...as early as 1977, Exxon (now ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest oil companies) knew that its main product would heat up the planet disastrously. This did not prevent the company from then spending decades helping to organize the campaigns of disinformation and denial that have slowed—perhaps fatally—the planet’s response to global warming....Exxon responded, instead, by helping to set up or fund extreme climate-denial campaigns....The company worked with veterans of the tobacco industry to try and infuse the climate debate with doubt.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "...as early as 1977, Exxon (now ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest oil companies) knew that its main product would heat up the planet disastrously. This did not prevent the company from then spending decades helping to organize the campaigns of disinformation and denial that have slowed—perhaps fatally—the planet’s response to global warming....Exxon responded, instead, by helping to set up or fund extreme climate-denial campaigns....The company worked with veterans of the tobacco industry to try and infuse the climate debate with doubt." in the context of "McKibben, Bill (September 18, 2015), "What Exxon Knew About Climate Change", The New Yorker retrieved: December 21, 2018" to mean that wisdom is timeless.