At a Glance

In 1991, Shell produced a video detailing what a warming planet would look like.Critics find it ironic since the oil conglomerate spends millions today to lobby against measures that could ward off climate change.

The oil company Shell warned ofdire consequences associated with climate change in an obscure educational film it produced back in 1991but apparently, the oil conglomerate has been fighting against its own warnings ever since.

According to confidential , Shell, which has that would protect the world from climate change, produced the little-known film called "Climate of Concern" in 1991, which explained how its own product could lead to extremeweather, floods, famine and "greenhouse refugees."

The film also notes that climate change was "endorsed by a uniquely broad consensus of scientists" and would change "at a faster rate than at any time since theend of the ice age."

The tone of the film was dire, indeed.

“Tropical islands barely afloat even now, first made inhabitable, and then obliterated beneath the waves … coastal lowlands everywhere suffering pollution of precious groundwater, on which so much farming and so many cities depend,” the film’s narrator says. “In a crowded world subject to such adverse shifts of climate, who would take care of such greenhouse refugees?”

ProfessorTom Wigley, who was head of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia when it helped Shell with the 1991 film, .

“It was quite comprehensive on what might happen, what the consequences are, and what we can do about it. I mean, there’s not much more,” Wigley said, adding that the predictions for temperature and sea level rises in the 1991 film were “pretty good compared with current understanding."

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According to corporatewatch.org, of the now-defunct , which lobbied governments heavily and mounted persuasive advertising campaigns in the U.S. to turn public opinion against concrete action targeting greenhouse gas emissions.

"The so-called 'carbon club' led the way in undermining public support for action to curb climate change," notes the website.

Oddly, the same oil conglomerate that today lobbies against regulations that might help save the planet suggested in 1991 that immediateactions were necessary to prevent a climatic catastrophe.

“If the weather machine were to be wound up to such new levels of energy, no country would remain unaffected,” the narrator of the film says. “Global warming is not yet certain, but many think that to wait for final proof would be irresponsible. Action now is seen as the only safe insurance.”

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Severe drought reveals the remains of a tree on the banks of the Madeira River near Nova Olinda do Norte, Brazil, Oct. 21, 2005. (© Daniel Beltrá, courtesy of Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago )