Oregon County Sues BP, Chevron, Shell, Exxon for $51B Climate Damages
carboncredits.com
carboncredits.com
The lawsuit appears to be available at https://multco-web7-psh-files-usw2.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.co.... Heading straight for end and looking at the causes of action:
1. Intentional and negligent creation of public nuisance. The nuisance appears to be extreme climate events, and I'm doubtful that you could actually show sufficient action on the part of the oil companies to link them to the extreme climate events (the standard is probably that you need to show that but for the actions of the companies, those events wouldn't have happened and... yeah, that kind of direct attribution isn't possible).
2. Negligence. I mean, this section is a mere page long, and doesn't go into any detail whatsoever, so it's hard to even figure out what is the supposed duty that wasn't done. So... almost certainly going to die on a motion for dismissal.
3. Fraud and deceit, in that they covered up the effects of climate change. Except that's not fraud--fraud requires that someone be reliant on the lie to do something. So you'd need to show that, e.g., someone only bought a tank from gas from Exxon because Exxon said climate change didn't exist. I suppose it's possible that's true--there's millions of people in the country after all--but... that's not really something that happens (least of all, anything actually alleged in the complaint, so far as I can thing).
4. Trespass. Wildfires caused by climate change constituted trespass. Cute legal theory, but cute legal theories are almost always tossed out of court quickly.
So out of four claims, three of them are dead on arrival, and the first one has an uphill fight. And even if they win, the $50 billion for "abate the nuisance" definitely isn't going to happen, and you're looking more at the actual damages which is apparently around $50 million.
The website seems like a PR dumping ground. Given the incomplete byline I would highly doubt they are an actual journalist —- more likely a freelance blogger.
As to 2 it certainly seems like a hard one, but not entirely without merit. Wouldn't it be negligence if you sell a product knowing that your customers are going to use that product to hurt the environment? It's not like a hazardous chemical where you can assume the buyer has processes in place to deal with the results. These companies did the research and they know their product negatively affects the environment when burned, they know the government is not enforcing any checks and balances and still they sell the product to customers who 100% are going to burn the product. In my opinion it's for sure the government and the customers themselves who bear the greatest blame, there's some negligence there.
I'm not sure why you're going back on your own argument in 3. I'm sure you could find people whose belief that their buying of oil doesn't affect the climate was cemented by the deceit of those companies. And if someone would start suing companies for negligent burning of hydrocarbons, I'm sure there would be CEO's that would happily point their fingers at the oil companies in accusation of deceit.
The trespass one seems ridiculous, I guess because a judge isn't supposed to let frivolous things affect their judgement it's a freebie to throw in?
Anyway, 2 and 3 seem to at least have some merit to my untrained eyes. Maybe it's more about sending a message than actually winning a lawsuit? If a judge takes the suit seriously and the oil companies are forced to publicly weasel out of these charges, wouldn't that be some sort of a win for the movement?
> Governments are the biggest polluters
> the EPA itself recently polluted an entire town's drinking supply.
Ancient Athenians had it simpler - if you bring a lawsuit and less than 1/5 of jurors vote in your favor, you get a heavy fine for wasting everybody's time. Unfortunately, wouldn't work in the US - about 1/3 would vote for anything if it helps their tribal interest and hurts the opposite tribe, even if it's ruinous for the society in general.
Complete amateur hour
I am surprised they didn't mention manipulation of research at unis.
I think this passage is particularly relevant:
> The message received from actually reading all of these documents is not — as is commonly reported — that oil executives' own scientists were warning them of the true nature of climate change. Instead, what they indicate is a broad pattern of scientists who were either outside their discipline or among the outliers who were unconcerned with the anthropogenic portion of CO2 buildup, advising those executives that no action was currently warranted. They were wrong, make no mistake; but that's what they were saying, and that's the information the oil companies were acting upon, at least through the end of the 20th century.
> There's a point I've tried to make any number of times on Skeptoid, and that's if you want your argument to be robust and persuasive, don't include any bad evidence. Include only strong evidence that has been proven to survive scrutiny. If you present cherrypicked quotes, like the authors of so many of these articles have been doing, it is very easy for your opponents to discover that; and when they do, the only point you will have made is that your argument is weak and easily countered — and thus probably false. It's a bad time in human history to harm the cause of educating people about global warming.
I often have to wonder, how are these highly intellectual people able to have a world view like that?
From my experience, bad evidence works wonders in arguments, because they're generally driven by emotions. It doesn't even matter if they're disproven later on, as the person will have moved on to new arguments.
Rational discourse like this person seems to take for granted is - from my experience - beyond rare.
