The scientist pauses at the slide. On the screen, a yellowing memo from 1978. Three lines, typed on a company letterhead, that sound like science fiction: “Significant warming of the atmosphere. Potential global consequences.” The room falls silent for a second. Then someone coughs, a chair squeaks, and the projector keeps humming, indifferent.
We’re in a small conference hall, fluorescent lights, paper cups of bad coffee. On stage, researchers are calmly showing how the biggest companies in the world knew exactly what was coming. Not vaguely. Not “maybe someday”.
They had graphs, models, internal warnings.
And they went ahead anyway.
They knew, they calculated, they chose
The story doesn’t start with polar bears or melting glaciers. It starts in boardrooms thick with cigarette smoke, where engineers and executives gathered around overhead projectors and green-and-black data printouts. From the late 1960s, oil companies were commissioning internal studies on how burning fossil fuels would change the climate.
Those reports were not vague guesses. They ran equations, matched them with rising CO₂ levels, and predicted temperature increases frighteningly close to what we see today. The science inside those corporations was often as good as, or better than, what governments had. And still, the pump kept running.
One of the starkest examples comes from Exxon (today **ExxonMobil**). Internal documents uncovered by journalists and researchers show that its scientists, in the 1970s and 1980s, built detailed climate models. They projected how much the planet would warm depending on how much oil, gas, and coal humanity burned. Their predictions matched today’s reality with surprising precision.
Publicly, though, the story was different. While internal memos spoke of “potentially catastrophic” changes, advertising campaigns and PR statements played down the risks. We’ve all been there, that moment when you sense something is wrong, but the official line tells you to relax and carry on.
This pattern wasn’t limited to Exxon. Shell, BP, Total, and other majors received similar warnings from their own experts. Archives reveal presentations, internal newsletters, and confidential reports laying out scenarios of sea level rise, extreme weather, and agricultural disruption.
Instead of sounding the alarm, many companies chose another path: funding think tanks, lobbying against regulations, and spreading doubt about the science. This is not a story of ignorance. It’s a story of deliberate strategy, of risk weighed against profits, of a global experiment carried out on all of us without our consent.
➡️ Secondo la psicologia, chi ama stare in disparte percepisce meglio le emozioni altrui
➡️ Come cambiano le priorità quando smetti di correre tutto il giorno
➡️ “Nei momenti felici mi sento scollegato”: la psicologia spiega il tempo emotivo
➡️ Jeff Goldblum, l’uomo che ha fatto credere a un’intera generazione che gli scienziati fossero cool
➡️ “Non cercavo la felicità, ma qualcosa di più stabile”: cosa è cambiato
➡️ “Pulivo il pavimento ma lo rendevo appiccicoso senza saperlo”
➡️ Cosa fanno le persone organizzate la domenica sera
From secret memos to courtrooms: naming the responsible
Today, those old memos and reports are taking on a new life in court. Cities, regions, and even entire countries are filing lawsuits against oil and gas giants, accusing them of misleading the public and delaying climate action. In legal language, the question is simple: who knew what, and when?
Researchers have stepped in like forensic detectives. They collect documents, run content analyses, compare internal projections with public statements. Name by name, logo by logo, they’re rebuilding a paper trail that runs from corporate labs straight to the heatwaves that now kill thousands of people every summer.
One study published in 2023 did something almost brutal in its clarity. Scientists analysed Exxon’s internal climate models from the 1970s and 1980s and compared them with observed warming. Climate sensitivity, temperature curves, CO₂ scenarios: the overlap was stunning. The company was not “unsure”. It had a pretty sharp idea of the scale of the coming crisis.
At the same time, trade associations funded by these firms were crafting talking points to cast doubt on climate science, buying full-page ads and TV spots. Those catchy slogans that said “the science is not settled” did not come out of nowhere. They were written with full access to evidence that said the opposite.
Scientists now talk openly about “climate deception” and “disinformation campaigns”. They name specific actors: **ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell**, and the powerful lobbies representing coal and gas. Lawsuits in the United States, Europe, and the Global South are starting to quote academic papers as evidence.
Behind the legal language lies a plain moral question: when does knowing and staying silent become complicity? And when does actively sowing doubt become a crime? Let’s be honest: nobody really reads a 200-page technical report every single day. Yet these corporations had entire teams paid to do exactly that, then bury the parts that threatened their business model.
What can we really do with this anger?
Faced with this kind of story, the instinct is to shut down. Turn off the news, scroll past the headlines, joke about the weather and move on. There is a quieter path, though, that starts with a very simple gesture: naming things. Naming who polluted, who lied, who delayed. And naming what we, individually, actually control.
One practical method many climate advocates suggest is the “three levers” approach. Personal choices, political pressure, and financial pressure. You pick one small action in each category. You keep it realistic, almost modest, so it fits inside your actual, messy life. That way, the story of climate change stops being only about what was done to you and starts including what you’re doing back.
