Editor and General Manager
It’s clear from the New York Times op-ed of Oct. 9, 2015 (“Exxon’s Climate Concealment,” Naomi Oreskes) that the oil behemoth Exxon engaged in a deliberate disinformation campaign designed to counter the scientific community’s warnings about the threat of climate change. The essay notes that, while its own scientists were issuing internal reports on the threat, speaking on the topic at scientific conferences and collaborating with government scientists on related studies, the company was funding as many as 30 different organizations whose role was to cloud the issue.
Inside Climate News broke the story, and its reporting is insightful and scary. Scary—because it is clear that corporations with enormous resources, and hence power, at least sometimes opt to behave with depraved indifference to the harm they do if there is profit to be made.
Relevant scientific research done by corporations needs to be more transparent. From big tobacco, to chemical contamination (DuPont in Parkersburg, West Virginia), and many other examples, it is clear that knowledge of potential harm, real harm, even potentially catastrophic harm, does not prevent some corporate leaders from acting aggressively in the sole interest of greater profit. Intellectual property needs to be protected; company strategic goals need to be kept confidential; but the real information they have about the effects of their products on the environment and its inhabitants must be made public. By what mechanism? I’m not sure. Would it suppress research? Maybe, but I doubt it— there are too many reasons to do it, and valid research always becomes a news headline at some point anyway.
Not all companies behave badly. Some that do bad things do good things as well. The damage done by “bad actors” can be extensive and may be preventable. The “environment” in which that can happen should be created as soon as possible.
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