What the gas giants knew all along

From The Saturday Paper

The founding chair of Australia’s oldest fossil fuel industry association was aware at least as early as 1969 that burning oil, gas and coal had the potential to cause harm, according to newly recovered materials.

However, legal experts say that under Australian law it is unlikely companies will be held to account for their historical role in driving climate change, while activists and campaign groups are ever more at risk of litigation and jail time.

The relevant observations are found in an article published in the June 1969 issue of Australian Fisheries – a journal produced by the then federal department of primary industry – authored by Reg Sprigg, a geologist who helped establish Santos, served as the founding chair of the Australian Petroleum Exploration Association (APEA) and founded the oil company Beach Energy.

Throughout the article, Sprigg discussed various sources of pollution in the marine environment and the civilian use of nuclear technology, but in a section titled “Things to come” he noted that “Man’s ability to modify his environment is expanding spectacularly” and pointed specifically to the greenhouse effect.

He warned there was “considerable evidence” that the burning of oil, gas and coal was changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere and that “subtle changes of global significance are already evident”.

“There is, for example, considerable evidence to indicate that man’s pollution of the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, is already [happening],” Sprigg wrote. “Increased CO2 in the atmosphere warming the earth’s climate, is believed to reduce transparency to selected reflected radiation, giving a glass-house effect. This heating is considered by some to be responsible for accelerated melting and retreat of glaciers (potentially catastrophic to water storage in some regions), causing a consequent rise in sea level.”

Though Sprigg expressed doubt about the precise consequences – wrongly interpreting this to mean there could be a resulting fall in sea levels – he added, “the evidence is sufficient to demand a great deal more accurate documentation”.

Eight years later, Sprigg also gave a fiery address on the floor of the 1977 APEA national conference when launching the industry body’s environmental code of conduct. During the speech, he predicted that oil and gas would one day be supplanted by solar and nuclear energy, and argued that since growing CO2 in the atmosphere would change climatic patterns, it could be harnessed to prevent a new ice age.

“Fortunately, [man’s] pollution of the atmosphere by carbon dioxide and other incidental by-products of his industrialisation is probably already indicating real potential for climatic modification, as by the ‘greenhouse’ effect,” Sprigg said.


These statements stand in stark contrast to the association’s later activities, as APEA coordinated with its counterparts in the Australian Institute of Petroleum to emphasise the uncertainties of climate science and to spread doubt.

In its first known public statement on the subject in 1989, APEA’s key message was that “far more research needs to be done into the impact of the ‘Greenhouse Effect’ ”. That year, the association outlined how “in its discussions with political representatives”, it had argued against “costly unilateral actions which will lower Australia’s living standards relative to the rest of the world”, stressing that “the ongoing search for and production of petroleum energy sources in Australia should not be discouraged” and that Australia should make no “commitment to artificial reductions in ‘Greenhouse’ gas emissions which mirror global targets”.

The association today offers an annual award, the Reg Sprigg Medal, to recognise “an individual’s outstanding service in promoting the objectives of the Australian oil and gas exploration and production industry”.

Climate transition scholar Dr Marc Hudson, who found the 1969 Sprigg article, says it shows how “the potential danger of climate change was known by business, politics and science far earlier than most people understand”.

Australian Fisheries was, after all, produced by the department of primary industry, and those writing for it were high-status and influential people,” he says. “That the founding chair of APEA knew in early 1969, at the latest, that carbon dioxide build-up might heat the Earth and cause havoc is exasperating.

“There is no excuse of ignorance – they knew their actions had the potential to harm everyone and everything, but they went ahead anyway.”

The Australian Petroleum Exploration Association rebranded as the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association in 1996. In 2023, it changed its name once again to Australian Energy Producers (AEP).

Australian Energy Producers did not respond to a request for comment.

The chief executive of Climate Analytics, Bill Hare, described Sprigg’s 1969 observations as “just another piece of evidence that the fossil fuel industry knew how serious the climate change problem was and that they were the main driver of it”.

