A senior Exxon lobbyist was caught on tape admitting that the corporate has been operating a behind-the-scenes marketing campaign to fight regulation on plastics and PFAS, a video released Thursday exhibits. The tape is the second installment of an undercover investigation carried out by Unearthed, the investigative arm of Greenpeace UK, and it confirms environmentalists’ worst fears.
An Unearthed reporter posed as a recruiter on the seek for lobbyists for a significant consumer and managed to land Zoom calls with senior Exxon staffers, together with its senior director of federal relations, Keith McCoy. In the May assembly, McCoy admitted that Exxon employed the identical techniques it had beforehand used to derail local weather insurance policies in its effort to fend off “comprehensive regulations” on plastic.
“It’s just like on climate change, right,” he stated within the video. “So when climate change came, well it’s here, but well when it started, you started to have conversations to say, ‘well, you can’t completely change the electric grid from coal and gas into wind and here’s why.’ It’s the same conversation: ‘You can’t ban plastics because here’s why,’ or ‘you can’t recycle or you know, legislate 100% recycling because here’s why.’”
With these techniques, McCoy stated that Exxon has been preventing in opposition to legislative efforts to limit using a bunch of chemical compounds collectively often called PFAS, that are extremely poisonous and don’t simply break down within the atmosphere or the human physique. Stunningly, he admitted that Exxon itself manufactures merchandise based mostly on PFAS, together with a fireplace preventing foam, one thing the corporate had beforehand denied.
To keep away from having these efforts related to the vitality big’s “public face,” McCoy stated the corporate pushes this agenda via commerce associations, together with the American Petroleum Institute and the American Chemistry Council, as a substitute of doing so instantly.
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“We think if word got out that ExxonMobil manufactured those chemicals, that ExxonMobil uses those chemicals, it’s a talking point. You know, it becomes ‘the ExxonMobil chemical,’ and that is just going to hurt the effort,” he stated.
When Judith Enck, former Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator and founding father of advocacy group Beyond Plastics, noticed the tape, she stated, “holy cannoli.” But although the footage was surprising, she stated she felt nobody ought to have been stunned.
“I’m happy that the public gets a glimpse behind the curtain,” she stated. “But it ultimately just confirms what we’ve known for years, which is that Exxon and other fossil fuel companies are deceiving the public. They want to see more production of plastics despite all of the environmental and public health harm that goes along with it. So the revelations were not surprising to me, but it’s still startling to hear their playbook.”
Enck has spent years elevating the alarm about how as nations eschew oil and gasoline in favor of renewables and encourage electrical autos, vitality majors are rising plastic manufacturing in an try and safe a substitute market. That’s a main cause, she stated, that the U.S. price of plastic manufacturing is rising so quickly. American manufacturing of the most typical plastic, polyethylene, is on monitor to extend greater than 40% by 2028, according to at least one estimate. And a current report discovered that Exxon is the one greatest contributor to the world’s plastic waste.
“The fossil fuel industry is losing their transportation fuel market and they’re losing their electricity market, so they have shifted to plastic production in a big way,” she stated.
McCoy stated that Exxon has been working carefully with the American Chemistry Council to create mannequin laws on points associated to its plastics enterprise. One profitable technique Exxon has used, McCoy stated, has been to push for a authorities examine of the well being impacts of PFAS to delay laws.
“Lo and behold we got a study, we got it passed, and that completely lowered the temperature, there’s been very little talk about PFAS,” he stated.
McCoy didn’t say precisely what examine he was referring to, however Enck acknowledged the technique instantly. “The American Chemistry Council was very involved in getting a new law on the books called the Save Our Seas Act at the federal level,” she stated, referring to a chunk of laws signed into law final 12 months. “The name sounds good, but what did the Save Our Seas bill actually do? Propose as a study to delay legislative action.”
Among the worst provisions within the Save Our Seas regulation was one directing the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to analyze chemical recycling, a deceptive time period that really refers back to the poisonous strategy of changing plastic to fossil fuels via gasification or pyrolysis (the appliance of intense warmth). In the Unearthed video, McCoy stated that the corporate was “very, very focused on” increasing chemical recycling, particularly mentioning a gasification facility at Exxon’s Baytown, Texas plant. Thirteen state legislatures have additionally passed legislation to spice up chemical recycling. McCoy’s admissions elevate questions concerning the origin of these payments.
Plastic production and disposal each emit tons of of tens of millions of tons of greenhouse gases, which contribute to local weather change, and wreak havoc on public well being. Every minute, one dump-truck load’s price of plastic additionally results in the ocean, the place it kills wildlife, carries diseases, and releases carcinogens.
World leaders have given oil corporations a seat on the desk in crafting local weather coverage, even welcoming them into international climate talks. The Unearthed report signifies that Exxon has pushed to obtain the identical remedy with regards to plastic laws and that their lobbying has seen successes. As the world grapples with what to do about plastic manufacturing and air pollution, policymakers must be on excessive alert for Exxon’s bullshit and shut them out of negotiations.
“I just think this segment should be a wake-up call for lawmakers,” stated Enck. “I mean it’s not a surprise that Exxon wants to continue to perpetuate more production of plastic … but elected officials and regulators need to look behind the curtain when dealing with trafe groups and ask whose interests they’re really representing. The answer is, certainly not the public’s.”
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