This is some combination of grandstanding by the state prosecutors, abuse of the extremely vague statutes under which such suits can be brought, and a threat to the rule of law.
It strikes me as implausible that even if Exxon has published all of its internal climate research it would have made a substantive difference in people's likelihood to invest, or to consumers propensity to purchase Exxon gas. Because these are the only outcomes germane to the case aren't they?
You can tell by the comments here that people want Exxon punished, they don't care much about the means by which this occurs.
My understanding is that the fraud claim — if it matches the fraud claim in the New York case, at least – is this. Exxon had an internal figure used to represent one kind of climate change costs for one purpose. Investors never saw this. There was also an external figure shared with investors, to help investors assess risks to Exxon stock. The case for fraud is that these weren't different for a good reason, but because they sought to mislead investors.
The pricier of these figures is the external figure, so they're being charged for being too alarmist with the public. In either case I don't think it has much to do with the previously linked research claims in this thread.
(To this, there is added some consumer fraud by... not labelling gas pumps with warnings about global warnings, among other things, I think it was? This is the weaker claim, and I would not expect it to prevail.)
This happens all the time, and isn't considered fraud. San Fransisco is doing it- claiming one risk of climate change for the purposes of setting regulations and filing lawsuits, and using another for applying for insurance.
And I don't think being punished for using an overly conservative figure is likely, unless the court invents some duty owed to short-sellers. And it's not something we want to encourage.
The trouble is, the leaked internal documents point to Exxon actually genuinely believing the climate change doubt narrative they were pushing externally. So any argument to the contrary has to make clever use of tricks like selective out-of-context quotation, emotional appeals, and plausible-sounding but logically nonsensical arguments to trick the reader.
For example, this lawsuit. The overall tactic is to argue that Exxon knew fossil fuels could potentially cause catastropic climate change but decieved people by sowing uncertainty about whether they would cause climate catastrophe, which isn't even a contradiction, but let's put that issue to one side.
They then hit it out the park with a humdinger - in May 2019, CO2 concentrations hit 415 ppm, and 37 years ago Exxon's scientists predicted this in a graph. This astonishing accuracy shows Exxon's scientists knew exactly how much CO2 emissions and warming they were causing. Here's the leaked document this graph was taken from: https://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/documents/... Some choice quotes from it that somehow didn't make it into the complaint: "There is currently no unambiguous scientific evidence that the earth is warming", "Overall, the current outlook suggests potentially serious climate problems are not likely to occur until the late 21st century or perhaps beyond at projected energy demand rates", and also apparently coastal flooding wouldn't happen for centuries even in the worst case scenario. There's quite a bit more too. The supposedly super-accurate secret internal report didn't contradict Exxon's external talking points, it matched up with them exactly.
(There's also weirdly gratuitous dishonesty. For instance, the Exxon document argues that if a rapid move away from fossil fuels was necessary to prevent climate catastrophe, nuclear power was the only feasible option and renewables such as solar were completely infeasable since it'd take at least 40-50 years to achieve significant power production using them. For some reason, the complaint claims that Exxon recognised measures such as energy conservation and shifting to renewable sources were the only viable options. I guess the prosecutor reckoned renewable power was more sympathetic and popular than nuclear...
The complaint also goes on to accuse Exxon of misleading the public by claiming that efficiency improvements in their products reduce greenhouse gas emissions because producing and using them still emits greenhouse gases. Do they want to actively discourage energy efficiency improvements?)
It's implausible that if Exxon published its research, customers would have filled up at Chevron instead, yes.
It is totally plausible that the global oil / fossil fuel market would have not been as big as it is now, that efforts (from government or from private entities) to find less-polluting alternatives would have been more popular, etc.
When you disrespect the law, you risk devaluing a powerful tool against evil (and one of the few tools against evil that's actually discriminating, one of the few tools to actually make a good faith attempt to distinguish guilt from innocence.)
They knew about the dangers of climate change since the 1970s and pumped millions into climate change denial think tanks and did everything they could to prolong their dirty business a bit longer, while externalizing all the cost and hauling them upon the public they were actively misleading.
It'd be a different thing if they hadn't tried to hide the findings of their own scientists and hadn't spent that much resources to discredit people actually trying to get us to fix stuff.
They're guilty as hell. Morally, probably even legally.
It’s ludicrous to suggest that if the entirety of what the oil industry was doing to hide the truth had been revealed it wouldn’t have changed minds.
They were actively advertising as if this could on forever, with no problems! You don’t see how “oh wait we’ve been hiding scientific evidence that’s not true” wouldn’t be of material impact?
We’ve all become paid shills of industry. Explicitly defending the indefensible because implicitly we’re addicted to our emotional models of “how reality functions.”
But society doesn’t owe us that and literally tears down its own history all the time. It’s moving on and removing the profit motive of this industry for a good reason.
Oil saves more lives than it kills and it makes lives better for all of us. You can't just take the negatives and ignore all the positives.
Most of us wouldn't be here if it wasn't for oil, the internet would not be here if it wasn't for oil, most medicine, the ability to keep an incubator running let alone the materials for creating and I could go on we wouldn't be as many people on the planet today if it wasn't for our use of oil.
We're not talking about the benefits of the oil here. No one is disputing that fossil fuels have helped us advance as a society and brought about a lot of good.
What is at issue here is the willful negligence and active deception campaign by the incredible profitable oil companies to bolster their profits by deceiving and outright lying to the public to avoid those risks.
If this is not called out and punished, then it will be that much easier for the next great crime to happen, whether its face is tobacco, renewable energy, or fusion power.
Getting to the core of the matter as well in what you raised, we can have our cake and eat it too. We can have technological advances and better quality of life without throwing away our children's future and doing irreversible (on human time scales) damage to our planet. But not without zero cost. I would argue that cost would and should hit the pockets of the most profitable companies in the world first, whose profit is largely on deferred or unaccounted-for externalities that have long been swept under the rug.
And wouldn’t this be a nice discussion to have had, 30 years ago, without firms like Exxon and Fox destroying our ability to discuss this freely and honestly?
And if we had realized 30 years ago that we were not happy with it, or that maybe we wanted to reduce our exposure wouldn’t we have had 30 years to change our infrastructure ?
Wouldn’t the amount of emphasis on the Middle East changed?
Mass transit would be a conversation 30 years more advanced.
The trick in my argument is that 30 years ago we Knew that oil was problematic.
And we saw good scientists avoid engaging with the paid shills and cranks arguing for oil and against global warming - because that would give them more credibility.
Then we saw how that made no difference.
Then scientists went on Fox hoping to have an honest discussion- and were slaughtered by dishonest arguments, fired by news anchors who were part of an ecosystem funded by Exxon and their ilk.
We all collectively owe Exxon and it’s friends an accounting for their actions, which they knowingly took in bad faith.
