an international campaign by oil groups to “challenge climate science and weaken controls on energy. fossils, ”the researchers point out.
The IPIECA “torpedoed by active lobbying the ecotax projects of the European Commission between 1990 and 1994” and other projects of regulation of fossil energies, declared Wednesday Mr. Bonneuil, during a press conference in line. According to him, “there are internal notes welcoming this lobbying work” in the archives of the French groups studied.
” He is […] false to argue that the climate risk would have been suppressed by Total or Elf in the 1970s or since ”, Total reacted to Agence France-Presse, assuring that“ since 2015, TotalEnergies has been engaged in a profound transformation of its activities »Towards renewable energies.
With Agence France-Presse