Exxon's own researchers were skeptical of the same climate fixes the company was busy promoting to the public.
The evidence comes from documents released earlier this year, without fanfare, in Massachusetts' 2019 lawsuit against ExxonMobil. Among them is a 1988 memo from Frank Sprow of Exxon's corporate research department, warning colleagues that a worldwide consensus on cutting greenhouse gases would bring "substantial negative impacts on Exxon." Sprow wrote that memo weeks before the United Nations established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and just months after NASA climatologist James Hansen told Congress the planet was warming. A 2023 Wall Street Journal article quoted part of the memo, but it has not been published in full until now, alongside newer statements from Exxon scientists challenging the company's public claims about biofuels and carbon capture and storage.
The gap between what Exxon's scientists understood internally and what the company said externally stretches back nearly four decades, and the documents suggest it hasn't closed. That's the core of Massachusetts' legal case, and it tracks with the broader "Exxon knew" narrative that has fueled climate lawsuits against the company for years.
Exxon has leaned hard on biofuels and carbon capture as proof it takes the problem seriously; that pitch gets harder to sell when the skeptics turn out to be its own researchers.