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what do you do when you learn the product you make threatens the entire planet exxonmobil provides an essential component of modern society affordable
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reliable and abundant energy [Music] they were actually making eerily accurate predictions about how high the co2 concentration the atmosphere would be
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[Music] there are massive fracking booms happening in texas north dakota pennsylvania exxon mobil is making a bet here on natural gas america is at the beginning of a great
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natural gas boom did it turn out we had it wrong absolutely what we learned about methane emissions is very very scary methane is harming every single person
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and every animal and everything on this planet global warming and a lot of it's a hoax it's a hoax i mean it's a money-making industry okay they knew that eventually policymakers
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were going to catch up and take actions that would put their business in jeopardy so what do you do delay distract and deflect [Music]
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[Music] i certainly didn't go up questioning fossil fuels or thinking about where energy came from it was just
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1950s usa everything was automatic and wonderful soon traffic will flow smoothly in around and between every major city and town in america fossil fuels we're driving what we call
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western civilization and still today i value what fossil fuels have done for the world this is the road to prosperity
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i was proud to be working three years later in the oil and gas industry but we each have to make our own decisions decide what to do with our lives
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and when you change course you change course [Music] four decades ago a young engineer called
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tony in graffia joined a government task force searching for ways to access new sources of oil and gas it was being driven partly by this patriotic fervor
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we don't want to be beholden to the middle east right u.s oil production and natural gas production had just fallen off right off the end of the table
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we're going to work really hard to make sure that the u.s always has its own supply of fossil fuels what's not to like their search led them to shale rock even in this small piece of marcella
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shale there is stored methane which becomes natural gas when it's produced uh and if one were to estimate the total amount of methane
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thousands of square miles under all these states it's many many trillions of cubic feet of natural gas but nobody had thought about spending a lot of money trying to get oil and gas
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out of shale and most people in the industry the vast majority of the people in the industry said it couldn't be done we did a lot of computer modeling and concluded that it was certainly
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possible after years of further research the industry perfected a method of fracturing rock and horizontal drilling fracking [Music]
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people realized then that there was this enormous untapped resource we've unlocked the keys to the kingdom once fracking became cost-effective wall street took note
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most people in the oil and gas industry most reporters like myself that were covering it thought that oil and gas in the united states was over we had found all the good reserves we had drilled all the big wells
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and shale changed all that it was unexpected it was dramatic and it was lubricated by billions and billions of dollars coming out of wall
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street thanks to record-breaking u.s production natural gas will continue to be a bargain at chesapeake energy we explore for american natural gas the leader of the fracking boom was chesapeake
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energy's aubrey mclendon far less than many other companies aubry mcclendon was a great visionary he was one of the best natural speakers i'd ever seen
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ceo of chesapeake energy we welcome you mr mcclendon whenever you're ready please begin thank you mr chairman if there's one message i'd like to effectively communicate today it's that america is at the beginning of a great
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natural gas boom and this boom can largely believed that natural gas was the fuel of the future and that's he called it that all the time for clean electricity natural gas is the answer just remember
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pollution is no bargain natural gas is [Music] at the time most of the world's power was generated by coal which was sending greenhouse gas emissions to record
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levels mclendon argued that gas was better for the planet because it released less co2 [Music] he said well what do you think you know he said do we need
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an association or an organization just focused on the gas opportunities out there so we started the clean skies foundation it was just doing everything we possibly
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could to get out the message what if america had its own clean energy abundant and available for the next century or more and possibly indefinitely the fossil fuel industry tries to make
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this argument that we can be part of the a world solution good we can be a force for good on climate that we'll go out and we'll drill the natural gas which is going to help us
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lower um our emissions doing a world of good for our economy energy security and are irreplaceable and then all of a sudden aubry mcclendon he starts courting
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probably the most prominent environmentalist in the country carl pope at the sierra club and we have carl pope uh the executive director of the sierra club who is a giant in the environmental movement
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aubry mcclendon's chesapeake energy secretly donated 26 million dollars to the sierra club america's most influential environmental organization well we were working with chesapeake to
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kill coal and they were providing us with financial support the concept that we were trying to convey was to say eventually we have to be off all fossil fuels but we have to
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get off coal first oil second and gas third so we have the opportunity to replace a very dirty fossil fuel coal with a much cleaner fossil fuel natural gas for the next 20 or 30 years
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the gas industry had gained a powerful friend in the environmental movement it was an alliance karl pope would later come to regret the natural gas industry excuse me the
