With Earth Week upon us, government watchdog Accountable.US is taking an opportunity to remind the public that the American Petroleum Institute has spent decades fighting meaningful efforts to address the climate crisis and that its recent pledge to work with the Biden administration on the issue cannot be trusted.

“API spent the Trump years and decades before fighting efforts to address climate change. In fact, it made the situation worse by actively working to weaken commonsense regulations around greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants,” said Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US. “API’s only priority is lining the pockets of wealthy oil and gas company executives. It simply cannot be trusted as the Biden administration moves forward with plans to tackle the climate crisis head-on.”

API Has Known The Climate Risks Of Fossil Fuels In The 1970s. It’s Spent Decades Fighting Reasonable Climate Policies Anyway.

  • API Knew About the Climate Risks of Fossil Fuel Pollutions as Early as the 1970s. “Members of an American Petroleum Institute task force on CO2 included scientists from nearly every major oil company, including Exxon, Texaco and Shell. […] The American Petroleum Institute together with the nation’s largest oil companies ran a task force to monitor and share climate research between 1979 and 1983, indicating that the oil industry, not just Exxon alone, was aware of its possible impact on the world’s climate far earlier than previously known.” [New York Times, 12/22/15]
  • API Testified Before Congress That There Was a Weak Connection Between Air Pollution and Mortality Despite the Oil and Gas Industry Knowing Fossil Fuels Posed “A Serious Risk to Human Health.” “A scientist commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute (API), a US oil and gas industry group, promptly told a congressional hearing in 1997 the link between air pollution and mortality was ‘weak,’ before Exxon pushed out its own study claiming ‘there is no substantive basis’ for believing PM2.5 was causing more deaths.” [The Guardian, 03/18/21]

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