The onlookers are the people that generally don't understand the topic that's being discussed, which creates this illusion of making a rational decision, even though it's entirely driven by emotion.
It is because people have different goals and are using different metrics. They are just getting confused and thinking they are aligned with the same goals. If you are seeking truthful arguments with debates between good faith and purely rational parties, then weak evidence isn't great, because (like the parent said) it just creates a man made of straw than can easily be torn down. BUT if your goal is to perpetuate arguing and drive up emotions, the tool is fantastic. Because it creates a man of straw which can easily be torn down! Everyone likes burning a big man. I hear they even do it yearly out in the desert.
So people just aren't able to properly communicate because language is fuzzy and filling in gaps. That we're assuming those gaps are filled in the same way, but they aren't. Weak evidence is either very useful or very hurtful, but it depends on your settings and goals.
Not to mention the probable billions of dollars spent in an effort to increase public ignorance[1] around the issue. (See [2], for example.)
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnotology
2: https://www.desmog.com/2014/10/31/oil-and-gas-industry-s-end...
Is there a name for this "appeal to-non emotion" line of non-reasoning? Maybe the "Vulcan Fallacy"?
Again, the claim was that emotions are an impediment to truth-seeking. They are not reasoning. They are useful for interpersonal relationships, but absolutely worthless when determining whether something is true or false. If we are going to play at tired pop-culture references, here is another: facts don't care about your feelings
For example, my comment obviously made you feel upset. There is no reason to believe I have not understood the claim correctly. I just disagreed with it. Which should be okay. Not everyone has to agree with you, right? That would be egotistical.
But let's look at a clear example that is much harder to dispute in how emotions play a role. You know that _joy_ and _excitement_ you get when you solve a really tough problem? How you overcame all that _frustration_ and _disappointment_? That dopamine hit that makes you feel on top of the world? That also is part of what drives you to keep pursuing these things. That makes you _stubborn_ and _focused_ because you have _pride_ and you're _curiosity_ _driven_. Without emotions you wouldn't be doing this in the first place.
The thing is that your biological machine was designed with emotions into the operating system. It is part of the language itself. But we are probably instead thinking of the definition of emotions differently. Just because you don't notice your feelings doesn't mean they aren't there. Indifference, seriousness, sincerity, ennui, indigence, self-confidence, reluctance, calmness, annoyance, insightfulness, and perseverance are all emotions, some of which you are exhibiting right now as you read this. What I propose instead is that recognizing this you can in turn control your emotions rather than let them be in control of you, which I think you'd fully agree upon. Emotions don't have to be extreme but nor do they need to be depressed (diction chosen with intent). They don't have to cleanly fit in a bin. Instead, emotions to us are like water to a fish. Rather than ridding yourself of emotions, you harness them. I'd suggest that it is a far better way to reach your goals as your working with the wetware you've been given instead of working against it. You don't need to install a new operating system but just learn to exploit the one you have. That's why I say that you are human too Mr Spock.
Can anyone show an accounting of these billions? Because you can't spend that kind of money without leaving a lot of paper trails.
> “Fear and anger have to be a part of this campaign,” Berman said. “We’re not going to get people to like the oil and gas industry over the next few months.”
> Berman also advised that executives continue to spend big. “I think $2 to $3 million would be a game changer,” he said. “We’ve had six-figure contributions to date from a few companies in this room to help us get to where we are.”
> But always cover your tracks, he suggested, adding that no is better equipped at doing so than his firm. “We run all this stuff through nonprofit organizations that are insulated from having to disclose donors. There is total anonymity,” he said. “People don’t know who supports us. We’ve been doing this for 20-something years in this regard.”
> Berman, whose tobacco ties were profiled yesterday by DeSmog contributor John Mashey, is the founder and chief executive of the Washington-based Berman & Company consulting firm. He attended the conference in Colorado, hat in hand, looking to raise money from energy companies for an advertising and public relations campaign he started called Big Green Radicals.
[0] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/koch-pledge-tied-to...
[1] http://www.noclimatetax.com/
[2] https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/753...
"ExxonMobil‘s $33 million campaign to sow doubt and denial about global warming"
> [...] We know this $33M figure is an underestimate of the total spending by Exxon to fund opposition work on climate policy. For example, the Chamber of Commerce appears for the first time on Exxon’s Worldwide Giving report in 2014 at $1 Million. We assume this is not the first (or the last) contribution Exxon has made to the US Chamber of Commerce.