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gas industry but you know they've got they've trained me to call off the natural gas and there's nothing natural about it i didn't understand how strong they were i thought the big player was oil i thought gas was kind of a junior cousin
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gas turns out to have an awful lot of political strength and americans had been more fully sold on the myth that gas was green and i didn't realize how
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deeply that it sunk into people's brains probably mine several other major environmental organizations went on to back natural gas expansion aubry mclendon would die in a car
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accident in 2016 but by then his campaign to sell gas as a climate solution had changed the world it's sort of amazing that there was this
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guy in oklahoma city who helped really shift the whole national dialogue about climate and about fossil fuels and just at a time when a lot of scientists were
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sort of looking at this and saying we really need to start weaning off fossil fuels and in doing so he he locks in the united states onto natural gas for the next generation
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there are massive fracking booms happening in texas north dakota pennsylvania it's much of the middle of this country it's led to unprecedented expansion in towns from catoola to beeville the oil fields fueling a
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red-hot energy boom tens of thousands of fracked wells were now appearing across america and the world the boom attracted the interest of one of the world's largest oil companies
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x certainly marks the spot exxon mobil announcing it is buying xto energy and it's a 41 billion dollar deal including something mobile is making a bet here on natural gas
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overnight exxon mobil became america's largest gas producer [Music] da long chang was an exxon mobil engineer who worked on the company's
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fracking operations my peers when they were recruiting me they knew my concerns about climate change they told me that exxon mobil was the largest non-state energy company in the
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world and even then oil and gas had been its bread and butter exxon mobil was going to be part of the energy transition over my career and i believed them they talked about
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the excitement of having gas be a bridge fuel to the future of energy i think one of the biggest challenges that the world is facing today is to develop all the
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energy we need in an environmentally friendly way the fact that natural gas was much cleaner burning than coal that it produced half the carbon dioxide emissions of coal those are very
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appealing to me but chang also knew there was a major problem with gas if it's allowed to leak [Music] natural gas is primarily methane and
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methane when it's leaked out into the atmosphere can have orders of magnitude more global warming impact than carbon dioxide methane gas can have an impact of more than 80 times the impact of carbon
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dioxide but the reason why this is so important is because we only have a couple decades to avert runaway climate change chang worried that the tens of thousands
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of new fracking operations across the globe could be leaking massive amounts of methane turbocharging the climate crisis it's commonly known among engineers that
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all gases leak and that if you don't take measures to check for leaks and if you don't take measures to prevent those leaks then the assumption is that you're
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guilty until proven innocent re felt that having many unconventional methane gas wells was a ticking time bomb for methane gas leaks the more engineering infrastructure the
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more wells and the more pipes the more potential there is for leakage when they are marketing natural gas as clean energy they were fixated on the idea that natural gas when burned
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produces half the carbon dioxide emissions of coal [Music] but without measurement devices to verify that you're not significantly leaking you can't be sure that your
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natural gas is actually giving you less of a global warming impact than coal there wasn't much appetite for management to measure methane leakage because if they found out there was a
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problem they would have to do something about it [Music] at the time exxonmobil and others in the industry said they were working to reduce methane emissions
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but on the ground some in the environmental community were documenting widespread leaks i am hunting for methane that is escaping
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from oil and gas facilities because that's what i do i'm a methane hunter sharon wilson worked at an environmental watchdog group investigating methane emissions
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this is an optical gas imaging camera and it makes the invisible methane and volatile organic compounds from oil and gas facilities it makes those visible
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[Music] all of these pieces of equipment have got leaks there's a lot of methane going off the flare
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[Music] this is just a really really dirty sight these emissions what's coming out of oil and gas sites the fact that it's invisible has helped
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them be able to expand and help them maintain that narrative of being clean and when that is not the case the tanks are venting it started with
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local concerns but then when i realized what a powerful actor methane is i realized that it's a global problem we need to move about where that
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telephone pole is it was hard to imagine at first how much [Music] gas is releasing from these sites from everywhere
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and how many ways that they release gas all the way from the drilling all the way until it ends up at a power plant
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she kept sending her findings to regulators and the press it's just disbelief that you can show someone video after video proof after
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proof after proof and they still do nothing i sure can't compete with the oil and gas industry pr budget that they use to
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pump propaganda at us wilson gathered evidence from hundreds of sites including some operated by exxonmobil in a statement exxonmobil said it's been an industry
