UN secretary general criticizes oil firms for concealing fossil fuel impact on climate change News
IADE-Michoko / Pixabay
UN secretary general criticizes oil firms for concealing fossil fuel impact on climate change

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres Wednesday accused Big Oil of peddling a “big lie” about their contribution in global warming. Speaking at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Guterres said, “We learned last week that certain fossil fuel producers were fully aware in the 1970s that their core product was baking our planet.”

Guterres was referring to a study on the oil giant ExxonMobil published last week in the Science Journal. The study found that the firm has known the climate consequences of their fossil fuel products since the 1970s but rejected the predictions of its own panel of in-house scientists on the role of fossil fuels in global warming. General Motors and Ford are also implicated in denying scientific predictions about environmental harms.

ExxonMobil is embroiled in a number of lawsuits in US. The state of Massachusetts sued the corporation for misleading consumers and investors about the risks of their fossil fuel products. Several jurisdictions in California also sued the company in an attempt to hold them accountable for their role in inducing climate change.

The WEF annual meeting is taking place from January 16 to 20. This year’s convention examines the theme of “Cooperation in a Fragmented World.” It brings together leaders, innovators and visionaries from spheres of government, business and civil society to discuss issues plaguing human life and find solutions through public-private partnership.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Bank of England granted political independence

On May 6, 1997, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown announced that the Bank of England would be granted political independence for the first time in the three-hundred year history of the Bank. This policy was statutized in the subsequent Bank of England Act of 1998 gave the Bank independent control of British monetary policy effective June 1, 1998. Read the Bank of England Act of 1998.

Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese laborers from US

On May 6, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese laborers from entering the United States and prohibiting courts from bestowing US citizenship on Chinese. Connecticut Senator Joseph Hawley spoke out against the Act in these words: Let the proposed statue be read 100 years hence, dug out of the dust of ages and forgotten as it will be except for a line of sneer by some historian, and ask the young man not well read in the history of this country what was the reason for excluding these men and he would not be able to find it in the law. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and its successors were abolished in 1943 at the insistence of President Franklin Roosevelt.