Thread by @NiranjanAjit

slowly reading through some of the internal documents that oil executives were forced to turn over to congressional investigators and the honesty on display here is wild 1/

here is a senior lobbyist at shell discussing communication strategies for a workshop on carbon capture and storage that it jointly sponsored in 2019 2/

shell tweeted a poll in 2020 asking "what are you willing to change to help reduce emissions" that it estimates reached up to 309m people after getting trashed by climate activists, forcing the company to address internal pushback even after press coverage died 3/

in a discussion about whether shell's tweet was gaslighting, one government lobbyist said the criticism was "not totally without merit" while another described it as "pretty tone-deaf" 4/

internal slides from 2020 show how shell communicates its business strategy ("ultimately this means being the world's most valuable energy company") incl. "a careful and continuous balancing act that conveys credible optimism while setting realistic expectations" 5/

a shell employee in 2020 said the net-zero pathway has the company published has "nothing to do with our business plans", to which a colleague replied that mixing the two (the net-zero pathway and the company's actual plans) "would not be a good thing" 6/

an exxon advert for algae as a clean fuel source vs an exxon employee describing the research 7/

in 2017 an exxon environment manager told the ceo - i think - that limiting warming to 2 degrees celsius requires "unprecedented gains in efficiency and transformation of the global energy sector" for which they don't see the policy, finance or affordable tech to support it 8/

exxon also requested an oil and gas industry statement remove reference to the 2015 paris agreement on climate change in case it created "a potential commitment to advocate on the paris agreement goals" 9/

last year a chevron manager sent these talking points to the company's vice president for strategy and sustainability and it's a pretty succinct summary of how fossil fuel companies use the language of social justice to manipulate the public conversation on climate solutions 10/

if that wasn't enough for you there are plenty more quotes here 11/11

if any current/former employees of these oil companies would be willing to speak about this, either on- or off-the-record, my dms are open and i would love to hear from you