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leader in the effort to reduce methane emissions and has been using advanced technology to detect leaks what is happening in the united states particularly in texas
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it's affecting people all around the globe because methane is harming every single person and every animal and everything on this planet
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as sharon wilson was sounding the alarm a growing number of engineers and scientists were waking up to the dangers of methane leaks including the man who'd helped pioneer
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the process of fracking [Music] i became very much more concerned about climate change when i realized what shale gas and oil was going to unleash
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that's the great word unleash this is trade unleash a tsunami of oil and gas yes that's what it did that's when i started feeling contradictory regret and pride
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pride that we had done good engineering work to help somebody eventually figure out how to do it regret that we had helped somebody figure out how to do it by now tony in graffia was a civil engineering
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professor at cornell university and had spent years advising oil and gas companies in 2011 he and colleagues published a critical report on the climate impact of
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fracking we spent two years doing the research published a paper in the prestigious journal and what bob howarth and i locked on to was this very crucial point which is
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it's not just co2 that's driving climate change it's also methane we're the first people to really try to cumulatively look at these methane emissions from shale gas it happens in all these various steps
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this is what we think the methane emissions look like if the leakage rate of the natural gas is of the neighborhood of three percent then it's it's bad for the climate it's burning coal
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what we were suggesting is that from the time you really start drilling all the way through the final consumer some percentage three and a half four five percent of the gas that's produced
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is emitted unburned to the atmosphere the report was the first to contradict the narrative that natural gas from fracking was a climate solution [Music]
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the reaction to the paper was disturbing i had never been a co-author of a paper that created a political firestorm [Music]
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and a scientific firestorm at first we were pilloried then we were ignored i can understand people saying to me you're a traitor you took their money for 25 years you
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did their research and now you're saying stop yeah okay i am [Music] we had to endure a lot of personal attacks
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for no good reason it hurts some of those people are good friends they won't talk to me anymore my colleague bob howarth lost research
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funding the pushback from industry and from academics who may or may not have some tied to the industry though many cases they did was was
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strong the basic discussion was methane emissions couldn't possibly be as high as as we said well this was a screenshot of an ad from google that we took after our paper came
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out in 2011 the american natural gas alliance anga paid for a google ad that was up there for 22 months before they pulled it down it discovered in the eyes the american
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natural gas alliance that i'm a fraud the fossil fuel industry has a history of doing what they need to to protect their interests and uh you know they can be ruthless that's that's a
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fact the cornell professors were criticized by other universities including the massachusetts institute of technology mit that year the influential mit energy
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initiative published a study on the future of natural gas mainly funded by aubry mclendon's clean skies foundation [Music] the future natural gas study at mit i
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think we were ahead of the curve in talking about the forthcoming shale gas revolution methane emissions are a very important greenhouse gas that needs to
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be addressed it's just that methane emissions from the oil and gas industry are actually a minority of methane emissions uh fortunately in contrast to carbon
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dioxide methane has a relatively short lifetime in the atmosphere that doesn't mean one should ignore it it means that one better eliminate new emissions the study promoted gas as a bridge fuel
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to a lower carbon future it also criticized the cornell methane report as unsubstantiated [Music] ernest moniz insists industry funding
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did not influence these conclusions the point is we always believe in transparency and and so that's yeah the funding was part of a wider strategy
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by the fossil fuel industry by 2012 oil and gas companies were pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into departments at prestigious academic institutions across america
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the very research centers that we assume to be independent are being funded by the very industry that they're supposed to be critically investigating this high-profile mit report trumpets
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the alleged benefits of methane gas and fracking while downplaying their downsides it has laid the intellectual groundwork for the reliant on methane gas as a
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bridge fuel the problem is these are to a letter the talking points of the fossil fuel industry would you be happy to talk about generally who funded the mit energy initiative not
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necessarily that report all right let's no let's let's let's just end the interview okay i mean if you want to paint that as some kind of
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black spot well go ahead ridiculous totally ridiculous look at the output not the input but it's very disappointing perfectly
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honestly moniz would become energy secretary in barack obama's second term where he helped advocate for the natural gas boom bolstered by the mit study the industry
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narrative on natural gas took hold in washington it became part of president obama's 2012 state of the union address where he unveiled his new energy policy
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there's this great irony of the obama administration he comes in promising to be the climate president he's going to address these issues he really positions himself as i'm going
