In 2015, as part of our groundbreaking investigation called Exxon: The Road Not Taken, we published a trove of internal company documents. One of them is record of a briefing James Black, Exxon’s chief scientist, gave to the company’s board of directors. It was 1978.
He warned them about the catastrophic impacts of climate change, which would manifest in a matter of decades, he said, if CO2 emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels were not brought under control. Other documents showed company scientists earnestly working to understand CO2 emissions, hoping to save the world from looming catastrophe—but it proved to be the road not taken. Our nine-part series broke the story of how the oil giant spent decades manufacturing doubt about the dangers of climate change its own scientists had confirmed, now accelerating all around us.
At the core of our report were internal smoking-gun documents exposing Exxon’s duplicity. These have had a long life, providing crucial documentation in dozens of climate-related legal cases, including the confirmation hearing of Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State in 2017, in countless reports and academic treatments over the years, in international proceedings, and at a hearing of the U.S. Senate budget committee in 2024 investigating oil-industry disinformation.
The series was a finalist in 2016 for one of the most prestigious awards in journalism, the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. It remains one of our most enduring and important bodies of work. It still animates the national and global climate conversation and is a powerful contribution to ongoing efforts to hold industry accountable.
About This Story
Perhaps you noticed: This story, like all the news we publish, is free to read. That’s because Inside Climate News is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We do not charge a subscription fee, lock our news behind a paywall, or clutter our website with ads. We make our news on climate and the environment freely available to you and anyone who wants it.
That’s not all. We also share our news for free with scores of other media organizations around the country. Many of them can’t afford to do environmental journalism of their own. We’ve built bureaus from coast to coast to report local stories, collaborate with local newsrooms and co-publish articles so that this vital work is shared as widely as possible.
Two of us launched ICN in 2007. Six years later we earned a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, and now we run the oldest and largest dedicated climate newsroom in the nation. We tell the story in all its complexity. We hold polluters accountable. We expose environmental injustice. We debunk misinformation. We scrutinize solutions and inspire action.
Donations from readers like you fund every aspect of what we do. If you don’t already, will you support our ongoing work, our reporting on the biggest crisis facing our planet, and help us reach even more readers in more places?
Please take a moment to make a tax-deductible donation. Every one of them makes a difference.
Thank you,
