Massachusetts Sues Exxon over Climate Change, Accusing the Oil Giant of Fraud
insideclimatenews.org
insideclimatenews.org
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.
https://climateinvestigations.org/drilled-climate-change-den...
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.)
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.
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?)
Could you elaborate on this point?
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.
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.
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.
Capitalism is about leveling the playing field. Not enabling crony assholes to play by their own set of rules.
> 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.
>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.
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'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.
My 2 cents.
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.
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.")
Oil kills via air pollution. Oil companies hid this information.
Do corporations get to willingly and maliciously lie to people?
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.
Do you think a corporation encouraging extensive oil use at all cost is the same thing as "oil saves lives?"
It's not.
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.
Exxon could've just been honest and oil would still have been sold and used and saved people, we could've just been using it more responsibly.
But they lied, for profit.
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?
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.
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.
For one thing, the idea that they knew it would cause climate change seems highly suspect to me.
Then again I don't know all the details, I smell an attempt at scoring political points though more than anything.
Let's revisit this statement in the next century and see if it holds up.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Unless your primary goal was to kill the industry, and never really had the victims' best interests in mind at all.
Taking a long view, one could argue that there will be less victims overall. This isn't to say that I'm in favor of making any drug illegal.
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.
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.
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's what the oil contributed.
>It was the difference between whether my son who was born 10 weeks to early would both survive
Appreciated, but oil is simply not a necessary component for that to happen. It may be currently the most convenient but not necessary.
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.
There are lots of climate change deniers who only need a little disinformation to prevent any action.
The President has said that climate change is a hoax. This Senator brought a snowball to work to explain that climate change is not a problem:
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/02/3-years-ago-...
I think the answer to that seems like "yes", do you have a different opinion?
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.
Get over it.
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.
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).
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.)
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.)
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)_/¯
“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
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.
a. Allegedly, investors were wronged by being presented with misleading projections about the company's future prospects.
b. Allegedly, consumers were wronged by being misled about the impact of the company's products.
[1]: https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2019/10/24/Complaint%20...
I'm curious how you believe either of those statements are anything but fact given what we now know.
Is there a possibility for personal responsibility and jail time for the people who did this?
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.
[1]: https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2019/10/24/Complaint%20...
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.
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.
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.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...
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.
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.
A bit tougher for people to live without food.
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.
We have modern nuclear technology today, we should just elect to use it.
How long would it take to build out nuclear "with no sacrifice necessary"?
Less time than it will take to finish this lawsuit.
In the 1970s, Sweden built reactors in 5-7 years. In current decade, China has built reactors in 5-7 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Sweden#List_o...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors#China
Nuclear may be preferable to coal but (IMO) not to large scale development of solar, wind, and higher efficiency grids.
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 !!
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 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.
But what blew my mind a little bit was learning about the Plymouth Scamp (Dodge Rampage) https://www.allpar.com/omni/rampage/scamp-rampage.html
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.
Sorry to pointlessly ramble, love this subject.
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.
The Supreme Court just a few days ago declined to hear a number of cases related to nuisance suits, which threw them back to state courts: https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy...
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.
The MA and NY lawsuits are grandstanding and scapegoating.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-ene...
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.
Even if society later discovers that it made a mistake when making it legal.
For instance, it is legal to sell a drug that is FDA-approved. But suppose:
- It transpires years later that the FDA approval was based in part on the pharma company suppressing unfavourable clinical trial results.
- The pharma company claims the FDA was aware (in some sense) of those suppressed studies, and still approved the drug.
- A patient dies from adverse reactions observed in one of the suppressed studies. The patient's family is advised to litigate.
Who is liable for what here?
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.
That's quite funny when you think about the costs we will incur if we don't get a handle on this. Most people really do think in the short term.
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.
They are not asking me about all those 9/11 fees when i air travel. Why are they worried to take that climate change fee? I dont get it.
Because when you raise prices on people’s method of transportation significantly, they protest, a lot. Politicians don’t want to be voted out.
Airplane flights are often paid for by companies and aren’t a typical part of most people’s day-to-day life.
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.
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.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...
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.
There is no financial case to be made here whatsoever.
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.
How many more times do we have to be subjected to known harms and disinformation campaigns before we outlaw this kind of corporate behavior?
I then wonder, why this happens to be the case. Can't fathom, really.
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.
But we wont.
Well more actually, unless noone is born in that time, if you want to be glum about it.
I hadn't even heard about the nitrogen cycle. Thanks!
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.
You wouldn’t blame an electric company on you buying electronic items, it’s the usefulness of the items themselves that drives the sales.
so yes, if exxon would promise that the gas prices are so low that i can afford an SUV, then i might be persuaded.
Unless of course the ship is sinking really slowly and one of them might get elected governor before the whole thing goes down.
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.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_oil_and_gas_co...
https://www.forbes.com/2011/05/10/oil-company-earnings.html#...
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.
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?
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.
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?
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)
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?
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.
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.
Without petroleum, the world today looks a lot more like 1930 than it does 2020.
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).
I suggest you are misreading the argument.
This has been known by Exxon for ~40 years, and they have worked to suppress and sow disinformation.
Can you elaborate? The response seems incoherent.
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.
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?
But are you thinking about bottles, bags, flooring, roofing, insulation, clothes, etc?
The amount of products with oil uselessly baked in without concern to the environmental impact is incredible. Plastics have many great alternatives.
A defense of oil based on it's usefulness is not an excuse for the current state of oil usage. Stop it.
Prepare for the worst, as its baked in. These people aren't letting go so expect little to no mitigation in the next decade.
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.
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.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveys_of_scientists%27_views...
I fear for when MA decides to come after me.
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 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.
It's incomparable.
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.
Somehow, we need to start making decisions with an eye closer to the long term.
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.