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after oil and gas we're really going to reign them in the president of the united states but by 2012 he's standing up there at a state of the union talking about how
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great natural gas is [Applause] we have a supply of natural gas that can last america nearly 100 years [Music] and my administration will take every
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possible action to safely develop this evidence [Music] when obama said we had a hundred years of natural gas we panicked because we knew
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the climate was changing so fast instead of helping the public awareness of the harm and what was happening they just glossed over all of that and
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everyone became super excited about this cheap clean energy that was going to last a hundred years it's maddening because america will develop this resource
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without putting the health and safety of our citizens at risk we didn't take the alternative path of drastically increasing investment in renewables thank you god bless you and god bless
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the united states of america it should have happened in the obama years and we've exacerbated climate change problem for 10 years when we could have been diminishing it
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[Applause] doing something for the first time taking advantage of this new resource you don't always know what you don't know and over time what we learned
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about methane emissions as it relates to natural gas is very very scary i think the obama administration tried to be very conscious of all the
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implications of the shale revolution did it turn out we had it wrong abs absolutely but at the time we didn't know that it was wrong and it's it's not like we didn't have some of the best scientific minds in the country working
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on that a deadly southern california wildfire could continue to spread this afternoon 2012 is shaping up to be one of the worst fire seasons on record these kinds of events will become more frequent and
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probably more intense as a result of human-induced global warming by the second term of the obama administration his administration was starting to get more serious about claimant you know if
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sort of it's climate versus energy production he's starting to lean more on climate obama do the right thing there had been mounting public pressure
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to take on the industry [Music] there really was a multi-prong attack on the oil and gas industry but specifically at this fundamental
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nature of the oil and gas industry you've been around for a long time but your products are problematic and you've known that they've been problematic you don't deserve to continue operating in
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the long term in paris this morning a potential landmark deal is being revealed on climate change even as he promoted fracking obama began a major climate push that led to the
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paris agreement in 2015 the first global agreement to limit carbon emissions 196 countries pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions
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the paris agreement is adopted i've come here personally as the leader of the world's largest economy and the second largest emitter to say that the united states of america
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not only recognizes our role in creating this problem we embrace our responsibility to do something about it [Music] the president began to shift course on
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methane introducing new regulations to reduce emissions [Music] the industry had a very aggressive reaction to
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the need for regulation there were litany of arguments about why it wasn't a good idea to regulate [Music] natural gas is a key opportunity to
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further improve environment methane emissions are down in the united states yet they're pursuing a methane regulatory regime why do we need to go out and regulate it
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even more than it already is the industry came out fighting those methane regulations like crazy they said that they didn't need rules they could do this voluntarily
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i'm going to just set up here they were marketing natural gas part of the climate solution so while they were fighting back against these rules i was just continually out
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showing how badly they needed some rules collecting more and more evidence out on the ground out in the middle of it of these horrible horrible emissions
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i've been giving comments to epa the environmental protection agency for i don't know 15 or more years i went to
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dc more than once and testified for the obama rules and let them know what i was seeing on the ground the evidence that i was collecting
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and the whole time the industry was there denying that this was happening the industry was saying one thing and i was presenting this evidence
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that showed that what they were saying was not true it was never true [Music]
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obama also proposed an ambitious clean power plan to reduce the use of fossil fuels and support renewable energy like solar and wind republicans and the oil and gas industry
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counter-attacked this clean power plant is all about an anti-fossil fuel strategy to shut down coal generation and fossil fuel generation and the generation of electricity and you should be very concerned about that because what is it
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going to be replaced with if it's renewables wind the cost of that is going to be insurmountable when we first started people thought we were a little bit nuts you know talking about giant windmills
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to be honest so patrick woodson ran one of america's largest renewable energy firms for him obama's new plan spelled
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opportunity back when we originally started there wasn't much technology we would literally get in the car drive around and look for signs of really high winds so you know trees just
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bent in half but i've got a particular fondness for this site because this is this is really where one of the places where it all began for me [Music]
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you know i'd like to leave this planet you know better off for the next generation than it was for ours [Music] we were going gangbusters trying to put as many projects in the ground as possible i mean it seemed like the
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greatest time to be in renewables then you started to see the folks that opposed the expansion of clean energy were willing to kind of fight us at all levels the false promise of renewable energy in