> On this page, you’ll find the total amount of funding from ExxonMobil and its foundations to dozens of organizations that worked to spread climate denial. Hyperlinks will take you to further detail about each organization’s funding specifics and activities.
https://www.desmog.com/exxonmobil-funding-climate-science-de...
2. This $33M appears to be all charitable giving by Exxon spread over more than 20 years. That's not much, nowhere close to billions of dollars.
3. The tiny amounts are a problem for them, so they say they "know" it's really a lot more. As befits a site that just makes things up, the reason they "know" is: "We assume this is not the first (or the last) contribution Exxon has made to the US Chamber of Commerce". Brilliant. Assumptions, facts, what's the difference?
Again, this isn't evidence for "billions of dollars" being spent on "increasing public ignorance". It's not even evidence for any money being spent on climate, because the reasons they donated to these various foundations isn't really known to the desmog guys. It's just more assumptions.
For example, your argument that one incomplete list of a single company's "charitable activity" is "nowhere close to billions of dollars" when the claim was "probably billions" across the entire industry, where "probably billions" is pretty obviously no more than a vague gesture at "huge amounts of money".
That you find a climate-disinformation spend even in the $10s of millions acceptable is something you might ponder before you start lecturing people on what sites they should post on.
Yes you hedged your claim, but so what? It's still wrong. You don't get to make wild and totally false claims by sticking "probable" onto everything.
> That you find a climate-disinformation spend
You haven't shown that or even laid the groundwork for that. Even if these firms were spending the amounts you claim, which they apparently aren't, did it occur to you that they might be right? Nope. You just assume anything they say must be wrong, because you've been brainwashed by propaganda. You can't even find any specific campaign!? If you could we could then debate the real issues, but didn't even get that far.
Again you omit the salient detail that "probable billions" referred to an entire industry and the (conservative) $33m (offered as a simple example in relation to your claim of "I could only find $10k!") is the contribution from only a single component of that industry. Classic goalpost shifting, which is why it's fruitless to engage.
Except that's way too convenient to be a coincidence.
You mean to tell me that for decades all of the top scientists at all the major oil companies just so happened to be heterodox or hold highly conservative opinions about climate change? And all important decision-making executives just so happened to take them at their word, and never heard a contrary opinion? And if only they weren't so incredibly unlucky as to get consistently bad advice all consistently and conveniently giving them the answer they wanted to hear, they'd have acted on climate change sooner?
That's an utterly absurd hypothesis, particularly coming from a "skeptical" source. It ignores the obvious incentive for oil executives to deliberately and exclusively seek out such scientists.
This article is far far too accepting and apologetic, beyond the point of credible gullibility.
And this is the same oil majors that put lead in gasoline because ethanol was a competing fuel, blatantly lying about the safety of this and poisoning several generations.
If the service is essential, the consumers of said goods can make their own decisions about how essential they are without all the smoke and mirrors.
So don't tell me the lies of the oil companies had any effect on policy. Congress saw the conflict of interest, but didn't want to do anything that raise gas prices.
Congress and the public may decide what level of non-renewable energy sources is acceptable to them. But they should not need to do so while being burdened by deliberate campaigns to misinform them or muddy the waters.
What feeds the world today? Fixed nitrogen fertilizers made out of the combination of air and fossil fuels.
I seriously cannot fathom how someone could say that the world is better off if people didn't exist. What value system justifies that mass murder through erasure?
Obviously the solution isn’t “kill 4B” and especially because the climate impacts and causes are very unevenly impacted - 300M Americans have generated more greenhouse gases than the billions in Africa or Asia who are being impacted first.
The median quality of life is the best it has ever been for humanity.
Lets be a bit careful about putting words into other people's mouth or implying things. I intentionally phrased it that way, that it would have been nice to have avoided the current status in the first place.
I don't subscribe to the believe that more living humans equals better for the universe or even for the planet. Certainly not for the planet or other living beings on our planet.
You are saying that the moral value of many/most human beings is a net negative. I don't know if you don't see, or if you choose to ignore the repugnant conclusions which must necessarily derive from this viewpoint.
If for you the only possible conclusion is, that we have to fix it after the fact by applying some erasure, then that conclusion is on you, not on me. I find the conclusion from "net negative" -> "must erase now!" premature at best. To imply or state, that I voted for any "erasure" is plain wrong.
I personally would rather go about it like this: "Shit happened. We were collectively very stupid. What can we do now, so that in the future we don't make it any worse?"
So yes it's a necessity but as other have said, oil companies can keep operating without lying about climate effect though they'll get less profit as impact.
Maybe if we had built a society around respecting, honoring, and preserving an incredible evolutionary product we'd be just fine.
