Today a fifty-year-old charity founded by the descendants of John Rockefeller, of Standard Oil wealth, disinvested their funds from Exxon Mobil and accused the company of misleading the public to enable the company to damage the climate. In a statement the Rockefeller Family Fund called the company morally reprehensible and said:
“Evidence appears to suggest that the company worked since the 1980s to confuse the public about climate change’s march, while simultaneously spending millions to fortify its own infrastructure against climate change’s destructive consequences and track new exploration opportunities as the Arctic’s ice receded,” the Rockefeller family wrote.
Where did they get this idea? From what was probably the best environmental story/expose published last year, in which Inside Climate News blew the lid off Exxon’s climate distortions and destruction, fact by fact, document by document, drawn from company files donated to a university, combed through by a team of students from Columbia University. Plus interviews statements pictures follow-ups and more. It’s greatness in journalism.
This has led to multiple investigations, as detailed in an RT story:
In November of 2015, the state of New York launched an investigation into whether the largest US gas and oil company had misled the public and investors about the risks of climate change. A similar inquiry has been opened in California, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Exxon: The Road Not Taken. Read it. Please.
But here’s the twist. Before turning on Exxon, the $130 million Rockefeller Family Fund turns out to have been a funder of Inside Climate News, and apparently assisted in the investigation!
Or so Exxon alleges:
“It’s not surprising that they’re divesting,” the company told CNBC. “The Rockefeller Family Fund provided financial support to InsideClimate News and Columbia University Journalism School which produced inaccurate and deliberately misleading stories about ExxonMobil’s history of climate research.”
!!!
Story there — somewhere.
Kit Stolz 