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texas is taking billions of dollars from consumers and taxpayers more than 13 billion dollars of your money is being diverted to government subsidized there started to emerge you know national opposition to to projects negatively
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impacting property values and the environment while at the same time groups were banding together that were funded in large part by certain members of the oil and gas community all of a sudden you realize there was a
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playbook now they generally would start with the idea that the turbines were too noisy that there were eyesores eventually if they couldn't get traction with those arguments they would move on to the they're dangerous
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they cause disease there's not a study behind them most of them were efforts to kind of derail local permitting ultimately they would also try and put
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roadblocks into how you built them you know create distance barriers or noise barriers or other things to make it harder to put projects together when you start seeing massive lobbying efforts
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backed by fossil fuel interests or conservative think tanks or the koch brothers pushing for new laws to roll back renewable energy standards or prevent new clean energy businesses
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from succeeding a problem [Music] legal challenges stalled obama's clean power plan and his presidency ended with his
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climate agenda in peril the 45th president of the united states of america donald j trump [Applause] the next president would finish it off
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we will determine the course of america and the world for many many years to come mr trump who once called global warming a hoax signed a sweeping executive order
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this week calling for regulators to rewrite president obama's climate change policy okay it just kind of makes your blood boil when you you hear these politicians talk
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about denying climate change denying the impacts we had to go on the defensive again trump's vocal opposition to renewables and lack of faith in science and technology
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were big concerns for a number of us there's been a change of direction the president has sent a very clear message that the last eight years where we had to choose between jobs and the environment those days are over the war on coal ended the war on fossil fuels
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ended all right right yeah it's going to be good and you look at the trump administration who they brought in secretary of state rex tillerson former ceo of exxon heading up the environmental protection agency scott pruitt former attorney
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general of oklahoma who had made a career for himself attacking the epa and trying to tie it up so that it couldn't be a regulator heading up department of energy rick
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perry a former governor of texas there were a lot of friends of the oil and gas industry that went to washington dc with the trump administration and how about these democrats they want to get rid of oil
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they want to get rid of natural gas they want to go to wind darling i just can't watch the show tonight the wind it just stopped blowing [Music]
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a reversal of tougher obama-era standards for rules on greenhouse gas emissions and fuel economy plan that would dramatically weaken pollution limits on coal-fired power plants
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new rules making it easier for oil and gas companies to release methane we withdrew from the one-sided horrible horrible economically unfair
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close your businesses down within three years don't frack don't drill we don't want any energy the horrible paris climate accord
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that killed american jobs and shielded foreign polluters the trump administration was very clear what thought about climate it pulled out of the paris accord that sent a clear message globally that
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the united states was not going to play a role as a leader on climate i mean those are very good years for the oil and gas industry in the united states the united states is now the number one
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producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world but at this moment of triumph the industry faced a new threat across america
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legal investigations were starting into big oil's long history of climate change misinformation i recognize that fossil fuels have literally fueled our economic development in this country
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[Music] we're experiencing now this reckoning with that history maura healey is the attorney general for massachusetts
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my job as attorney general is to enforce the laws that are there to protect people [Music] my office has been involved in suits against tobacco companies a suits against the opioid manufacturers and the
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story of exxon mobil is exhibit a for the worst form of corporate greed that we've seen healey's allegations are built on industry documents revealing that exxon scientists had warned their bosses more
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than 40 years ago that burning fossil fuels would lead to climate change [Music] and the question i have is why in the face of that information about how devastating
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exxon's products and then practices were going to be on both climate and on its own business model why they then made the decision to engage in this decades-long effort to mislead and
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deceive the public why [Music] i'm about the corporation [Music] anderson
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thank you your honor admit please support my name is justin anderson i represent exxon louis exxonmobil denies the allegations and has tried to have the case dismissed on
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the grounds that it has a constitutional right to express opinions on climate change the idea that the government can be trusted never to bring legal action against someone because they disapprove their
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speech runs counter to the fundamental of concept the fundamental core principle behind the first amendment itself the first amendment protects us from the government it doesn't punish your client for his
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speech it alleges this is only an allegation right at this point but there's been a 40-year fraud your does more than that the minister the alleged misrepresentations
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are the statements that exxon mobil has made about its views on climate policy on energy policy okay thank you thank you ross
