Early warnings and emerging accountability: Total’s responses to global warming, 1968-2021

Christophe Bonneuil (), Pierre-Louis Choquet () and Benjamin Franta
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Christophe Bonneuil: CRH (UMR 8558 CNRS / EHESS) - Centre de Recherches Historiques (CRH) _ Unité Mixte de Recherches (UMR 8558 CNRS / EHESS) - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Pierre-Louis Choquet: CSO - Centre de sociologie des organisations (Sciences Po, CNRS) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Benjamin Franta: Stanford University

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Abstract: Building upon recent work on other major fossil fuel companies, we report new archival research and primary source interviews describing how Total responded to evolving climate science and policy in the last 50 years. We show that Total personnel received warnings of the potential for catastrophic global warming from its products by 1971, became more fully informed of the issue in the 1980s, began promoting doubt regarding the scientific basis for global warming by the late 1980s, and ultimately settled on a position in the late 1990s of publicly accepting climate science while promoting policy delay or policies peripheral to fossil fuel control. Additionally, we find that Exxon, through the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association (IPIECA), coordinated an international campaign to dispute climate science and weaken international climate policy, beginning in the 1980s. This represents one of the first longitudinal studies of a major fossil fuel company's responses to global warming to the present, describing historical stages of awareness, preparation, denial, and delay.

Keywords: Oil industry; Climate change; Global warming; Agnotology; Denial; Public relations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env, nep-his and nep-res
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-03390521v1
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Published in Global Environmental Change, 2021, 71, ⟨10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102386⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:spmain:halshs-03390521

DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102386

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