Memorandum for the Petitioners | 44
wholly-owned subsidiary of Esso, now respondent ExxonMobil.!> The paper
identified the link between the burning of fossil fuels and rising carbon
dioxide emissions.!*°
5.47. In a statement to the United States Department of Health
Education and Welfare in 1958, concerning air pollution from transportation,
Charles
Jones,
then
Executive
Secretary
of
API’s
Smoke
&
Fumes
Committee,'*’ noted that carbon dioxide was an inescapable component of
gasoline combustion in automobiles.'** In the same document, API assured
the US government that the industry was committed to controlling pollution
emissions not only from the production of its products, but from their use.!°?
In present day terminology, these are called scope three (3) emissions, which
are all indirect emissions,
including upstream
which occur in a company’s value chain.’
and downstream
emissions,
5.48. In a separate report also published in 1958, which summarized
the industry’s research into air pollution, Charles Jones expressly referenced
a project aimed at determining the amounts of atmospheric carbon attributable
to fossil fuel combustion.'*'
5.49. Coupled with API’s
1954 investment in research and
documentary evidence of climate research by a leading oil company, Humble
Oil (now respondent ExxonMobil) in 1957, the Smoke and Fumes documents
from 1958 indicate that the whole industry was starting to understand its own
role in COz emissions and climate change and was considering its
responsibility related to those emissions.
5.50. A 1959 speech to industry leaders by the physicist Edward Teller
presented an even starker warning -- and still more explicit notice -- of the
"5 Id, p. 17.
'56 Id., p. 17; See also Exhibit “YY” to “YY-7,” Brannon Jr., H. R., ef al. (1957), Radiocarbon Evidence on
the Dilution of Atmospheric and Oceanic Carbon by Carbon from Fossil Fuels.
157 tn 1957-58, when API first acknowledged coordinated research into atmospheric carbon from fossil
fuels, the following Carbon Majors companies were API members directly, or through their predecessors,
subsidiaries or affiliates: Ashiand Oil, British Petroleum, Chevron, Conoco Phillips, ExxonMobil, Petroleos
de Venezuela, and Shell Oil. (Submitted for the record as a document annexed to slide 26 of testimony on
May 23rd.),” Muffett, C., supra note 141, p. 18, citing
http://dupontasbestosdocuments.com/d2/API/11507.pdf (last accessed on 12 September 2019).
'58 C.A. Jones, Executive Secretary, Smoke and Fumes Committee, American Petroleum Institute,
submitted to United States Department of Health Education and Welfare (19 November 1958), Sources of
Air Pollution: Transportation (Petroleum), p.2, available at
https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/docs/#id=xrem0047 (last accessed on 12 September 2019).
159 Id. pp. 2-3.
‘6° Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (hereinafter, “TFCD”) (2017), Final Report:
Recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures citing Greenhouse Gas
Protocol, “Calculation Tools, FAQ,” available at https://www. fsb-tcfd.org/publications/finalrecommendations-report/ (last accessed 12 September 2019).
‘6! Muffett, C., supra note 141, p. 18, citing Exhibit “ZZ” to “ZZ-5, Jones, C. A. (1958), A Review of the
Air Pollution Research Program of the Smoke and Fumes Committee of the American Petroleum Institute,
Journal of the Air Pollution Control Association, pp. 268-272.
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