 My name is David Sesson. I'm the founder and publisher of Inside Climate News, and we cover climate and energy issues online, everything. The idea actually originally came from a conversation that I had with Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame, and he had been a whistleblower himself, and he said, look, we know that the fossil fuel companies are at the forefront of denial, but they have great scientists, so there must be people inside that have a conscience, and we should find them, and talk to them, and find out what the fossil fuel companies can do. And so it made a lot of sense to me, and I started digging and I found out that BP actually had come out in favor of climate solutions. Back in the late 90s, and Lord Brown, who was the head of BP, had said his own scientists were the ones that came to him and demanded that they take an intellectually tenable position. So I pitched it to my staff at the start of the year where we have a meeting looking forward, and they were daunted by the idea of finding a needle in an enormous haystack. They're a very small news organization, and these are some of the most enormous, most powerful companies in the world. How were we ever going to do this? But we started and we managed to get the story. And so what did that investigation find? What was the key storyline that you uncovered? Well, what was enormously surprising to us was how far back Exxon had been aware of climate change, long before the public. They were at the forefront of climate research, working with academia and government in the late 70s. Their board of directors and senior executives were all very well informed and kept close watch on the development of the science. And at first, their reaction was to do good science and try to find scientific solutions. And they thought if they did, they could have a prominent seat at the policymaking table when the time came. So we were surprised how well informed and how ahead of the curve they were. And that's why we ended up calling our series Exxon the Road Not Taking. Because instead of saying, okay, we've got a problem, let's roll up our sleeves and solve it. We know that for the last 20 or 30 years they have been at the forefront of climate denial. It's very well documented story. Not only the expenditure of money on groups that deny climate science, but their own lobbying efforts, the comments of their own CEO. It's a sad record when you see what they could have done. And what has been the impact of your article? You talk about being a small group, but some of the impact that you have has been quite extraordinary. What was the reaction to the article? Well, the impact has been terrific. It's led all the major candidates for president in the Democratic Party to call for an investigation. And the New York Attorney General has launched one recently. So there are documents under subpoena right now and Exxon is going to be forced to turn it over. They've hired a law firm to help them, a big New York law firm. And also the other impact of it is that Exxon is now saying, well, we've always been doing climate science and we've always admitted there's a problem. And they are coming forward now embracing the truth about global warming in public. And it's putting a lot of pressure on the Republican Party, which, as part of its platform, denies climate science. I find it striking that Exxon's responses to your articles was to talk about the good science they did, but completely gloss over all the misinformation that they've funded. That's right. They are emphasizing the fact that they were involved in 50 peer-reviewed papers and they've funded climate science during that time. But it was largely inconsequential work. And also behind the scenes, they were trying to undermine the IPCC and undermine climate scientists within the United States very directly. We've published memos that show them lobbying the Bush Cheney White House. And the way that we put it in one of the subheads is that they took ordinary scientific uncertainties and turned them into weapons of mass confusion. Could you comment on the prospects of legal action or even criminal charges against Exxon? How do you think that might play? It's hard for me to speculate about the legal system and how that will work. It's very complicated. Certainly, Bernie Sanders, the candidate for president, has said that the moral case is clear. It's a more difficult one to press a legal case because of the way the laws are. But certainly, a lot of people are looking at the documents we published and feel like there is a case to be made that Exxon defrauded the public. Thanks very much for your time, David. Okay. Thanks.