Exxon Says it Never Doubted Climate Change Threat

LONDON – Oil company Exxon Mobil Corp. never in the past decade doubted the risk from climate change, its global spokesman Kenneth Cohen said on Thursday, in a latest attempt to improve its green credentials.

Exxon had simply firmed up, or “evolved”, its understanding of the threat, said Cohen, the company’s head of public affairs.

The world’s most profitable company now accepted that a US climate policy was inevitable and it preferred either a carbon market that would allocate carbon credits solely to suppliers of fossil fuels, such as oil companies, or else a carbon tax, Cohen added.

Under an existing European scheme, carbon credits have been given to utilities and will earn these companies tens of billions of euros in windfall profits.

Reuters