Using Rhetoric to Delay Legal Action Against the Tobacco Industry

Recent research has shown that oil companies knew about the threat of climate change decades ago. Yet over forty years, it has been revealed that they contributed millions of dollars to think tanks and campaigns to spread doubt and misinformation about climate change – its existence, the extent of the problem, and its cause.

Across the US, these revelations have sparked a wave of lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry, demanding accountability for climate change – and now a US congressional committee has started to investigate. Executives from the world’s biggest oil companies and trade groups have been called to testify before US lawmakers in October this year, in an inquiry modelled on the tobacco hearings of the 1990s, which paved the way for far tougher nicotine regulations.

This week, The Climate Question looks over the evidence behind these allegations – and asks whether Big Oil might finally be facing a reckoning for its role in the climate crisis.

Presenters: Neal Razzell and Phoebe Keane Producer: Zoe Gelber Series Editor: Ros Jones Editor: Emma Rippon