A dramatic silence.
According to a scientific article published this Wednesday in the journal Global Environmental Change, the company Total was aware of the harmful consequences of its activities for the climate as early as 1971 but maintained the doubt for years, then seeking to thwart efforts to limit the recourse to fossil fuels.
Christophe Bonneuil, research director at the CNRS, Pierre-Louis Choquet, sociologist at Sciences Po, and Benjamin Franta, researcher in history at the American University of Stanford, studied the archives of the oil group, which has since become TotalEnergies, as well as journals interns and interviews.
As early as 1971, French energy company Total was aware of the catastrophic potential of global warming.
What did they do about it?
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- Ed Maibach (@MaibachEd) October 20, 2021
In 1971, a publication in the journal Total explained that the combustion of fossil fuels leads "to the release of enormous quantities of carbon dioxide" and to an increase in the quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
A "rather worrying increase (...)", already noted the text.
However, the group ignored this subject, the researchers note.
Total pressures
In the mid-1980s, the American giant Exxon, via the Oil Industry Environmental Association (IPIECA), led an international campaign by oil groups to "challenge climate science and weaken controls on fossil fuels. “, Continue the researchers.
Bernard Tramier, director of the environment at Elf then Total from 1983 to 2003, quoted in the article, says he was informed of the importance of global warming during an IPIECA meeting in 1984. Two years later , he alerted the executive committee of Elf, saying: "it is therefore obvious that the oil industry will once again have to prepare to defend itself".
“The novelty is that we thought that only Exxon and the American groups were in duplicity.
We can see that our French oil champions participated in this phenomenon at least between 1987 and 1994 ", Christophe Bonneuil explained to AFP, speaking of a" factory of ignorance ".
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At the same time, Total and Elf lobbied "successfully against policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions", while seeking to acquire environmental credibility through voluntary commitments, the study suggests. Wednesday.
A strategy to minimize the problem
At the end of the 1990s, the approach changed.
UN climate experts, the IPCC, published their first report in 1990. The Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 led to the adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The Kyoto protocol was adopted in 1997.
"The French oil industry stops publicly questioning climate science, but continues to increase its investments in oil and gas production," to insist on "uncertainty, minimizing (climate) urgency and deflect the attention to fossil fuels as the primary cause of global climate warming, continue the researchers.
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In the mid-2000s, a new strategy. The Total group, which absorbed Elf in 1999, hosted a conference on climate change in September 2006. Its CEO at the time, Thierry Desmaret, recognized the reality of climate change and the conclusions of the IPCC. Total "begins to promote a division of roles between science and business, where science describes climate change and businesses claim to solve it", thus claiming its legitimacy to influence public and business policies and highlighting its " energetic transition ".
In a response sent to AFP before the publication of the scientific article, the group declared: “TotalEnergies' knowledge of climate risk was in no way different from the knowledge emanating from scientific publications of the time (
the 1970s
) ”. "The leaders of Total (...) recognized the existence of climate change and the link with the activities of the oil industry" and since 2015, the company has aimed to "be a major player in the energy transition", continues -he.
A 2017 study showed that the US oil group ExxonMobil had known since the 1980s that climate change was real and caused by human activities.
But the group has struggled for years to maintain doubts about this reality, thus deceiving its shareholders and citizens.