00:42:12
[Music] the revelations about what exxon had known about climate change shocked some of the company's employees [Music] i had no idea that in the 70s there was
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already major exxon mobil work on climate change where the internal scientists were warning management about the threat of climate change and they were actually making eerily accurate predictions about
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how high the co2 concentration the atmosphere would be why were they only coming to light through outside channels why weren't we hearing about this within the company
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i was very upset about seeing that exxon mobil had put so much money and so much effort into fighting the transition away from fossil fuels da long chang
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left exxon mobil in 2019 i left because i felt betrayed by having devoted so much of my career to exxon mobil on the promise that the company would take on the world's toughest
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energy challenges and help the transition away from fossil fuels exxon mobil is committed to the expansion of oil and gas that was clear when i was leaving the company well it's really good to see you and
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a lot has happened since we filed our case the court rejected exxonmobil's appeal to dismiss the case on free speech grounds healey's team is now gathering evidence
00:43:51
and preparing for trial talk to me a little bit about what they're pumping out in terms of methane exxon's marketing natural gas to consumers and others as a climate
00:44:04
solution as being cleaner than other fossil fuels meanwhile it is venting gas into the atmosphere making climate change worse in a dramatic fashion that's just classic
00:44:17
misrepresentation and straight up deception that's green washing that's what they're doing they're making themselves sound green when they're anything but win or lose this case our job is to tell the story okay you will
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see this through all the way through in court it is so important that exxon be held accountable for its wrongdoing i'm looking forward to us being able to get in the room with current and former exxon employees
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and take their testimony and make them answer questions about what they did what they know you can't lie there's a difference [Music]
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nobody from exxonmobil would agree to an interview the company says the litigation is baseless and without merit and there is no truth to the suggestion that exxonmobil ever misled the public or
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policymakers about climate change it recently defeated a similar lawsuit brought in new york [Music] but the pressure is continuing in the courts
00:45:27
and now in congress a hearing on capitol hill today the ceos of the world's biggest oil companies shell exxon chevron and bp a landmark hearing that puts a spotlight on the
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role fossil fuels have played in accelerating climate change apparent knowledge of it disinformation misinformation the committee will come to order this is a historic hearing
00:45:54
for far too long big oil has escaped accountability [Music] in october 2021 top oil executives were questioned under oath about the industry's history of casting doubt on fossil fuel driven
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climate change we won't solve the climate crisis unless we solve the misinformation crisis i now recognize mr khanna who is the
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chairman of the subcommittee on the environment thank you madam chair first let me thank the we initiated the investigation to find out what the misinformation was what these
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companies knew when they knew it and it marks the beginning of scrutiny on them they've been able to avoid it duck it and not have to deal with it and now they're realizing they're not
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going to get away with this what do you have to say to america's children born into a burning world find it in yourself today to tell the truth it will be better for your
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company's futures and will be better for humanity's future my name is darren woods i'm the chairman and chief executive officer of exxonmobil corporation
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exxonmobil provides an essential component of modern society affordable reliable and abundant energy exxonmobil has long recognized that climate change is real
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and poses serious risks but there are no easy answers exxon mobil is committed to being part of the solution our scientists and engineers are
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applying their expertise to help responsibly meet the world's need for energy for working to find ways to accelerate the transition to a world with fewer emissions mr woods i want to ask you about some
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public statements that your predecessor lee raymond made in 1996 and 97 about the inconclusive nature of the scientific evidence
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were they consistent with the views of exxon's own scientists yes chairwoman thank you for the question uh uh our understanding of the science has been
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aligned uh with the consensus of the scientific community as far back as 20 years 20 years ago when you uh referenced our chairman at that time's comments and as science has evolved and
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developed our understanding has evolved and developed as has our work and position on the statement but in the spirit of giving you the chance to turn the page for the company i assume you would acknowledge that mr raymond's
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statement was a mistake and the company regrets it correct i think mr raymond's statement was consistent with the science i i don't even want to argue that mr mr woods i don't even want to argue that we could go back for i just i assume now that
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it's a false statement that the company regrets making it and would acknowledge that right i think the expectation would be that we we look at that the time it was said and years ago forget forget whether it was consistent
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or not can you just acknowledge that it was a mistake and and you regret that that statement was out there would you say that if i i don't think it's fair to judge something 25 years ago with what we've learned since that well i i'm
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disappointed that you're not even willing to say that something is a mistake you can't make change going forward if you don't accept responsibility for the past if you're unwilling to even say yes we were wrong we've turned a leaf
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if you're continuing to defend the past knowing that the past was wrong then you're continuing to engage in misinformation and you're continuing to perpetrate a corporate culture that is
