Exxon Pleads Not Guilty, Really

Exxon has come out swinging to lay claim to the mantle of environmental consciousness. Yeah, they get it, they really do. Really?

"Kenneth Cohen, vice-president of public affairs for Exxon, said: "Our company has been put in this bucket of not taking the climate issue seriously and that is flat wrong... Those who meet with us understand we are not a denier.

"'We believed then and today that Kyoto is not the right approach... Our opposition to Kyoto has been seen as opposition to climate change and I regret that.'" He said Exxon's long-term aims were to respond to rising energy demand but also to planetary warming.

The firm's funding of third-party thinktanks, which have produced papers questioning the human role in climate change, has recently been heavily criticised in a Greenpeace report.
Exxon retaliated yesterday by saying some of Greenpeace's facts were "just flat wrong" and in one case "absurd", though the company hinted that it may stop funding the controversial thinktanks."

Yeah, right. Exxon long ago promised the Royal Society that it would stop funding these supposed thinktanks yet its cash is still finding its way into their budgets. So long as that continues, don't rely on Exxon's hints.