Because, it would have been nice to have this discussion 30 years ago.
Maybe. That alone does not mean we should continue to use oil when alternatives exist.
>and it makes lives better for all of us.
No, it does not. There are many impoverished communities on the planet who reap relatively little or no benefit from oil use and suffer disproportionate burdens from its production and use, example: Africans.
> You can't just take the negatives and ignore all the positives.
You can't just ignore the negatives, or the evolution of the circumstances.
> the ability to keep an incubator running let alone the materials for creating
Oil is useful for creating and running an incubator, or any number of modern inventions, but is definitely not necessary for all of those things.
It was the difference between whether my son who was born 10 weeks to early would both survive and be a normal kid or risk not survive and whether he would become normal.
That can be true together with the allegations in the lawsuit. If a person robs a bank and donates it to charity it’s still a crime. Maybe it’s true that if oil companies hadn’t mislead everyone the world would be different today, but that doesn’t mean crimes should be excused “for the greater good.”
Sure, but lying about whether your product kills people is still a crime. They're not suing oil. They're suing Exxon for lying about it and funding lies.
Technically you might be able to make that claim, but I have a hard time understanding the point if it saves more people than it kills. Then at least morally I would question who is really in the right here.
I think our current usage of oil is responsible yes and I think it's irresponsible to not use oil.
There are no realistic alternatives to 99% of our current use of oil which includes more or less any product used in a modern civilization so unless you can point me to some alternatives I think you are the one who has the immoral position.
Wouldn't we have starvation of the majority of the world's population without oil? I was under the impression that our industrial scale farming needed lots of energy and fuel.
Wouldn't that depend on whether you take a human-centric or bio-centric view of the world's population? The loss of genetic data over this last century might be something we don't recognise the full implications of yet.
It would seem to me that the only thing for humans to do is to look at it from a human-centric view which would naturally involve some sort of bio-centric view.
I for one is not ready to have a bio-centric view if it means I can't provide my kids with all the things that fossil fuels have provided and keep providing for them.
> I for one is not ready to have a bio-centric view if it means I can't provide my kids with all the things that fossil fuels have provided and keep providing for them.
Are you also unwilling to make those sacrifices for the sake of valuing the lives and experiences of humans in every other country as much as the lives and experiences of humans in your own country? I suspect most of us are, since we collectively buy phones made in horrible factory conditions which our own labor laws wouldn't tolerate. I agree that the "natural" thing to do is to value your own species above others, but I think that applies to subdivisions of humans as well, and it gets ugly. It's not a binary thing, human v.s. non-human, it's a set of behaviors on a continuum. We can recognise that we engage in such behavior while still using figures for pollution-related-deaths that include people who work in Foxconn factories, and I don't see why we shouldn't extend the same courtesy to whales. Whales are people too, maaaan.
Yes, which is why I want them to keep having access to cheap reliable energy so they can build their way out of poverty.
It's exactly not black and white which is my whole point. There are good sides and bad sides to everything we do.
The alternative for the people at Foxconn is far worse, just like the alternative to not using fossil fuels is far worse for all humans whether living in developed or developing countries.
Anyway, I have lost 30 karma points even having this discussion so this will be my last comment on this.
> Anyway, I have lost 30 karma points even having this discussion so this will be my last comment on this.
FWIW, you seemed polite and coherent to me and I wouldn't have downvoted your post even if I could. I try not to let karma-seeking affect my more serious posts (though I do purposefully take downvotes as a signal of what sorts of humor are acceptable by community standards), and I think it's generally a loss when somebody gets downvoted into oblivion for politely sharing a perspective I disagree with.
For the same reason you can't invent a new kind of pain killer and tell doctors and patients that it's less addictive than the existing alternatives, when you know for a fact that it is far more addictive.
Except the (over-)reaction to that is on course to be a greater problem than the one it fixed. We've essentially outlawed painkillers overnight, leaving victims even worse off than before.
Unless your primary goal was to kill the industry, and never really had the victims' best interests in mind at all.
Now if you are asking why a company shouldn’t be able to lie and decieve the whole world about how their product will upset the entire global ecosystem then I don’t have the legalese answer for you (although this case should be helpful if you are interested).
The simple answer however is because it is wrong, unjust, irresponsible, causing harm, etc.
They not only withheld information about the negatives you mention, but they also sowed disinformation.
Furthermore, nobody here is arguing that oil is all bad. Obviously it has been immensely beneficial to society. And yet, how is it that those benefits are privatized by these companies, and the negatives (costs) are externalized?
I was responding to the blanket claim in the parent that oil kills people. In my view it's not as simple as being claimed but I am sure technically there is a case here.
The positives are also externalized. The internet wouldn't happen without fossil fuels yet it's not the oil companies who make the money on that. Many of our inventions wouldn't be possible without the ability of fossil fuels to make life easier and free up time for us, things that the oil companies does not benefit directly from. So I take issue with this idea that externalities are only negative, they are to a much larger extent beneficial in ways we don't even think about.
I think the legal and to an extent the root of moral outrage at issue, Thom, is the inherent fraud of the deceptive claims facilitated by diverting profit to corporations/agencies intended to poison-the-well of public discourse, combined with active suppression of any type of release of in-house research that provided evidence that the fossil fuel industry could have been contributing to climate change.
It rubs some people (me at least) the wrong way when we try to say our policymaking is based on reasoned science, but not everyone is bringing all their chips to the table in good faith, and some are outright fabricating lies to keep the gravy train going, and keep the public guessing.
I've actually enjoyed your posts mind, and find quite a bit to agree with in them. However, I don't necessarily think you're making a successful counterargument in the sense no one is condemning the oil/petrochem industry for doing what it's doing; it seems to be aimed more at bad behavior in terms of burying inconvenient science, and funding disinformation campaigns.
That, at least, strikes me as worthy of its day in court, so at a minimum the public interest can be served by discovery. After all, they don't need to be found guilty for good to come of it.
So, if the entire planet is decimated by global warming in 200 years. Killing 9 billion plus, will you stick by those words, or do you simply deny global warming as a problem.
Yup, instead of passing relevant laws, punishing them seems to be what people want. Laws are boring I guess. They can make any level of punishment work, they can cut back in the US and expand elsewhere to make up for the loss. Meanwhile ,CNOOC and Gazprom are doing great.
Big bad corp makes for a nice villain but in a democratic country lack of good laws (bad voters!) is the problem. Should there have been a law compelling companies to listen to their scientists? Should there be criminal punishment of execs who spread any level if false information? What about media execs? Is the lobbying problem the root cause? It all seems to me lack of good voting or the US system of democracy being inadequate. I mean,it's not like oil companies use oil strictly for fossil fuels and it's not like civilization at the moment does not depend on fossip fuels. Less pitch forks and better laws is all I'm saying.