“We also know that the fossil fuel industry runs disinformation campaigns about how uncertain climate science was and how the cost of action was too great, and did so from the ’70s and ’80s,” Hare says. “We know this was wilful and designed to undermine public and political commitment to act and has been quite successful.”

The document adds to a growing body of evidence, both in Australia and overseas, about the early awareness of the potential consequences of climate change among fossil fuel producers – though, unlike in the United States, there is currently no evidence that Australian companies were actively involved in privately collecting hard data.

US oil company Exxon, for instance, maintained an in-house scientific team that actively researched the phenomenon of climate change, with the company going so far as to retrofit an oil tanker to collect atmospheric readings in the late 1970s.

A study published in January 2023 in the journal Science found scientists working at the biggest oil company in the world were so accurate that the internal models they produced in this period showing the trajectory of warming effects were consistent with what later, more advanced models found.

According to a June 2024 report by the London School of Economics, Australia is the second-most active jurisdiction for climate litigation in the world with 132 cases, six of which were lodged in 2023. The US was first with 1745 cases in total.

A broader definition used to compile a database maintained by Melbourne Climate Futures, a multidisciplinary initiative established by the University of Melbourne, has logged 549 climate litigations in Australia to date.

Legal academic Rebekkah Markey-Towler, who manages the database, says it remains to be seen whether or not an Australian oil company, or their industry associations, will eventually face legal liability for their historical actions contributing to climate change.

“I think negligence claims against governments and industry in Australia are not so much ‘not never’ but rather ‘not yet’,” Markey-Towler says. “The short point to make is that there are different avenues to hold companies accountable for their contribution to climate change, such as negligence, consumer protection, corporate law provisions.”

However, she says what has happened overseas may not be transferable to Australia.

“We have different legal protections in Australia, so while documents like [the 1969 Sprigg article] could play some role, it would depend on the type of suit,” she says.

Monash Business School legal academic Ella Vines said the Sprigg documents would be “relevant to establishing foreseeability of harm”, which has formed the basis of similar cases overseas.

While the case to prosecute corporations is still unclear, several have been mounted successfully against climate activists, along with adverse legal findings against campaign groups and new efforts by the Albanese government to immunise Australian companies from greenwashing lawsuits.

In mid July the government introduced legislation to the Senate that would expand the information companies must provide about the risk climate change posed to their businesses, but the bill also offered a three-year period in which statements made by directors that were wrong or misleading could not be challenged in courts.

Federal Treasury first proposed this three-year exemption from greenwashing laws in November 2023.

Meanwhile, at the start of the month, 21-year-old Laura Davy sought to appeal a three-month jail sentence for blocking operations at Port Waratah Coal Services with activist group Blockade Australia. The prosecution marked the latest in a number of heavy penalties meted out to climate activists who peacefully interrupt the operation of fossil fuel infrastructure.

The ability of climate groups to organise is further threatened by the Environmental Defenders Office’s critical loss in a legal challenge to the construction of a gas pipeline in the Northern Territory by oil company Santos. The judge threw out the case on the basis that a consultant with the EDO had coached a witness. And in a recent decision, the court allowed Santos to subpoena records against three activist groups that weren’t involved in the litigation – Sunrise, Jubilee Australia and the NT Environment Centre – as part of the process towards establishing costs.

Australian Energy Producers has since called on governments to cut funding to the EDO, and the Coalition under Peter Dutton has backed this demand.

David Mejia-Canales, a senior lawyer with the Human Rights Law Centre, says the organisation has documented what it calls “an alarming increase” in the passage of anti-protest laws across Australia, with 49 bills introduced in the past 20 years.

“These laws specifically target climate activists by criminalising peaceful protest with fines of up to $50,000 or 12 months in jail,” Mejia-Canales says.

“In Australia, it is easier to jail a climate defender than to hold oil and gas corporations accountable for the damage they cause to our environment.”

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on July 27, 2024 as “Carbon-dating the big lie”.

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