Senate Budget Committee Hearing Examines New Evidence of Fossil Fuel Industry Climate Deception, Diversion and Delay

The U.S. Senate Budget Committee hosted a full committee hearing today, "Denial, Disinformation, and Doublespeak: Big Oil's Evolving Efforts to Avoid Accountability for Climate Change." The hearing, along with a report released on Tuesday, are a part of a multi-year investigation initiated by the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee and now a joint investigation by committee Democrats with the Senate Budget Committee looking into fossil fuel industry climate disinformation.

The hearing comes after the United States experienced the highest-ever annual number of billion-dollar plus disasters in the previous year. Also in 2023, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP brought in combined annual profits totaling over $100 billion. Climate attribution research, including multiple studies led by the Union of Concerned of Scientists (UCS), directly connect emissions from the extraction and use of fossil fuel products to increased average temperature of the Earth's surface, global sea level rise, ocean acidification, and wildfires. Another peer-reviewed analysis by UCS found that if policymakers do not take action on climate change, extreme heat could cause tens of millions of outdoor workers in the United States to jeopardize their health and risk losing a collective $55.4 billion in earnings each year by midcentury.

Below is a statement by Kathy Mulvey, the accountability campaign director in the Climate and Energy Program at UCS.

"The Budget Committee's hearing provided more unequivocal evidence that ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell, and others in the industry are hell-bent on protecting their power and profits-even if it means defrauding the public, manipulating our political systems, and taking needless risks with shareholders' investments and our economy. As several witnesses pointed out, just as the tobacco industry faced legal and financial consequences for its deception and the resulting harm to people and communities, the fossil fuel industry must be held accountable for its role in the climate crisis.

"This joint congressional investigation is an important step toward ending the fossil fuel industry's lies and obstruction of critical climate action. The internal industry documents released to the public and the testimony at this hearing add to the already considerable mountain of evidence illustrating misconduct by fossil fuel corporations and their surrogates. We urge policymakers and public prosecutors to move expeditiously to pursue accountability through every means at their disposal."