what the risks were.42 For example records show that Exxon continued to conduct research into
climate science, as demonstrated by internal company documents from 1977 through 1982.
However, Exxon did not even acknowledge climate change in Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC) filings until 1991.43 Moreover, as indicated by an American Petroleum
Institute memo from 1998, the industry sought to sow doubt about the scientific consensus
surrounding climate change instead of actively warn the public.44
Not only did the oil industry know a great deal more about climate change, oil industry scientists
even recognized the seriousness of climate change.
As the Petitioners and Amici Curiae make clear, if the Commission accepts that climate change
interferes with human rights, then this Commission is bound by its Constitutional mandates, its
Procedural human rights obligations, and the Guiding Principles to investigate the Carbon
Majors contributions to climate change that threaten the human rights of the Filipino people.
Furthermore, human rights due diligence requires a business enterprise to actively seek
information about the negative human rights impacts of its activities, as well as about the risk
that negative human rights impacts may occur in the future. Once a company identifies such
impacts, this triggers a responsibility to prevent and mitigate potential or existing violations, and
to remediate any violations that have previously occurred.45 “The legal systems of most
countries provide for civil liability for a business enterprise that causes a victim to suffer harm or
prejudice, including by failing to act with due diligence. As described in the Human Rights Due
Diligence Report (HRDD) Report (2012), such a failure is usually defined as not taking all the
precautionary measures that could reasonably have been taken in order to reduce the risk of the
harm occurring.”46Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Right to Life: “It is the supreme right
from which no derogation is permitted.”47 It is a right, moreover, “which should not be interpreted
narrowly.”48 A right, finally, embedded within every system of law, and enforceable within domestic
systems not only against governments, but against private individuals—whether through constitutions,
through criminal law, or through the law of tort and negligence.49
State Investigations about the Sufficiency of the Oil Industry’s Disclosures about Climate
Change Suggest that the Members of the Carbon Majors May Have Breached Obligations to
Conduct Due Diligence and to Ensure Transparency
The procedural elements to identify impacts, account for them, and respond to those impacts are
common components of the various due diligence regimes established under national systems to
42
See Synthesis Report supra note 4. .
See InsideClimateNews, ICN Staff, “The Long Tale of Exxon and Climate Change,”(July 2015).
44
See, Kathy Mulvey and Seth Shulman, Union of Concerned Scientists, The Climate Deception Dossiers: Internal
Fossil Fuel Memos Reveal Decades of Corporate Disinformation (2015),
45
See supra note.
46
Id.
47
Human Rights Committee, General Comment 6, Article 6 (Sixteenth session, 1982), Compilation of General
Comments and General Recommendations Adopted by Human Rights Treaty Bodies, U.N. Doc. HRI\GEN\1\Rev.1
at 6 (1994).
48
Id.
49
Id.
43
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