Recently I have taken up an interest in the debate of global warming. Through my tantalizing Earth and Ocean Science course I was able to learn about this particular topic. The general public have heard that Earth’s mean temperature has been gradually increasing as a result of two different ideas. One being that the sun over time burns brighter which increases the amount of radiation that the Earth intercepts, and two: that human beings are increasing the amount of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere which increases Earth’s temperature. Telegraph.co is convinced that it’s the sun and its development of sun spots to blame for the Earth gradually getting warmer over the last few decades, I am not convinced. 
This week in Comm 101 my interests were peaked when we discussed corporate social responsibility and sustainability. I was shocked by the news regarding how much big corporations actually help our planet through sustainability. For example, Coca-Cola focuses on the following: economic empowerment and entrepreneurship for women, water conservation and recycling for developing countries, and developing youth initiatives. I decided to do a little more research on the big corporations of our world and what I found was very disturbing. Imagine, a corporation that had the scientific reports to prove how burning fossil fuels is causing global warming, but withholding this knowledge from the public for almost 40 years.
According to the Scientific American, Exxon mobile was aware of climate change as early as 1977. As soon as the company became aware it began a full on research project which cost over $1 million. The results of the study showed that carbon dioxide rates were furiously increasing as a result of humans burning fossil fuels. The head scientist at the time, James Black, reported to Exxon that if the burning of fossil fuels did not slow down, then the Earth’s mean temperature would increase by two to three degrees within the next 10 years. Since coming into this gold mine of knowledge, Exxon has spent more than $30 million on think tanks that promote climate denial.
Exxon’s lack of corporate social responsibility has caused us to almost double our rates of carbon dioxide emissions due to the burning of fossil fuels. The human race has lost valuable time in the race against global warming and it’s all thanks to Exxon Mobile. After acquiring this information I started questioning how we are supposed to change such damaging decisions made by large corporations such as this one. Human beings know the difference between right and wrong, but most of the time we choose to ignore damaging decisions such as this one. I hope for our sake that we can turn the situation around.
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Image Sources:
http://media.zenfs.com/en-US/video/video.discoverychannel2.com/DeadlySunSpots_576x374_2324011117.jpg
Text Sources:
http://www.coca-colacompany.com/our-company/the-coca-cola-foundation
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/