The climate is changing "at a rate faster than at any other time since the end of the ice ages… it is changing too fast for life to adapt without serious disruption." This is the climate change warning contained in the film Climate of Concern, with which Shell, as far back as 1991, planned to inform the public — particularly young people in schools and universities — about how the planet's climate was changing due to the large quantities of CO2 released into the atmosphere by the fossil fuels used in industrial production and transport.

A first step that Shell then took great care never to follow up on, abandoning the idea of releasing the documentary to the public. Now a Dutch independent journalism agency, The Correspondent, has tracked down the film. Further investigation was then carried out by Damian Carrington, a journalist at the Guardian.

Damian Carrington @dpcarrington

𝕏

Shell's 1991 warning: climate changing ‘at faster rate than at any time since end of ice age’ theguardian.com/environment/20… by me and @jhmommers

♥ 16💬 2 28 feb 2017 · Apri su X →

Climate of Concern, an old film that is more relevant than ever

"It is surprising that it is [a film] from 25 years ago. Incredible," said Tom Wigley, a professor who was head of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia when he helped Shell produce the film. "[A documentary had been made that was] fairly comprehensive about what might happen, what the consequences are and what we can do about it," he added. Wigley himself acknowledged that the predictions regarding rising temperatures and sea levels presented in the film are fairly accurate and consistent with the knowledge available today.

Shell was asking questions

With crystal clarity, the film highlighted how the planet's temperature was rising and the grave consequences this could entail: tropical islands wiped out by rising sea levels, coastal plains that would have to contend with the contamination of the aquifers on which agriculture and many cities depend. All of this was accompanied by disturbing images depicting people affected by famines and natural disasters. The very same issues, with the very same images, that we see today. "In a world subject to climate change, who will look after the refugees caused by climate change?" the narrator asks the viewer in the film. And it is exactly the question that governments and our communities are asking today.

Knowing and staying silent

Shell was aware of the risks of climate change even before 1991. There is evidence of a "confidential" report dated 1986 showing that the company was familiar with what climate science was beginning to demonstrate: the greenhouse effect. In the 1986 report, Shell wrote that climate change was a problem that "ultimately, only governments can address." But the document reveals, three decades on, that the energy industry "has very strong interests at stake and many capabilities to be able to contribute."

Shell is not the only one that knew and stayed silent. Many other oil companies concealed the problem, as evidenced by The Climate Deception Dossier of 2015. Shell was aware of the possibility of "rapid and dramatic" changes that "would impact the human environment, future living standards and food supplies, with significant social, economic and political consequences." According to the Los Angeles Times, the oil company had already considered in 1989 what the effects of climate change might be in the construction of one of its oil platforms, yet in the same year it participated in the founding of the Global Climate Coalition, an international lobbying group that opposed the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and obstructed scientific research on climate change. The Anglo-Dutch oil company would leave in 1998, citing "irreconcilable" differences, but the company is still present in the Business Roundtable and the American Petroleum Institute, through which oil companies have sought by every means to obstruct Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan. Not content with that, Shell lobbied to have European renewable energy development targets reduced, and in 2016 launched the New Energies division — a greenwashing exercise of limited success, given that it allocated an investment equal to 1 per cent of the 30 million dollars it puts into the oil and gas sector instead.