Exxon says it never doubted climate change threat

By Gerard Wynn

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil company Exxon Mobil Corp. never in the past decade doubted the risk from climate change, its global spokesman Kenneth Cohen said on Thursday, in a latest attempt to improve its green credentials.

Exxon had simply firmed up, or "evolved," its understanding of the threat, said Cohen, the company's head of public affairs.

The world's most profitable company now accepted that a U.S. climate policy was inevitable and it preferred either a carbon market that would allocate carbon credits solely to suppliers of fossil fuels, such as oil companies, or else a carbon tax, Cohen added.

Under an existing European scheme, carbon credits have been given to utilities and will earn these companies tens of billions of euros in windfall profits.

The commonest greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, is made by burning fossil fuels like oil. Environmental groups have long accused Exxon of funding research groups that rubbished the threat of a manmade, climate change catastrophe.

"We're very much not a denier, very much at the table with our sleeves rolled up," Cohen told reporters.

Cohen also chairs the Exxon Mobil Foundation which last year, alongside Exxon, handed out $139 million to charities and research groups.

In 2005 the company withdrew support for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which the following year ran an advertising campaign promoting carbon dioxide, which said "we call it life."