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Executives of some of the world’s largest oil and gas companies – Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP and Shell – will appear before a congressional committee on Thursday to address accusations that the industry has spent millions of dollars to run a decades-long campaign of disinformation. Doubt the science of climate change and derail action to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels.

The hearings mark the first time that oil executives will be forced to answer questions under oath about whether their companies are misleading the public about the reality of climate change by obscuring the scientific consensus that the burning of fossil fuels raises Earth’s temperature and sea levels. with devastating consequences Worldwide, including severe storms, worsening drought and more deadly wildfires.

House Democrats compare investigation Historic tobacco trials of the 1990sClearly revealing that tobacco companies lie about the health hazards of smoking, paving the way for tough nicotine regulations. Just as public health experts are sure that smoking causes cancer, climate scientists are now as confident that burning fossil fuels causes global warming.

Evidence that fossil fuel companies distort and underestimate the realities of climate change well documented by academic researchers.

“For the first time in American history, Big Oil will have to respond to the American people on climate disinformation,” said Ro Khanna, a Democrat representative from California, who is spearheading efforts to bring executives to Congress.

It’s not at all clear whether Thursday’s hearing will have the explosive effects of the tobacco probe, where seven executives stood raising their hands to take the oath before telling Congress they didn’t believe smoking was addictive. Photos of that moment splashed onto the front pages nationwide.

Oil company executives are allowed to attend Thursday’s events remotely via video, reducing the likelihood of a similarly striking visual moment. And much of the effectiveness of the hearing will depend on coordination between members, who are each given limited time to review directors, a format that can hinder a consistent line of inquiry.

Some Republican leaders denounced the hearing as a distraction, and they plan to use it to raise concerns about the Biden administration’s climate change agenda, which they claim is hurting the economy. They plan to call a former worker who lost his job at the Keystone XL pipeline as a witness. When President Biden canceled the project on his first day in office.

“This is another publicity stunt by the Democrats,” said James Comer, senior Republican Kentucky Representative on the oversight committee. “When the economy is trying to recover from a pandemic, it’s a terrible time to turn away from fossil fuels.”

Oil companies have refused to lie to the public about climate change, saying the industry is taking bold steps to rein in residual emissions. “Meeting the demand for reliable energy while tackling climate change is a major undertaking and one of the defining challenges of our time,” Shell Oil chief Gretchen Watkins told lawmakers. company.

A spokesperson for the company said it provided thousands of pages of documents to the committee. BP and Exxon also said they were cooperating.

Casey Norton, spokesperson for Exxon Mobil, said in a statement that the company “has long recognized that climate change is real and poses serious risks.” He said the company’s statements on climate science were “accurate, fact-based, transparent and consistent with the broader mainstream science community at the time” and “evolved” as science did.

Until 2000, Exxon Mobil Advertised in the New York Times He said “scientists cannot confirm” that the burning of oil, gas and coal is causing climate change. Ten years before that, United Nations scientists endorsed The planet had warmed 0.5 degrees Celsius over the previous century due to greenhouse gases from fossil fuels.

The American Petroleum Institute and the US Chamber of Commerce said they were looking forward to sharing their views in favor of climate change policies. A representative from Chevron did not respond to requests for comment.

The trial comes a few days ago United Nations global warming conference It begins in Glasgow, which is considered a pivotal moment in efforts to address the threat of climate change. President Biden is expected to begin negotiations. Reconnected the US with global climate negotiations and also took action to reinstate some of the climate regulations removed by the Trump administration. However, in the face of the ongoing industry lobby, as well as the dissidents within his own party, saw key parts of the climate agenda to disappear.

Congressional scrutiny also comes as environmentalists, cities, states, and even some shareholders in energy companies increase pressure on the fossil fuel industry. to address its central role in the climate crisis.. The International Energy Agency, the world’s leading energy agency, this year should immediately stop approving new oil and gas fields and move quickly towards renewable forms of energy like wind and solar power if they want to avoid the most devastating effects of climate change.

The trials came more than four decades after the oil industry began collecting scientific evidence about global warming.

In 1978, Exxon Mobil embarked on a major project to study climate change, placing instruments on one of its giant tankers to monitor rising levels of carbon dioxide in the sea and atmosphere. But when oil prices collapsed in the 1980s, it hurt profits, so Exxon ended the research.

“The evidence gathered in the late ’70s and early ’80s was already clear,” said Edward A. Garvey, a geochemist who worked on Exxon’s early climate studies at the time. “We had an important window, but we squandered the opportunity,” he said.

Oil executives have publicly declared that there is inconclusive evidence that human activities have a significant impact on the global climate, despite scientists warning that such evidence is conclusive. In a prominent example, Exxon’s then-CEO Lee Raymond said in 1997, “At this time, scientific evidence is insufficient as to whether human activities have a significant impact on global climate.”

Questions are also expected to focus on how companies work with groups such as the American Petroleum Institute and the US Chamber of Commerce. Lobbying the United States government Against taking strong steps on climate. The oil industry and the trade groups that represent them, for example, called the world’s first global climate change agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, as unrealistic and dangerous for the US economy. In 2001, former President George W. Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol.

The presidents of the American Petroleum Institute and the Chamber of Commerce are also scheduled to appear before the committee on Thursday.

“This is an industry with a long and documented history of misrepresenting the facts of climate change and the facts about its own activities,” said Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science at Harvard. “At this point, it’s up to them to prove that they’ve changed.”

The trial, which is the start of a broader investigation, is also expected to examine more recent efforts to thwart meaningful climate policy and legislation. The fossil fuel industry has opposed several climate policies, including: behind-the-scenes effort to roll back vehicle emissions standards It was accepted by the Obama administration.

Committee chairperson Carolyn B. Maloney said she hoped the hearing would be “a landmark for increased regulation of the fossil fuel industry” and spur climate action in Congress.

The catalyst for the House of Representatives hearings was an operation this year by the Greenpeace activist group. The group filmed An Exxon lobbyist who says the company is fighting climate science through “shadow groups” and targeted influential senators in an attempt to undermine President Biden’s climate proposals.

Many of these senators later said that the lobbyist exaggerated their relationship or had no relationship with him at all. A short time later, Mr. Khanna asked industry executives to testify before Congress.

Executives scheduled to testify are Exxon’s Darren Woods, Chevron’s Michael Wirth, BP’s David Lawler, Shell’s Ms. Watkins, the American Petroleum Institute’s Mike Sommers, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Suzanne Clark.

Henry Waxman, who led the tobacco trials of the 1990s, said oil and gas executives would likely be more savvy than tobacco chiefs, whose outright denial that cigarettes are addictive, exposing the wide gap between their explanations and scientific evidence.

“I expect the executives of the oil companies to learn from the tobacco sessions, and they will now say how concerned they are about climate change,” he said. But he said the House committee should be prepared to investigate further. Still, it’s “hard not to think they’re still running a deceptive PR effort.”

All major oil and gas companies were publicly supported Paris agreementagreement between nations to combat climate change. BP and Shell have also made “net zero” commitments for their operations, removing as much carbon pollution as they are releasing into the atmosphere. But all four companies continue to invest heavily in fossil fuel extraction; renewable energy projects constitute a part of capital investments.