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not coming to grips with the climate crisis that's a failure of of of leadership unlike major european oil companies exxon mobil is not planning to develop
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solar and wind energy instead it's working on ways to capture rather than emit co2 carbon capture and storage can remove more than 90 percent of co2 emissions
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from these carbon intensive sectors exxon mobil estimates there will be a 4 trillion annual market for carbon capture and storage by 2050. it's one of the ways exxon mobil is advancing
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climate solutions it's not at all surprising that fossil fuel companies would uh promote uh ideas and policies that enable the continued use of fossil fuels so that they can sell these fossil
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fuels charles harvey is an expert on carbon storage and was a scientific advisor to a carbon storage company i got into this field because i wanted
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to make a contribution to averting climate change i realized that in fact what we were doing was contributing to
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a false solution carbon capture definitely works in that you can capture the carbon and you can inject it deep underground the issues were whether it's competitive with
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renewables because it would be a silly thing to do if you could just build wind farms or or solar energy at less cost and that's the case now definitely makes me angry that the
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fossil fuel companies are using this for their own ends it is a clever successful mechanism to sort of slow down and derail the the kinds of uh projects that
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that we need to do carbon captures it's not actually the direction to go to actually stop climate change or prevent global warming
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[Music] a dire warning and a stark reality really one key message that emerges we are out of time
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drive bro atmospheric methane is skyrocketed the international energy agency says the world needs to stop drilling for oil and gas to save the planet
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the fossil fuel industry no longer tries to deny the reality of human-caused climate change but it maintains that the world will need oil and gas for years to come [Music]
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nobody has been confronted with what the cost of this energy transition is there's consequences to actions sharif suki is a natural gas billionaire and the
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executive chairman of tellurian an american gas export company when you're confronted with an energy crisis or climate crisis you're going to worry first about what's going to happen before the end of the month rather than
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what's going to happen 30 or 40 years down the road and you're seeing this materializing itself everywhere utility bills are going to double and triple in europe this winter simply because there's no sufficient amount of energy
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on a global basis [Music] do we all agree that there is a climate issue that needs to be addressed absolutely
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is this the most important thing for people no sharif suki's company along with exxon mobil and others plans to increase exports of american natural gas to the
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world you still need to increase energy by 50 percent in order to satisfy the aspiration of ninety percent of the world [Music]
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eighty-five percent of the world's energy is hydrocarbons there is no realistic way by which you can say we're going to eliminate hydrocarbons out of the energy mix
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[Music] the renewables as part of the energy mix it's about five percent so before it becomes a significant piece
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it's going to take decades it's not going to happen overnight according to the international energy agency global greenhouse gas emissions from energy rose to their highest ever
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level in 2021 america remains the world's leading producer of oil and gas and production is increasing it's quite disturbing to see all of the
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drilling rigs out here drilling new wells more and more and more holes in the ground we're just going the wrong way these emissions will impact everyone all
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the way around the globe because of what's happening in texas it's known as a climate bomb we can have a future or we can have oil and gas but we cannot
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have both the latest u.n climate report on methane issues a stark warning methane levels in the atmosphere have reached record highs boosted by oil and
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gas production the science that we did has stood the test of time now they're saying hey methane really important we really got to cut back on methane emissions
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told yourself sorry [Music] the urgency around methane is it's our biggest knob
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to get our greenhouse gas impact below the threshold where we would be in the safe space to avert runaway climate change if we delay reducing our methane emissions to many
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decades in the future by that time it won't matter by that time the runaway climate change will be at a point where it's like an avalanche and there's no stopping it
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it's now more than four decades since oil industry scientists warned that burning fossil fuels could cause climate catastrophe we've lost 40 years in the climate fight
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40 years we collectively have not done what we need to do the drought the famine the storms the fires the devastation the rising sea levels
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so much of it could have been prevented [Applause] it's 25 years since the countries of the world came together to try to solve the problem to those who seek to obfuscate and
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obstruct we say we will not allow you to put narrow special interests above the interests of all humankind [Music]
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the clock is ticking and it's been ticking for some time [Music] i'm terrified that we're not going to do nearly enough fast enough
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the age of fossil fuels is far from over [Music] we've unleashed the whirlwind [Music]
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it's not too late but we lost the decades and now we're playing catch-up [Music] what climate change means to me
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is looking in the eyes of my grandchildren [Music] and wondering what kind of hell they're going to pay [Music]
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you
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