Big oil company Shell knew climate change was going to be big, was going to be bad, and that its products were responsible for global warming all the way back in the 1980s, a tranche of new documents reveal.
Documents unearthed by Jelmer Mommers of De Correspondent, published on Climate Files, a project of the Climate Investigations Center, show intense interest in climate change internally at Shell.
A “CONFIDENTIAL” 1988 document titled, “The Greenhouse Effect”, details Shell’s extensive knowledge of climate change impacts and implications. It also reveals an internal Shell climate science program dating back to 1981, well before the UNIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was founded.
Royal Dutch Shell is jointly registered in the UK and the Netherlands. It is currently facing court action unless it brings its business model in-line with the Paris Agreement’s two degrees goal.