A recent report by The Guardian reveals that Shell not only knew the extent of climate change as far back as 1991, but even made a film about it. The oil company’s film, called “Climate of Concern,” said the climate was changing “at a rate faster than at any time since the end of the ice age – change too fast perhaps for life to adapt, without severe dislocation.” Despite that knowledge, the company has gone on to heavily invest in the Alberta tar sands, and lobby extensively against climate change action. Check out the video below.
As The Guardian notes, Shell’s film painted a bleak picture of a planet ravaged by the effects of climate change: “Tropical islands barely afloat even now, first made inhabitable, and then obliterated beneath the waves … coastal lowlands everywhere suffering pollution of precious groundwater, on which so much farming and so many cities depend,” says the film’s narrator as images of people dealing with the effects of natural disasters and famine float by. “In a crowded world subject to such adverse shifts of climate, who would take care of such greenhouse refugees?”
Related: Shell tells US it’s ready to begin drilling 8,000 feet below Arctic seabed
At the time it was made, the film was available for public viewing by anyone – including schools and universities. But it seems to have largely gone off the radar in the decades since.
And according to Professor Tom Wigley, who helped make the film during his time as head of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, the predictions made by the film 25 years ago remain pretty accurate based on today’s knowledge.
“It was quite comprehensive on what might happen, what the consequences are, and what to do about it,” he told The Guardian, noting that predictions for temperature and sea level rise in the film were “pretty good compared with current understanding.”
A copy of the 30-minute film was recently obtained by Dutch online newspaper The Correspondent, which posted the video on its website and Vimeo.
Via The Guardian
Images via Chris Light and dvidshub, Wikimedia Commons
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Video via The Correspondent