>It strikes me as implausible that even if Exxon has published all of its internal climate research it would have made a substantive difference in people's likelihood to invest
You only say this because the marketing campaign against global warming, designed by this company because of the outcomes of said research, has been so effective.
> You can tell by the comments here that people want Exxon punished, they don't care much about the means by which this occurs.
Welcome to our latest age of populism. As usual in these cases, there are no rules, there is no law, there are no inalienable rights. There is only your chosen tribe, versus the other guys: enemies at worst, targets of opportunity at best. (If you criticize overreach and abuse on your side, breaking solidarity with the tribe, you get to be a particularly hated enemy.)
> As usual in these cases, there are no rules, there is no law, there are no inalienable rights.
When the government routinely steals from citizens ("civil forfeiture"), calls invading other countries "military police action" so that Congress doesn't have to approve wars, gives specifically black citizens syphillis without their knowledge or consent just to see what happens when you don't treat syphillis, gives citizens LSD without their knowledge or consent (Operation Midnight Climax), claims LSD has no medical applications, tries to blackmail MLK into suicide, routinely has huge globs of cash disappearing, does obvious false flag operations (2nd Gulf of Tonkin incident, if you can't believe the ones the government hasn't confirmed yet), ignores their own constitution (Snowden et al.), etc., is it any wonder that people don't care about your laws anymore? All of the above criminality was committed by the US government within the last century, some of it within the last decade. These laws were made up to begin with, and they're typically used/broken in ways that hurt the small rather than the large. I don't know if Exxon broke any of your precious laws by systematically covering up climate change since at least the early '80s, but I'd enjoy seeing this lawless monstrosity of a government chew them up for it anyway -- just as entertainment. If you want people to respect laws when dealing with big players, maybe you should try building a system that respects laws when dealing with small players. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Proposal: ignore their broken system and try to do something else entirely at the edge of the frontier, where such things are (sometimes) allowed.
“In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete.” --Buckminster Fuller
This is desperation time. Given that CO2 pollution results promise from moderate to extreme environmental disaster world wide, some portion of people are quite worried and, people being people, another portion of people are doing everything they can to keep business as usual going.
A US state suing an oil company might not be the best venue to force action but courts have been used repeated to force societal change and so it's not impossible Ma could get a result
Exxon being punished isn't an important end-goal but actually forcing the oil industry to acknowledge CO2 pollution might be useful in forcing regulation stopping it (and yes, believe that the state directly forcing a decrease in CO2 is the only way that we can put a dent in greenhouse gas production. Carbon credit and even a CO2 tax are insufficient).
Not the OP, but my guess would be that they're worried about the precedent set by fairly explicitly using a law meant to outlaw X to punish someone for doing Y just because the government dislikes that someone is doing Y. If the government wanted to outlaw promoting self-serving doubt/misinformation, they could do that, but that's not really what "fraud" is for.
Part of the rule of law is that the government doesn't just get to make up laws because it wants to punish you. It's why there's generally a prohibition for punishing people for things they did before it became illegal to do them.
A lot of this is symptomatic of both sides of the political spectrum feeling impotent to pass laws that actually do what they want, so they're doing what they can do bend existing law to do what they don't have the votes to do in new law. The whole situation is bad on a number of levels.
I think I'd understand the concern if a regulatory body within Massachusetts were directly penalizing Exxon without judicial oversight. But since they're taking Exxon to court for the legal system to determine if the case is valid, isn't this just what the rule-of-law looks like?
For sure, that would be a worse case. That said, defending a case against the government, even for a company as large as Exxon, isn't without cost. They're certainly an unsympathetic victim here, but in general, you want the government not to be bending the law to bring a case against an unpopular defendant.
It's one thing for private citizens/companies to file vague or spurious lawsuits against each other, only to have the courts throw it out. It's another for the government, who hypothetically represents the Law, to be bending/testing the limits of it.
It also presupposes that the court system is fair, and not inclined to side with the government. Obviously in this case, there's a claim to be made that it might be biased towards a massive corporation too, but in general prosecutors tend to get what they want in cases. I'd be shocked if this gets thrown out/refuted by the court without going to trial.
What is vague about misleading consumers, misrepresentation of product, fraud, carrying out greenwashing campaigns and generally lying to the public to maintain a marketable position?
Capitalism is about leveling the playing field. Not enabling crony assholes to play by their own set of rules.
"Lying to the public to maintain a marketable position" is incredibly vague. If I tell people my software is great and easy to use, but it's actually hard to use, can Massachusetts sue me for that? Can I sue Samsung for saying they sell the best phones if I think iPhones are actually the best phones?
Some of the allegations are exactly that vague. One of the major alleged misrepresentations is that Exxon claimed to be environmentally conscious:
> 687. ExxonMobil's greenwashing misleads consumers by saturating its brand with deceptive "green" images that portray ExxonMobil as a good environmental steward when, in fact, these images are contradicted by the actual environmental and public health impact of ExxonMobil's business. These images direct attention away from the massive and dangerous climate and public health harms caused by the routine production and use of ExxonMobil fossel fuel products and focus consumer attention instead on ExxonMobil's purported environmental responsibility and leadership.
That part of the complaint is referring to ExxonMobil's greenwashing efforts in Massachusetts. The fairly vague wording of 687 follows dozens of pages including full color reproduction of the ads which make the case that Exxon sought to convince customers that using their whiz-bang petroleum product (motor oil) can meaningfully "clean" engines and will result in decreased environmental impact from fossil fuels.
>645. ExxonMobil’s misleading statements and omissions are deceptive because, even if it is technically true that Synergy™ and Mobil 1™ improve internal combustion engine performance and/or efficiency relative to prior or other products, ExxonMobil’s claims that these products help reduce greenhouse gas emissions convey a false impression that using the products results in environmental benefits. To the contrary, the development, production, refining, and consumer use of ExxonMobil fossil fuel products (even products that may yield relatively more efficient engine performance) increase greenhouse gas emissions.
Isn't that part even more concerning? Exxon said some true things about its efforts to help the environment, and Massachusetts agrees they were "technically true". But saying these true things was still deceptive according to the state, because saying Exxon is good is like saying that fossil fuels are good and the state thinks they're actually bad.
No, what the state thinks is bad is that ExxonMobil is marketing the global petroleum conglomerate's version of a Safer Cigarette. Tobacco causes cancer; There is no safe cigarette.
The non-lying versions of the ad would be more like: "Combusting hydrocarbons produces, directly and indirectly, large portions of the total global CO2 released every year. The only way to reduce tailpipe CO2 emissions is to consume less combustion products. If you use ExxonMobil Synergy™ and Special Green Mobil 1™ then you could burn 0.65% fewer hydrocarbon molecules in your first 3 months!"
I do however agree with your main point, it probably wouldn't A/B as well.
