French oil giant Total knew that its fossil fuel extraction could contribute to global warming as early as 1971 but stayed silent about it until 1988, according to a new study. Research published today in the journal Global Environmental Change, based on internal company documents and interviews with former staff, found that personnel “received warnings of the potential for catastrophic global warming from its products by 1971”. Total – which this year rebranded as TotalEnergies – “became more fully informed” about climate change in the 1980s and “began promoting doubt regarding the scientific basis for global warming by the late 1980s”. The company publicly accepted climate science in the 1990s but promoted “policy delay or policies peripheral to fossil fuel control”, the authors found. The research – which has sparked the hashtag #Totalknew on social media – follows similar revelations about ExxonMobil and Shell in recent years which exposed how companies were aware of the impact of their emissions on the climate as early as the 1980s.
— source desmog.com | Oct 20, 2021