The MA and NY lawsuits are grandstanding and scapegoating.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Even if society later discovers that it made a mistake when making it legal.
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.
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?
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.