I agree with the comparison. A lot of the tobacco lawsuits were also driven by moral panic more than any general principle. McDonalds is allowed to say they're working on healthier options even though all their food is unhealthy; Amazon is allowed to say they're working on reducing packaging waste even though they use a ton of packaging.
Yes, the tobacco industry also created ad campaigns from lies. My opinion is that misleading consumers about product harm is also tort. Of course, I am not a lawyer.
You may be unfamiliar with how legal documents are structured. As is typical, every paragraph of the complaint is numbered for easy referencing; the fact that this was 687 doesn't indicate that the other 686 things were more important, just that they were written earlier in the document. The paragraph I quoted was the beginning of a major section about "greenwashing".
Perhaps a better example - is it illegal to not disclose that your supply chain includes companies with inhumane/unethical work practices? I don't see most companies talking about how their factories are potentially mistreating folks, even though it's quite likely that they know about it.
I'm not sure how I feel about it myself, but I'm not sure how I want this to be handled as a legal matter.
Apologies for the quick tangent but... It's interesting.
As far as I'm aware, there is a lot you can get away with not saying, as the courts are specifically not huge fans of compelled speech.
Each form of compelled speech that I'm aware of tends to arise from the authority of an administrative regulator. I.e. FDA compelling ingredient labels, side-effects, Office of the Surgeon General for alcohol and tobacco/nicotine warnings, FTC/CFPB for product/financial product marketing/disclaimers, Bureau of Labor postings in the workplace etc.
With regards to specific things like child labor/conflict minerals, etc..., the issue shouldn't have to come up in theory, because you shouldn't be doing it period, and any evidence that you are is prosecutable without having to indirectly assert it was a case of securities fraud.
It's also not illegal to be daft or misleading until it crosses the line into fraud, where a material reliance on the veracity or falsehood of the information can be demonstrated.
That doesn't mean that there aren't grey area cases, or that everyone does their due diligence, but in general, this is the way things have always worked for as long as I've been around.
I think the case here is that, say, the companies that were contracting with Foxconn or the like weren't doing anything explicitly illegal, but a large portion of people would see it as immoral/unethical. I'm certainly not saying that the government couldn't compel companies to label/disclose that sort of link, but assuming that's not the law, should Apple be sued for fraud if it turns out they were contracting with firms using unethical labor?
Obviously Exxon and others went further and attempted to discredit the evidence that what they were doing could be wrong, but if they'd just done the research into the climate impacts, and just never published it, would that have been fraudulent? To just pretend they didn't know what they were doing was immoral/unethical? That seems like the sort of things plenty of companies do all the time, to varying degrees of moral and ethical fault.
To extend the metaphor- is it implicit guilt and/or misleading for Apple to generate PR about the ~300 jobs in Texas it created in making new pro laptops / desktops (a relatively small market), when they're responsible for mistreating 3000-30000 laborers making iPhones in China? (numbers made up)
There are explicit legal provisions for "puffery" to cover the Samsung case as being just marketing fluff and not a claim of objective truth. But if you won a contract based on tricking your customer i to thinking your software was easier to use than the competition when it wasn't, yes, I personally would worry about the FTC.
More generally, preventing deceptive trade practices without preventing ordinary marketing is a well-established and well-explored field, it's not like Massachusetts invented it for this case. (And if anything threatens the rule of law, it's saying, "I don't know what the relevant statutes and regulations and caselaw is in this field so I think we shouldn't enforce laws in this field at all.")
Shhh! The church of climate change has found a witch and is conducting an inquisition here! Who needs the law when a company is literally causing climate armegeddon?!?!?!??
What are the possible results? If it's only fines than it may not deter anyone from doing similar things in the future (in case the gain is big enough, i.e., bigger than the fine).
Is there a possibility for personal responsibility and jail time for the people who did this?
The last two pages of the complaint [1] list its specific requests in "VIII. REQUEST FOR RELIEF".
This includes a request for $5,000 each violation of a consumer-protection-act, recovery of legal fees, and a request for "comprehensive injunctive relief". However, I suspect that the main thing may be an attempt to get the court to declare that there're on-going "deceptive practices" (first item in that section).
I'd guess that, if they can establish wrong-doing, then they'd have a basis for later follow-up actions.
A big enough fine and multiple law suits... Maybe even a class action multi state/ multinational law suit could end their company and probably many like them who did the same thing.
Exxon has received billions in tax subsidies. I'd be happy to see the federal government sue to get every subsidy dime back, and any dismantle their entire company.
Is there no direct way to sue the company? As in, "You made a big environmental mess, pay this fine".
This seems to my non lawyer eyes to sound more like "Hey you lied to the investors who wouldn't otherwise have bought your securities". Which is also a thing, but seemingly a bit convoluted.
I believe the environmental laws are that the EPA makes specific rules and companies have to follow them. This reduces uncertainty for businesses over what is an acceptable level or form of pollution.
In Bush Jr years, the EPA had to be taken to court to even accept that CO2 and other greenhouse gases are pollutants, meaning they have to be regulated.
The only other law I can think of would be reckless endangerment, hopefully somebody here can explain why it wouldn't apply.
In my experience there is quite a bit of confusion about the terminology of pollutant, emissions, and greenhouse gasses in the general public. Emissions and Pollutant are words than usually don't include CO2 in their regulatory or industry definitions.
There are many Hondas out there running around with chrome plastic ULEV labels riveted to the car. ULEV is Ultra-Low Emissions Vehicle, and in this circumstance "Emissions" refers to NMOG or "Non-Methane Organic Gas" which does not include CO2. I have anecdotally encountered many people who assume ULEV means "Doesn't Pollute As Much", and that is true.
In my state, when you get a smog-check or emissions inspection, the gasses the state measures to issue the sticker are known as "Emission Gasses" in the regulatory literature used in the state DOT approved inspection technician licensing training. CO2 (along with oxygen) is classified as a "Diagnostic Gas" and is not considered for this purpose as a tailpipe emission.
Many customers of the DOT inspections wrongly assume the emissions reduce CO2 or "Global Warming" when its really just reducing smog, cancer, asthma, acid rain, etc
Of course the tested emissions gasses such as oxides of nitrogen are quite harmful, and anyone affected by them will be unhappy, no effort at all has been expended to educate the public wrt CO2.
Most people assume their cars cause less "Bad Stuff" from the tailpipe laws and ULEV standards and catalytic converters and advanced chemicals. Their idea of that Bad Stuff usually includes CO2, but this is not the case. Hydrocarbons neccesarilly oxidize into CO2, H20, and other byproducts.
My understanding is that this is also a big part of the difference in emission standards between the US and EU. i.e. In the past we have been a lot more strict about things like NOX and other countries have been stronger about things like CO2. At least as far as diesels went, anyway.
My memory certainly doesn't stretch back to the 1970's introduction of EGR Valves, but the rage that acid rain, ozone, smog caused back then got us into really good shape in a lot of ways regarding NOX. 60s and 70s Americans still have ulcer inducing rage about the diesel stink and headaches anytime they get near 'em.