Personal choices are the most talked about: flying less, driving less, eating differently, saving energy. They matter, especially as social signals. But the guilt around them can become suffocating. You skip one flight and feel virtuous, then remember that a single tanker crossing the ocean burns more fuel in a day than you will in years.
This is where political and financial levers come in. Voting with climate in mind. Writing to local representatives when new fossil projects are proposed near your town. Switching banks or pension funds away from fossil fuel investments. These steps are less photogenic than a reusable coffee cup. Yet scientists who study social tipping points say they often have far more leverage.
The climate scientist Michael E. Mann likes to repeat a simple line: “We have been told for decades that climate change is your fault, my fault, the fault of individual consumers. That’s a convenient narrative for the polluters.” His point is not that personal behavior is irrelevant, but that responsibility has been shifted downwards, away from those who designed the system.
- See the structureBefore changing everything at home, spend one evening understanding who the big emitters really are: countries, sectors, and especially a handful of huge companies.
- Choose your battlesPick one local issue that touches your life directly: a planned highway, a gas terminal, an air route. Focus your energy there instead of trying to fix the whole planet alone.
- Move your moneyAsk your bank or pension provider where your savings go. If they back fossil fuels, consider changing. Quiet financial shifts add up faster than you think.
- Protect your attentionLimit your daily climate doomscrolling. One or two trusted sources beat an endless feed of anxiety and outrage.
- Talk, but not to winShare what you learn with friends or family like you’d share a story, not a sermon. People remember feelings long after they forget numbers.
A story still being written, line by line
The phrase “they knew” has become a sort of haunting chorus in climate debates. It echoes in hearings, in reports, in the quiet fury of coastal communities watching the sea edge closer every year. *Once you’ve read those old memos, it’s hard to unsee them.* You start noticing how certain talking points resurface, dressed in new words but carrying the same old doubt.
Yet this story is not frozen in the past. The same companies that misled the public now sponsor green events, run uplifting ads about wind farms, and talk of “net zero” while exploring new oil fields. Scientists tracking emissions call this “greenwashing” when promises don’t match actions. The dissonance is everywhere, humming under the surface like that projector at the beginning of our scene.
At the same time, pressure is rising from below. Youth movements, Indigenous communities, farmers hit by droughts, workers sickened by refineries: they are connecting the dots between local damage and global causes. Courts are starting to side with them. Judges are ordering governments to do more, regulators are probing oil majors’ ads, and parliaments are debating laws to ban climate misinformation.
None of this erases what happened in the 1970s and 1980s. Those pages are written. What changes is what we do with that knowledge. Whether we treat it as a depressing trivia fact, or as a key that unlocks a different kind of conversation about responsibility, repair, and power. The next chapters will not be drafted in secret laboratories but in public spaces, with all of us watching.
Maybe that’s the real shift. For decades, a handful of actors quietly shaped the climate future of billions without ever asking. Today, the curtain is at least partly open. Names are on the table. Methods are exposed. The anger is real, but so is a quieter, stubborn form of hope: the belief that when stories are told clearly enough, they can change what people tolerate.
This is not a heroic, Hollywood-style hope. It looks more like citizens showing up to boring meetings, scientists patiently answering the same questions again, workers pushing for safer, cleaner jobs. Small, imperfect, human gestures. Line by line, they’re writing an answer to that brutal discovery: they knew, and they went on. The question now is whether we will.
| Key point | Detail | Value for the reader |
|---|---|---|
| They “knew” decades ago | Oil and gas companies had accurate internal climate models and warnings since the 1970s | Reframes climate change as a story of responsibility and deception, not just “bad luck” |
| Specific actors are being named | Research and lawsuits highlight ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron and trade lobbies | Helps readers understand where to direct pressure, activism, and financial choices |
| Three levers for action | Personal lifestyle shifts, political engagement, and financial decisions | Provides concrete ways to respond without drowning in guilt or paralysis |
FAQ:
- Question 1Did oil companies really know about climate change in the 1970s?
- Answer 1Yes. Internal documents show that major firms like Exxon and Shell had detailed studies predicting significant warming and its risks decades ago.
- Question 2Why didn’t they warn the public clearly?
- Answer 2Publicly acknowledging the science threatened their core business model, so many chose to cast doubt, lobby against regulations, and delay action.
- Question 3Is this just about Exxon, or other companies too?
- Answer 3Exxon is the best-documented case, but research points to similar patterns in other oil and gas majors and in industry associations.
- Question 4What can an ordinary person realistically do about this?
- Answer 4You can focus on three areas: your own consumption, your political voice, and where your money sleeps at night (banks, pensions, investments).
- Question 5Isn’t it too late to change anything?
- Answer 5No. Every fraction of a degree of warming avoided still reduces suffering. Choices made this decade will shape heatwaves, floods, and food security for generations.
