ExxonMobil should ‘own up and pay up’ for heating planet, government’s climate adviser says

Lord Deben, a cabinet minister under Margaret Thatcher, says oil and gas giant is refusing to take ‘any responsibility’ for role it played in accelerating climate change

Oil and gas giant ExxonMobil should “own up and pay up” for the role it has played in accelerating climate change, a Conservative peer and government climate advisor has said.

Lord Deben, the former Tory environment secretary and cabinet minister under Margaret Thatcher, accused the US multinational of “denying the facts” and singled it out for refusing to take “any responsibility” for heating up the planet.

The peer’s comments came after research published in the Science journal said Exxon, one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, “skillfully” predicted global warming in the 1970s but then spent decades discrediting climate science to protect its core business.

Scientists at Exxon accurately forecast that global temperatures and carbon dioxide emissions would climb steadily from 1970s onwards. But at the same time executives at the energy giant made public statements contradicting its own research.

Writing in The Independent, Lord Deben said it was in Exxon’s “own interests” to “own up and pay up”. “Exxon-Mobil steadfastly refuses to acknowledge any responsibility, let alone admit to its wrongdoing,” he said.

“Its delaying action has given us all a huge bill and we should be looking for reparation. As long as it denies the facts and its unique responsibility for the delay, this is not the company with which to ally.”

The peer added: “We should give other businesses our custom. By not being complicit either as partners or customers, those committed to achieving Net Zero can help Exxon see it is in their financial interest to own up and pay up.”

A tanker pulls into an ExxonMobil fuel storage and distribution facility in Irving, Texas (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Lord Deben, the former MP for Suffolk Coastal, served as John Major’s environment secretary from 1993 until 1997. He was elevated to the House of Lords in 2010 after stepping down from the Commons.

During his time in office he introduced the Environment Act 1995 and the Landfill Tax, which was the first such environmental tax in the UK.

He also chairs the Climate Change Committee, an independent statutory body established under the Climate Change Act 2008.

Its purpose is to advise the UK and devolved governments on emissions targets and to report to parliament on progress made in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and preparing for and adapting to the impacts of climate change.

Campaigners have been ramping up calls for fossil fuel giants to pay reparations to the countries worst affected by global warming and the topic featured at both Cop26 and Cop27 climate summits.

The Science study said Exxon not only funded research that confirmed what climate scientists were saying at the time, but also used more than a dozen different computer models that forecast the coming warming with precision equal to or better than government and academic scientists.

Scientists, governments, activists and news sites, including Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times, reported several years ago that “Exxon knew” about the science of climate change since about 1977 all while publicly casting doubt on it.

Lord Deben (L) with former Commons Speaker John Bercow (PA)

The Science research outlines in more detail how accurate Exxon’s scientists’ predictions were.

From 63 per cent  to 83 per cent of those projections fit strict standards for accuracy and generally predicted correctly that the globe would warm by about 2C per decade.

The Exxon-funded science was “actually astonishing” in its precision and accuracy, said study co-author Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard science history professor.

But she added so was the “hypocrisy because so much of the Exxon Mobil disinformation for so many years ... was the claim that climate models weren’t reliable”.

A spokesperson for Exxon said: “ExxonMobil is committed to providing reliable and affordable energy to support human progress while advancing effective solutions that address the risks of climate change.

“We support the aims of the Paris Agreement and efforts to achieve net-zero emissions - we plan to achieve net-zero emissions from our operated assets by 2050.

“Over the next six years we plan to invest more than $17 billion on initiatives to lower greenhouse gas emissions. A significant share is focused on scaling up carbon capture and storage, hydrogen and biofuels.

“This work is described in greater detail in our Advancing Climate Solutions 2023 Progress Report, which is publicly available on our corporate website.”