Five Questions With: Neela Banerjee
By lynn.zinser
A team of InsideClimate News reporters set out last year to dig into the huge unanswered question of what did the major oil companies know about climate change and when did they know it. It was a question everyone thought they knew the answer to, but never had documented. So the ICN team of Neela Banerjee, Lisa Song, John H. Cushman Jr. and David Hasemyer began digging in, and even they were surprised by what they found.
A huge trove of documents quickly pointed the way to a focus on Exxon, the largest and most powerful of the American oil companies, and one that had launched its own cutting-edge climate research program in the late 1970s. The documents, and subsequent interviews, showed the depth of that research and how widely it was shared across the company. A decade later Exxon pivoted to challenging the push for climate action by stressing the uncertainties in the science.
The ICN series, “Exxon: The Road Not Taken,” documents that history. The first stories appeared in September 2015, and were quickly followed by corroborating work done in a separate investigation by a team of journalists from Columbia University and the Los Angeles Times. The impact was swift and powerful. Members of Congress, presidential candidates, environmental groups and a long list of other organizations concerned with the climate and environmental justice began calling for a federal investigation into whether Exxon mislead the public or investors. State and territorial investigations have followed. New York’s Eric Schneiderman subpoenaed the oil giant in November, part of his probe into Exxon’s climate activities. California, Massachusetts and the U.S, Virgin Islands announced they, too, have opened inquiries. All four are part of a new coalition of 17 AGs that has vowed to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for their conduct on climate change.
Banerjee, a veteran reporter who joined ICN in early 2015, talks about the investigation, the reaction to it and the journalism honors it has already earned. Those include the Izzy Award for outstanding work by independent media and the National Press Foundation’s Stokes energy award. It was also a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize for investigative reporting.
Q: When you started on the Exxon series, did you have any idea what the reaction would be to it?
BANERJEE: People write to me about the series, or see it on social media and respond and I continue to be surprised. When we were in the middle of it, looking at all the documents and putting together the stories, the work was interesting and it was rewarding to do this kind of investigative work. But I thought we would get a reaction in the climate-nerd world — the scientists, the environmental groups, the advocacy groups who really care about this stuff. I thought the general public would not notice. I did not expect the calls from Congress to investigate, the AGs getting involved. Every time a new one of these crops up I’m like, whoa.
Climate change is one of these things that, for those of us who care about it, the challenge is how do you get people to care? Clearly, this is something that got people to care.
Q: What has surprised you about Exxon’s response over time since the series first began?
BANERJEE: At first I was surprised about Exxon’s response, but then it began to make sense. I thought they would answer more of our questions, but they shut down pretty early in the process. After we homed in on Exxon, I began reading Steve Coll’s book on the company and late in the book he mentioned that he had sent them pretty detailed questions and they didn’t respond, so that seems to be their pattern. At first I think they tried to win in the court of public opinion, but now I think they are circling their wagons because of all of the calls for investigations.
What’s more surprising is the American Petroleum Institute. Once we widened the story to show that other oil companies and API also knew about climate change in the 1970s, they didn’t even bother to answer our emails. Now we are trying to figure out, what does that silence mean?
Q: What has been the most gratifying part of the awards the series has won or been nominated for so far?
BANERJEE: The most gratifying part was just being at the Goldsmith Award ceremony. We didn’t win; the Associated Press won for a fantastic story about slave labor in the Asian seafood industry. But just being there and seeing what colleagues are working on was inspiring. There is a lot of handwringing about where American journalism is going and it was great seeing so much brave and meticulous journalism going on. People are holding different authorities accountable, from the fossil fuel industry to the seafood industry to school officials. That was exhilarating.
Everyone in that room for the Goldman Awards was from a big media organization. And then there’s us. To produce work on the level of the New York Times and the Guardian and AP and be recognized by experts for that work, that was very gratifying.
Q: What is the challenge doing investigative work as a small journalism nonprofit?
BANERJEE: The challenge is just being tiny. I don’t think the journalists at ICN are unusual. We are all lucky to have found a place here to do this kind of work. But wouldn’t it be great if we were bigger and could do more? There are so many stories to do. It’s an embarrassment of riches, just in the fossil fuel world, so many issues we could shed light on. I am sure in time, though, we will get there.
Q: What are the latest developments in the series, and where does the reporting go from here?
BANERJEE: We have been begun to work with a collection of oil industry documents compiled by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) in D.C. that could add a lot more to our understanding of how the oil industry dealt with emerging climate science. From the documents, we have published a story about the fact that carbon dioxide research was on industry’s radar as far back as the mid-1950s, which means that companies such as Exxon had decades to digest the importance of CO2 by the time their scientists began research and modeling climate in the late 1970s and early 1980s. We are also looking into how the industry’s earlier fight with regulators and scientists over smog in L.A. shaped the strategy they took in arguing against climate science and action on global warming. There are other stories we’re working on, too, that are nascent but promising.
The new series kicked off this week. Read the first article: CO2’s Role in Global Warming Has Been on the Oil Industry’s Radar Since the 1960s
