Newly-discovered Shell documents dating back decades could help strengthen lawsuits aiming to hold the oil major to account for climate damages, climate attorneys say.
Among the files, reported for the first time today by DeSmog and Follow The Money, and published on Climate Files, there is a 1970 industry journal article where Shell appears to accept responsibility for harms caused by its products. A trove of Shell publications from the 1980s and 1990s foresee the “major adverse changes” the “greenhouse effect” is liable to cause to the climate.
And a 1998 report spells out Shell’s reasons for leaving the Global Climate Coalition, a now defunct lobby group that worked to undermine climate science. The document shows that Shell had acknowledged the need to adopt “prudent precautionary measures” to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis — even as it continued to push for more production of oil and gas.
“It is feared that a further rise in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere could lead to a higher average surface temperature on Earth, which could have far-reaching environmental, social and economic consequences,” wrote the authors of a 1987 internal Shell publication entitled “Air Pollution: an Oil Industry Perspective.”
Read the full article
https://www.desmog.com/2024/01/17/new-shell-files-could-aid-climate-cases-attorneys-say/
