Let's charitably assume we sue, win, and "big oil" goes completely bankrupt. Does anyone here actually think this will meaningfully change anything? That a void for fossil fuel energy production will just continue to exist unfilled?
if you can successfully drive western oil companies out of business, all our oil will have to come from saudi, russia, venezuela, etc. countries where we have no ability to tax the profits of oil companies and redirect that money to something beneficial.
They have the huge amounts of capital, and the management abilities to do nation-state levels of production around energy. Some of the more challenging ideas like space based power beaming on a massive scale would require the kind of capital and longterm projects current day BigOil can bring to bear. Truly massive solar farms are the same way, they require huge capital.
But that's not part of the agenda for people pushing the abolition of domestic oil. Which makes the conspiracy theorist in me wonder how much of the north American anti-oil environmentalist movement is actually Saudi propaganda
In the case of fossil fuels, this already is happening; there are plenty of companies working on alternative sources of energy. (And the "Big Oil" companies are among them.) As far as using government and the law to help, the single biggest impact ordinary people can have is to make it clear to our elected representatives that nuclear energy is a thing and we need more of it.
> the US government alone spends $20 billion every year on direct fossil fuel subsidies. Of that figure, around $16 billion goes towards oil and gas, while the remaining $4 billion benefits the coal industry.
https://en.as.com/en/2022/03/29/latest_news/1648510535_73079...
The solution for that is not to sue Big Oil. It's to make it clear to our elected representatives that we want these subsidies to end, and vote them out of office if they don't do it.
Getting rid of oil is the goal of the current Administration. They are having some success by making it difficult as possible.
Now we have a huge mess from it and elections are coming up, so goal is to blame oil for the problems caused by the Administration.
If you want to get off oil because you believe it's bad for environment. That is a respectable position. But there is a huge political price to pay when the poor in the country are suffering now from it.
Climate disaster is around the corner and we need to act yesterday. With our current approach it seems that we screw the poor both today and in the future.
0 - https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=m...
1 - https://www.macrotrends.net/2562/us-crude-oil-production-his...
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/27/biden-suspends-oil-and-gas-d...