In Europe, if I am not mistaken, the tax paid on displacement is in part due to the shorthand way of attributing more displacement=more co2, plus the heavy fuel tax. The result is that the euros put-put along behind some very, very efficient power plants, while in the USA the marketing had everyone demanding v6 gasoline minivans and dumpy pickup trucks.
Lot of people just get off on burning the stuff too, they like the fuel smell from the tailpipe.
By the mid 1990's, while every garage monkey was bitching about having to use a computer to fix the cars, vehicles finally started to actually get good.
These babies have about the power of a Mercedes-Benz inline5 240D but gas, mind blowing post-fuel rationing MPG and with a truck bed! Probably way better from a stop than the nowadays-too-dangerous-to-drive Mercedes 240D too, I couldn't say having never driven a Scamp. The oldest and easily most skilled mechanic I've ever known had a Scamp as his main daily driver until it finally rusted away less than a decade ago, and he sure loved it.
I'm not a US citizen and I'm not a lawyer. But it I'm really worried that the US public will blame Exxon for climate change. If Exxon disappeared overnight, the current regulatory environment means that another oil company will take up the slack in decade or two.
It's time for the US to realize they are much richer than most other countries. They should show the world they are willing to make real sacrifices. Otherwise we will see the tragedy of the commons play out on a global scale.
There are no sacrifice necessary, that's a silly meme that refuses to die. Its the same kind of thinking that made people ask where they are going to keep all the horses if cities become to large back in the day.
We have modern nuclear technology today, we should just elect to use it.
Even if thorium reactors could be built right now and use waste from older reactors, there is still the process of mining and handling radioactive material.
Nuclear may be preferable to coal but (IMO) not to large scale development of solar, wind, and higher efficiency grids.
We only need to mine 1/1e6'th of it compared to conventional chemistry. Thorium is a waste product, we mine it anyway, it's with the Lanthanides. It's an alpha emitter so unless you ingest it (serious hazard, dont ingest alpha emitters) it's not difficult to work with.
Even if nuclear technology provides all US electricity within "5-7 years", gasoline will still be needed to power the majority of US vehicles and aircraft.
It will be hard for Americans to stay at home some vacations, to build denser cities, drive smaller vehicles and eat less meat. Those are sacrifices that will not hurt the economy !!
I really don’t follow the logic here. Wouldn’t denying the global supply chain the fuel it needs to provide food and goods be more reckless than not?
If we just stopped using oil millions if not billions of people would die from malnutrition in a far shorter timeframe than global warming is going to cause.
Heroin dealers are a great analogy here. Yea, if you cut off the supply to an addict they go through a process of withdrawal. And these companies have been working hard to manufacture demand and get more addicts.
The world did fine without tonnes of plastics for quite a bit of time. Yea, it would require rethinking industrial civilization (unclear it would survive), but we need to stop weaning ourselves off this toxic asset ASAP and as quickly as possible.
In contrast, the oil and gas companies are going to spend $5 TRILLION over the next 10 years to develop NEW oil and gas reserves, and expect to grow their markets, sales and obviously, emissions.
That type of case will most like be public nuisance suits under state tort laws, akin to for example, the recent Oklahoma opioid case against Johnson and Johnson, or say, lead paint lawsuits.
These types of laws tend to be much more pervasive than "blue sky laws" that enable securities fraud cases.
There was a Supreme Court ruling about a decade ago that under federal law (specifically the Clean Air Act), it is solely the job of the EPA to regulate energy companies in most aspects related to the environment.
That ruling does not cover state tort laws or state securities fraud laws. It's been a tactic by the fossil fuel industry to move nuisance cases to federal courts, but in many recent rulings, most of the federal courts have been throwing them back to state courts in jurisdictional rulings.
A number of other nuisance suits are about to be filed soon, most notably by Washington DC and Honolulu. There may be a very large number of these lawsuits in the future, whether it be by cities, counties, or states.
No, there is no direct way to sue the company, because Exxon has been selling a legal product the whole time. We all have benefited from cheap fossil fuels and continue to do so. "More Americans believe in global warming — but they won't pay much to fix it: Most Americans are unwilling to pay $10 a month to fight climate change, a survey found." https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/more-americans-believe-...
The MA and NY lawsuits are grandstanding and scapegoating.
Grandstanding in the extreme. For example, one problem is that the internal documents people have pointed to as proof that Exxon knew their products were causing global warming displayed considerable doubt as to whether they were in fact doing so. So the prosecutors basically have to spin the documents as saying the exact opposite of what they actually say.
Or here's a good one. They claim that Exxon has been misleading people by claiming to be clean whilst massively expanding their fossil fuel production. There's a nice relevant quote in the 1982 internal report: "Mitigation of the "greenhouse effect" would require major reductions in fossil fuel combustion. Shifting between fossil fuels is not a feasible alternative" Sounds pretty damning, right? Not quite. It continues: "Shifting between fossil fuels is not a feasible alternative because of limited long-term supply availability for certain fuels although oil does produee about 18% less carbon dioxide per Btu of heat released than coal, and gas about 32% less than oil". Which implies increasing available gas reserves via fracking would be highly useful, and sure enough Exxon have invested lots of money in this and touted the environmental benefits of doing so.
Also the SCOTUS effectively sent a number of these cases back to state courts this week, solving any jurisdictional issues for now. Of course, the newest wave of these cases are still very new (and more are likely coming soon) and have yet to be litigated outside of jurisdictional issues.
It could be that they're unwilling to pay $10 a month because they think the ultra-wealthy and companies bringing in billions of dollars a year should pay for it.
Most Americans don't have a lot of disposable income thanks to the systemic changes over the last 40 years greatly concentrating wealth. So it's understandable that they'll choose to spend that on food now instead of against fighting a risk which whose worst effects will be felt a long time in the future.
> "The nationwide poll was conducted November 14-16, 2018 using the AmeriSpeak® Panel, the probability-based panel of NORC at the University of Chicago. Online and telephone interviews using landlines and cell phones were conducted with 1,202 adults. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points."
If somebody cold-called me and asked me if I would be willing to give them $10 to stop climate change, I'd tell them to go fuck themselves... but that would have nothing to do with my opinions on climate change. Rather it would be my aversion telephone scams, as well as skepticism that whatever organization I was talking to was actually able to efficiently use my $10 for what they claimed. If I gave $10 to every organization that claimed they could solve a serious problem, I'd be broke and I wager not one of those problems would be solved.
I'll tell you more. The vast majority of the users of this site, even though they're abundantly informed of climate change and like to grandstand about it themselves will not even spend _negative_ amounts of money to reduce their environmental impact by canceling their travel and yearly vacations thousands of miles away, to which they go by burning kerosene. I'd be also willing to bet most of us here drive gasoline cars, leave our computers on 24x7, eat meat, and don't look twice at where our food comes from.
