Documents Detail What Shell Knew About Climate Change Decades Ago
Newly revealed documents indicate oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has not only known about the risks of climate change for decades, but has also realized for more than 20 years that it, along with the rest of the fossil fuel industry and perhaps the U.S. government, could be held liable for not acting to prevent further climate damage.
One of the documents, written in 1998, models an eerily accurate scenario of violent and damaging storms hitting the East Coast of the U.S. in 2010.
“Following the storms, a coalition of environmental NGOs brings a class-action suit against the U.S. government and fossil-fuel companies on the grounds of neglecting what scientists (including their own) have been saying for years: that something must be done,” the report projects.
The document is one of a trove of 38 discovered and released to the public Thursday by Jelmer Mommers, a climate and energy journalist for the Dutch news organization De Correspondent. The documents are being released on the Climate Files website.
By Coofdy