Democrats say Big Oil misled the public for decades about climate change

Major oil companies misled Americans for decades about the threat of human-caused climate change, according to a new report released Tuesday by Democrats in Congress.

The 65-page report It was the result of a three-year investigation and was made public hours before a Senate Budget Committee hearing on the role that oil and gas companies have played in global warming.

“They could have been environmentalist Paul Revere, but instead they were more like Rip Van Winkle, wanting everyone to sleep,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said of fossil fuel companies’ efforts to deceive and distracted the American public for over 60 years. “What amazes me most is thinking about the decades when ‘Big Oil and Gas’ understood the problem in a way that almost no one in the country or the world did.”

The Democrats’ investigation revealed research, transcripts and even video recordings that show the fossil fuel industry knew about the consequences of its emissions at least as far back as the 1960s. Their report also showed how oil and gas companies initially tried to hide that information, but employed new tactics to minimize the urgency of eliminating emissions.

Geoffrey Supran, associate professor and director of the Climate Accountability Lab at the University of Miami, researches climate misinformation and fossil fuel industry propaganda. He said oil and gas companies’ decarbonization claims are just their latest strategy to delay climate action.

“The priority of science continues in oil companies today,” he said of his investigation into the industry’s tactics.

“This is greenwashing 101,” Supran added. “Talk green, act dirty.”

Senate Republicans called the hearing purely partisan and tried to refocus the discussion on the financial cost of the rapid oil and gas transition.

“We spent all this money and we haven’t lowered global temperatures even an inch of a degree,” said Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, one of the top oil and gas producing states in the US.

The American Petroleum Institute (API), a leading industry lobbying group, was repeatedly accused in the report and at the Senate hearing of helping oil and gas companies hide the truth about climate change. According to Senate Democrats, API advised fossil fuel companies on public relations strategies while also acting as a scapegoat for congressional scrutiny.

In a statement to NBC News, an API spokesperson said: “At a time of persistent inflation and geopolitical instability, our nation needs more American energy – including more oil and natural gas – and less baseless election-year rhetoric. U.S. energy workers are focused on delivering the reliable, affordable oil and natural gas Americans demand, while scaling up the next generation of low-carbon technologies like hydrogen and carbon capture, and any suggestion to the contrary is inaccurate.”

Democrats reiterated that oil and gas companies have harmed the planet for decades without having to pay for the consequences. That prompted Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to ask what happens next.

“If we have an industry that knowingly, and this is the point… consciously understood that climate change would bring devastating destruction to the lives of billions of people, what are the legal grounds on which we can hold them accountable?” he said.

This article was originally published in NBCNews. with