So it's going to be _hard_ to argue that more informed customers or shareholders would have made different choices, particularly in the absence of severe negative consequences so far.
But not when you know your product causes harm and spend BILLIONS to suppress and sow confusion around the science.
We have an excellent precedence in terms of big tobacco and the lies and disinformation they fed the public about the link between lung cancer and smoking.
When Exxon realized the problem decades ago, they could've lead a forward-looking campaign. Investing in renewables and nuclear technology. If they had done that, maybe today we'd be mostly powered by clean energy.
Here's the kicker: It would've been a long term win-win for both Exxon and the world. Putting themselves in a strong position to capitalize on the transition and even be a respected player.
To be clear, while you are not required to give a flying fig about whether or not Exxon investors earn a return, you can't exactly expect them to all line up to gleefully throw their money away, either. That's a charity, not a business.
And trust me, if we compare the financial returns on investment for renewables and nuclear technology over the past N decades, versus Exxon's returns today? Definitely not a win-win.
If they had started investing back then, they'd likely be in a better position today and going forward. A leader in future fuels instead of clinging onto fossil fuels, which is definitively short sighted.
Exxon is worth $293 billion right now. Its earnings over the past N decades are probably worth more. For that money, you could buy alternative energy providers outright. You could buy Siemens (~$50 billion), who, in addition to transportation and other lines of businesses, have a big renewables business, and are among the world leaders in nuclear ... or, well, they were, until 2011, when they abandoned that line of business entirely.
There is no financial case to be made here whatsoever.
I don't disagree, but Exxon might have had the cachet, especially in the 1980s, to speed up decreasing the carbon intensity of the economy. The entire energy sector is now <= 5% the size of the entire S&P, down from 18%, so it's unclear if energy companies still have that level of cachet.
Now, going forward, in 2020, there might be a different calculus. Usually, the market cap/stock price of a company reflects future cash flow. For an E&P company, much of Exxon's valuation comes from the cash flow expectation on its oil reserves. That's problematic if some of those oil reserves are in effect stranded assets. Certainly not all will likely, but say, things like the tar sands? It very well could be.
Similar argument can be made for fast-food, frozen and heavily processed food, and many other daily use items. By your yardstick, all of them spread misinformation and mislead the public since the harms of consuming fast-food or overly processed food are known.
I then wonder, why this happens to be the case. Can't fathom, really.
It's hard for me to imagine a positive outcome from this for either Exxon's shareholders or the public at large. I imagine it will translate pretty well into higher prices at the pump for everyone.
Seems a lot like the whole impeachment, even though no president has ever been impeached. Just a bunch of empty virtue signalling that won't make a real difference.
I'm all for sueing companies like Exxon for misleading people and spreading lies, but I also find it weird that we're trying to blame the big oil companies like it's all their fault. After all, it is the consumers themselves who create a massive demand for (cheap) oil.
This is an invalid argument, verging on non sequitor. High demand for a product does not legitimize fraud about the product, especially when that fraud increases demand. It is irrational to expect individuals to make the best ethical decisions for the larger group - this is why we have regulation on food, drugs, energy, etc.
I think the flaw in your argument is the assumption that the demand for fossil fuel is variable depending on anything Exxon has to say. I don’t see an Exxon ad and think “man I should buy an SUV”.
You wouldn’t blame an electric company on you buying electronic items, it’s the usefulness of the items themselves that drives the sales.
Demand is a function of many factors, including individual ethical concern and cost. Exxon has spent billions to reduce both of these effects - ethical concern is reduced because of the seed of doubt about climate change, and cost is reduced because of political contributions. Exxon is a great example of a firm successfully privatizing profit and socializing cost.
it's the usefulness of the item in relation to its cost and the cost to run it. an electric heater is quite useful, but also takes a lot of electricity. if the electric company promises that i'll spend less on electricity for heating than i would on gas, then that does make a difference.
so yes, if exxon would promise that the gas prices are so low that i can afford an SUV, then i might be persuaded.
Fossil fuels are not illegal. In fact USA has fought several wars and spent trillions of dollars to keep the flow going. So sue Exxon for a lot of other things, but not for producing fossil fuels.
EDIT: In fact people go nuts when gas prices approach $4 a gallon, which is maybe 2-3 times cheaper than in some European countries (when adjusting for income levels)
>This is an invalid argument, verging on non sequitor.
But it isn't. We cannot live without oil today. Oil is not like cigarettes. If every oil company decided to close shop tomorrow, every government in the world would step in and force them open.
There are cases where in principle we could remove oil uses (e.g. converting ICE to EVs), but there are thousands of products that require oil to make that have no obvious substitutes, from crayons to car tires, to shaving cream, to industrial lubricants, and so on. Airplanes, rockets, cargo ships, long-haul trucks cannot run on batteries, and require the energy density of oil to operate. Asphalt, the miracle road material, is essentially gravel and bitumen - a petroleum byproduct.
It does raise the question of, what are we blaming Exxon for?
Oil usage has an inherent societal cost. Exxon knew about the cost and suppressed that knowledge, much in the way big tobacco did.
If we had known, we may have not allowed them to externalize that societal cost so aggressively or required the cost be offset in some way (investments in carbon sinks to offset usage). This would have increased the price of oil, gas and coal, hurting their bottom line, but it would have made alternatives more economically viable sooner.
Anyway, the answer is lying. They lied about the dangers of their products and should be punished for that.
It's scapegoating, grandstanding and extortion - that's all it is. And you're abrogating your responsibility for your part in this when you use hundreds of petroleum-based products in your day-to-day life.
The oil companies had nothing to do with climate change action or inaction. They are providing a critical product that we can't do without even today, and we certainly could not do without when science started to come up with non-speculative evidence of human-caused climate change. US economy grounded to halt when Arab nations instituted oil embargo - with the outcome pushing Western governments to push oil companies to look for alternatives oil sources for national security reasons. You want to blame Exxon for that? As recent as this year, France experienced violent riots when gas prices rose. That's how important oil was and continues to be to the global economy. There was no need for Exxon to lie about anything.
>but it would have made alternatives more economically viable sooner.
LIKE WHAT? We have been looking for alternatives for decades. Chemistry and thermodynamics are a hard mistress. We have nothing, even today, with the energy density and portability of petroleum.
So I have no idea what you're talking about when you're creating a hypothetical world with your alternatives to oil or mitigations like 'carbon sinks' (which will never work) or whatever other mythical solution you come up with. There was no alternative to oil. There are no alternatives to oil today for the tens of thousands of products that require petroleum for manufacture. There is no alternative to oil today for global trade (airplanes, cargo ships, trucking).
By far (and it isn't even close) the biggest climate-change disaster was Western abandonment of nuclear energy in the 70s due to the FUD put out by environmental groups.
