Washington Knew. Congress Must Investigate.

For decades, the United States and other major emitting countries knew that burning fossil fuels could dangerously heat the planet—and chose to keep expanding coal, oil, and gas anyway.

Long before they signed the 2015 Paris Agreement, government officials had received clear warnings about rising temperatures, melting polar ice, higher seas, extreme heat, and devastating harm to communities around the world.

A major new report from the Center for International Environmental Law documents how governments received increasingly serious warnings beginning decades earlier than many have acknowledged. It examines records from the United States and seven other major emitting countries that together account for roughly 40 percent of historical carbon emissions.

Those warnings were not confined to private reports or closed-door government meetings.

In 1988, NASA climate scientist James Hansen (pictured) testified publicly before the U.S. Senate that human-caused global warming was already underway. His landmark testimony helped bring the climate crisis into public view, but governments had been discussing the risks of rising temperatures, melting polar ice, and sea-level rise as early as 1957—more than half a century before the Paris Agreement was signed.

Yet the United States continued supporting fossil fuel expansion.

Now ordinary people are paying the price through deadly heat, stronger storms, wildfire smoke, flooded homes, rising insurance costs, and enormous disaster-recovery bills.

This is not only a story about what fossil fuel companies knew. It is also a story about what our government knew—and what officials chose to do with that knowledge.

Congress must investigate America’s role by creating an independent Climate Accountability Commission with the power to obtain government and industry records, hold public hearings, and establish a complete public account of what federal officials knew about climate change, when they knew it, and why the United States continued supporting fossil fuel expansion.

This cannot become another Washington exercise that produces a report and then gathers dust. Its findings must lead to real accountability and action.

Congress should end federal policies that encourage new fossil fuel development, preserve and release historical climate records, require major polluters to help fund climate resilience and disaster recovery, and direct meaningful resources to frontline communities bearing the greatest harms.

Please sign the petition urging Congress to investigate. Even if today’s lawmakers refuse to act, we can build pressure for future accountability—and make clear that we will not forget what our government knew or how long it failed to respond.

The petition to Congress reads: In response to the Center for International Environmental Law’s new report documenting decades of government knowledge, create an independent Climate Accountability Commission to investigate what the U.S. government and major fossil fuel companies knew about climate change, when they knew it, and how that knowledge shaped federal policy. Make the findings public, end policies that expand fossil fuel production, and require major polluters to help fund climate resilience and disaster recovery.
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Sources:

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15072026/governments-knew-global-warming-risks/

https://www.ciel.org/reports/what-states-knew-climate/

https://www.climatechangenews.com/2026/07/15/major-emitting-countries-knew-of-climate-risks-decades-earlier-than-claimed/