By the way, I don't see wind and solar companies proclaiming what a disaster those technologies are to the environment (from requirement of rare earth materials, to land-use and environment destruction after deployment, to lack of recyclability). Do you want to sue them to too?
This lawsuit is like two lieutenants on a sinking ship getting in a fight over whose fault it is that they got torpedoed. One of the two may be right, but none the less it's pointless and unproductive. There are more important things to do.
Unless of course the ship is sinking really slowly and one of them might get elected governor before the whole thing goes down.
Exxon's current market cap is something like 300 billion. It is worth that much because of future claims it has on profits from the extraction, refinement and sale of oil. If Exxon makes enough to recoup that... you'll have another 50ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere.
So no. You won't have a huge sum of money to fix the sinking ship. You'll be bailing water from one compartment and throwing it into another.
The reason the characters are lieutenants in my story is because this problem is bigger than them. You could take every penny the oil companies have and it would barely make a dent in the problem. This isn't a money problem it is a fundamental economic and industrial structure of society problem.
> You could take every penny the oil companies have and it would barely make a dent in the problem.
Citation needed. The top 10 oil companies [1] had a cumulative $2.5 trillion dollars in revenue in 2017. I'd say that'd go a long way in climate change R&D.
Revenue, not profit. Oil is very low margin. Oil companies makes about 7 cents per gallon of gasoline. That's a lot less than the amount of money that is collected from gasoline taxes.
Okay, but the intended implication of my comment was that since this can actually send a message to others, it might actually cause others to be a bit more careful about how they proceed moving forward, which actually might very well help with help things moving forward.
Ok, but one of the "lieutenants" in your analogy is telling passengers that the ship's not sinking, and interfering with attempts to warn other ships about enemy torpedos.
This argument often gets trotted out, but it's misleading.
Imagine your grandparents were introduced to heroin and became addicted to it, and you built a society around celebrating and finding new ways to use heroin. Then your parents were hooked on heroin, and people may have found out that heroin actually isn't that good for you, but by this time, the heroin produces had amassed such wealth and power that they worked hard for 40 years to suppress and sow confusion around the science around.
Now you're born into a society of heroin consumers, and to some degree you're also addicted to it.
Is it the fault of the consumers that the world now runs on heroin? Especially considering that the heroin producers have known for 40 years, and have spent BILLIONS lying to the public and government?
This is a bizarre comparison. Petroleum was pulled out of the ground because was useful from day one. It is the backbone of the economy because it is useful.
Pretending that petroleum is and has always been a vile, evil thing is poorly considered revisionist nonsense (typed into a petroleum plastic keyboard)
Without petroleum, the world today looks a lot more like 1930 than it does 2020.
That's not what the argument is saying. We obviously didn't know the ill effects of the product when it first came out (think original Coke with cocaine).
Yes, it may have given us some material benefits, but now it is clear that it is hurtling the human race towards extinction (and likely much life on earth with it).
Which makes heroin a terrible analogy because it doesn't match up with the argument, except insomuch as it flatters the poster's sense of the evil Exxon as a 'pusher' of an evil product.
I don't follow. The burning of fossil fuels is risking human extinction. Sure, I can now fly from New York to Shanghai. But evidence increasing points that civilization and possibly humanity won't survive this benefit.
This has been known by Exxon for ~40 years, and they have worked to suppress and sow disinformation.
14% of global emissions is from all transportation. It's a poor example.
Most of it comes from electricity production, industry, and agriculture. I guess flying an airplane is an easy target. But it really shows the actual motives when someone holds it up as an example if how we're destroying the planet.
If you assume society is democratic, however, then knowing the facts matters - even if you end up behaving the same way. It's never a good thing to have a whole set of pressure groups funded by an industry trying to sow doubts about the long-term effects of that industry in contradiction of the facts.
There's a whole lot of unaddressed middle between "give up all oil and make the world look like 1930" and "wilfully hide the truth in order to give us 2020 tech."
How about, "As a democracy, have a debate about long-term problems with a core part of society in reasonable time to address them?
It has often been said that burning something as incredibly useful as oil is silly. And plastic is and will remain a core component of modern technology for a very long time. Of course with abundant energy we will make plastic from C02 in future, not oil. If civilisation survives the interesting times ahead.
Your argument neglects the fact that designing society around fossil fuels improved everyone’s lives exponentially and made the non-agrarian lifestyle not only possible but accessible to billions of people.
It’s not heroin, it’s more like some sort of intelligence drug with terrible side effects seen much later.
It’s a Faustian bargain we’ve all benefited from in innumerable ways.
The intent of the analogy is to make clear that consumers have little recourse over their "choice" to consume this material.
Lots can be said about the tradeoffs of industrial civilization. We now see that it is leading us to extinction.
It's like bacteria in a petri dish, for 50 years it accelerated our consumption of our limited resources and made the petri dish increasingly hostile to life within it.
We all know how the story of bacteria in a petri dish turns out.
It’s not just consumers, it’s the entire fabric of modern society.
The machinery that makes everything in modern life work runs on fossil fuels, and up until recently there wasn’t another viable option. Even so, with limitations on batteries it’s debatable how viable our options are now. Moving massive payloads takes exponentially more energy than a moving a single driver. Society is built on moving things.
Every part of the building you are in now, every piece of food you eat got there via fossil fuels.
Like it or not we’re stuck with fossil fuels for the foreseeable future unless the entire fabric of society changes, and I’m not putting my money on that.
The natural nitrogen cycle can optimistically support 4B people. That means 3.5B people need to die for that to even become a workable solution. But but magic tech will save us all ! We have magic tech today, we don't use it.
I don't think they could be replaced that fast with nuclear. According to Bill Gates at a speech he gave @ ARPA-E, the limitation of mass nuclear right now is the number of heavy forges left in the world.
I think you could scale up a mixture of solar-PV, wind + some nuclear that fast however, because the manufacturing needs are not as bad.
No, not likely. Over all, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries, according to Urgewald, the environmental and human rights organization. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent.
Let's say Exxon did suppress information about climate change and their role in it. Thus, compared to a world of perfect transparency and information, Exxon was able to earn more profit, because the market lacked the information to price their products correctly and transition away from fossil fuels decades ago.
Had Massachusetts access to Exxon's suppressed information decades ago, taxes could have been enacted on their products and the money used to transition to different power sources.
In this case, maybe it's correct for the state to sue, to claw back some of the money they would've had to make the transition by now.
Also, if Norway has based their entire economy on fossil fuels then that's their own kind of short-sightedness, because even in a non-climate-change world most experts agree the fossil fuels will run out eventually.
> (I also know my response will be downvoted and I will be told so, which is another case of virtue signaling. As I stated earlier, I don't write for the HN brownie points).
You've just labeled all future downvotes you recieve on this post as virtue signalling, which assumes that people have no other reasonable basis for downvoting your post. Try to have an open mind instead of assuming one unified motive exists for everybody who disagrees with you.
Edit: Also, how are anonymous downvotes virtue signalling? Do you think downvoters are signalling their virtue to the NSA?
Is anyone saying we need to immediately pull the plug on 100% of oil and fossil fuel use? I haven't seen any serious climate change plans that propose that.
Also, this lawsuit seems to be about deceptive business practices (misleading statements, lies), so I'm not sure how your comment is relevant. It's perfectly possible to run a business while also being honest about its deleterious effects.
> Is anyone saying we need to immediately pull the plug on 100% of oil and fossil fuel use? I haven't seen any serious climate change plans that propose that.
No, but they are saying that with respect to energy over ten years, and they are quite serious:
"The Green New Deal starts with a WWII-type mobilization to address the grave threat posed by climate change, transitioning our country to 100% clean energy by 2030" -- gp.org/green_new_deal
It's irrelevant whether or not alternatives exist, the accusation is that Exxon lied about its knowledge and actions to its own investors and consumers.
That's why we should sue people who are responsible, not the company.
If your are criminal, start a company, so they can not sue you, only the company. #protip
I hope justice is served with Exxon, but I also hope people motivate personal change by realizing that most of us did what Exxon did in the same time on an individual level.
Growing up in the 70s, I heard about sea level rise and global warming. Nearly everyone I know flies (and eats meat, drives, etc) more than necessary for their profit and pleasure and all the things they know contribute, using excuses similar to Exxon's but translated for themselves.
Anyone who makes excuses for the emissions that puts Americans (and likely your country if you aren't American) so high up in emissions -- if we think Exxon should change, shouldn't we?
In this quote, substitute for "Fossil fuel industry" and "Exxon", "we" and see how well it fits. I'm not talking about blame but taking responsibility for change now.
> Scientists have known for decades that the burning of fossil fuels is causing climate change. There is so much evidence that at least 97% of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming. It’s as settled as the link between smoking and cancer.
> The fossil fuel industry has known about the role of its products in global warming for 60 years. Exxon’s own scientists warned their managers 40 years ago of “potentially catastrophic events”. Yet rather than alerting the public or taking action, these companies have spent the past few decades pouring millions of dollars into disinformation campaigns designed to delay action. All the while, the science is clear that climate-catalyzed damages have worsened, storms have intensified, and droughts and heatwaves have become more frequent and severe, while forests have been damaged and wildfires have burned through the country.
Strongly disagree. Many Americans have understood for 50 years that the only way to stop fossil fuels use would be through government regulations. But, companies like Exxon have continually used their lobbying muscle to stop it.
You state strong agreement then -- justice served with Exxon, as well as curbing what stops regulation. You mentioned one source of curbing -- companies like Exxon. I cited another -- the people of the U.S. and our lifestyles.
Independent of people's talk, the U.S. government is well representing our behavior. There's nothing stopping us from polluting less as individuals. We don't, saying government should tell us what to do. Politicians know that if voters say one thing and do another, they'll vote consistently with what they do.
You want to stop curbing environmental regulation? Show legislators that voters want it. Right now voters overwhelmingly show they want the opposite. They fly around the world for vacation when they could go camping, etc.
It's impossible for the US public to change their mind quickly as a whole. Would you disagree if I said that the US public is the public that is the most affected in the world by corporate media and marketing? Even prescription drugs are advertised here and it's rather shocking to realise that's just normal here. Similarly, greenwashing and lobbying really work and have impact on the US public. Nearly half of the US public don't believe in man-made global warming, a striking difference from the 97% consensus among climate experts [1]. You must ask yourself where this gap comes from? Big oil is and will be doing everything to slow down the public from going away from fossil fuels and the US system is built do support big corporate money.
Yes, the impact of the actions of individuals are miniscule compared to that of industry, but I still believe changes in the culture of consumption stand to provide substantial benefits. If everyone is a bit more conscious of the impact of their actions, we'd, for one, likely make considerable strides in the field of green tech.
It's for that reason why I may be more supportive than others of i.e., recycling programs and reducing use of plastic bags. At least the existence of which gets people thinking of what happens to their waste.
I'm completely good with the idea that everyone should try to reduce their consumption and strive to reuse materials.
I just think it's crazy to compare that to what Exxon has done.
For example, as you stated:
> In this quote, substitute for "Fossil fuel industry" and "Exxon", "we" and see how well it fits.
And let's try applying that to the quote:
> Our own scientists warned their managers 40 years ago of “potentially catastrophic events”. Yet rather than alerting the public or taking action, we have spent the past few decades pouring millions of dollars into disinformation campaigns designed to delay action.
Uhhhhh no? I have had scientists telling me about global warming, but they were not hired by me, or direct reports of mine. They didn't advise me on how I could steer my business, as it is one of the major contributors to this problem.
I have not spent millions of dollars a year trying to create a culture that questions scientific facts.
That's fair, and no one disagrees that this asymmetry exists. But the point wasn't to compare. The point was to highlight what can still be done on an individual level, because change there is easier to imagine happening than on the level of entire industries. Change has to start somewhere, so starting from the bottom and nurturing a healthier ideal of consumption could end up being the force that eventually pressures industries to change (by changing voters sentiments that indeed climate change is real; voting with their wallets by supporting ethical companies; etc).
That's the idea anyways. Countering this disinformation with efforts on all fronts (education, activism, lobbying, personal statements like recycling) is one of many ways to stem the tide.
Because the alternative is willful inaction on the excuse that we are not the largest wasters, which is an unproductive and defeatist mindset. If this line of thought takes root among individuals, I wager you and I both will agree that the problem of climate change will take a darker turn.
>by realizing that most of us did what Exxon did in the same time on an individual level.
To whom much is given, much is required. The power dynamic of Exxon v One Person is so wide it's not worth a comparison.
People's lives are built as a response to society. Corporations and institutions build that society. They are far more responsible for their choices than I am mine.
I can reduce my usage, you can reduce yours, that's great. It pales in comparison to what companies and governments can do.
Agreed. The current culture of consumption leaves much to be desired. Too common is the disconnect between what can be easily attained and their
imperfectly unaccounted-for externalized costs. For better and for worse, this breeds growing expectations while the memories of once never having enough fades, along with certain modesties and the sense of vulnerability; we've become slightly more ignorant of how resources are made available to us. All while the desire for more continues to grow.
Somehow, we need to start making decisions with an eye closer to the long term.
It strikes me as implausible that even if Exxon has published all of its internal climate research it would have made a substantive difference in people's likelihood to invest, or to consumers propensity to purchase Exxon gas. Because these are the only outcomes germane to the case aren't they?
You can tell by the comments here that people want Exxon punished, they don't care much about the means by which this occurs.