Respect and honor doesn't magic food into existence.
Let's say Shell suspended all dividends indefinitely. What would your advice to your pension fund be? Sell Shell and buy BP? Would Shell's ability to function exist if they became a non-profit and a share price of 0?
Does Saudia-Arabia pay for the clean-up of say Australia? Does the US pay for the clean-up of Uraguay? Does the explorer, producer or consumer bear the clean-up responsibility?
Thankfully the US has a lot of say in the global oil supply and demand market. We already have rules & taxes in place for all the producers and importers of oil in the US (aka they need to buy certificates for blending renewable fuels mostly from US produced corn).
So yes, it is feasible, it is done already.
Should we halt all space exploration and aviation until neither require fossil fuels?
Perhaps someday in the future it would be, and we should work towards it, but note that oil bootstrapped a lot of modern way of life.
It sounds like you’re arguing that products made by oil companies should be outlawed? So no more petroleum and petroleum products?
Or am I misconstruing the implication of your argument?
Companies should be expected to pay the true cost of what they produce and not have it be borne by the rest of society.
They’re the ones asking for more profits…
Or what about our current government who recently demanded oil companies produce more to lower prices? Am I as democratic voter morally in the wrong? If not, why not?
- you are morally wrong if you don't factor climate change and its repercussions on you, your children and other people into your voting decision
- shareholders should be held accountable
- companies should be held accountable
- governments should be held accountable
The lawsuit in question attempts one of these approaches, but feel free to work on any of the others, many others already do ;-)
Regarding the specific "but what about Joe Biden asking for cheaper gasoline" question: Joe Biden was without a doubt the better candidate for combating climate change in the last U.S. presidential election. No need to doubt your morality (if you voted for him) in that regard. But of course there are many (primary) elections and climate change should probably be a factor for you and everybody else.
$51B of damages for ostensibly killing 69 people in that county? This seems farcical, they're shooting for the moon to make headlines, they can't be serious with this. It's a PR/political stunt.
I'm not sure what argument you make. Climate is different from weather and there have been extreme temperature events throughout history. Furthermore, how do you account for natural releases of methane or the whole cow farting angle? How do you establish responsibility, etc.
Perhaps the county should just ban the burning of fool fuels. If its causing do many local deaths then surely that's the logical first step? Or would that just be political suicide?
But the companies, according to the lawsuit, knowingly and recklessly hid the negative externalities (CO2 emissions and hence global warming) from public scrutiny. These externalities potentially impact everyone, no matter how much oil they actually consumed or how much they benefited from society's oil consumption. The county does not have to ban oil (which it wouldn't be empowered to, anyway) to make that point. You don't have to agree with it, but the arguments you have brought up do not address the complaint that plaintiffs have brought here.
No, they paid for the direct results, i.e. heating oil, gasoline. The externalities that result include having a functional society where millions of people don't die every year due to the weather, where innovative goods (many of which are produced using large amounts of oil) can be produced anywhere in the world and still end up on a store shelf very close to you (or even delivered), and where the majority of people are freed up from having to produce their own food supply. Whereas a few deaths are countable (and the connection from oil production to these specific deaths is highly specious), the positive benefits of oil and electricity are so massive and so embedded and crucial to society that they are literally incalculable.
Further, the amount paid is massively reduced due to the incredibly efficient global infrastructure dedicated to producing, refining and transporting oil, thanks (in part) to Exxon, BP, Shell, etc. Instead of paying $60 for a gasoline fillup, imagine the costs of finding oil-producing land, independently drilling for oil and personally refining it into gasoline. The fact that you don't have to do any of that, is the true "externality" that you've benefitted from, but no, you have not paid for.
Overall, the quality of life for most people at the moment is certainly higher than it would have been if oil has never been developed as a natural resource. But the risk of unmitigated climate change (which largely is due to humanity's consumption of fossil fuels) is that this equation will shift in the coming years and the use of oil, coal, etc. will turn out to have had a net negative impact on human quality of life.
They are suing today, it hasn't even happened yet, and you're lacking proof it will. "Might" is the word you should be using, not "will." "Might not" is a lot more probable, however.
There's a summary paper here that explores the data and shows this to be true:
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1140/epjp/s13360-02...
The analysis is then extended to some global response indicators of extreme meteorological events, namely natural disasters, floods, droughts, ecosystem productivity and yields of the four main crops (maize, rice, soybean and wheat). None of these response indicators show a clear positive trend of extreme events
There are other indicators you could use but they also don't show any crisis of extreme weather, often the opposite. Examples:
- Wildfire burn acreage is drastically down over the past 100 years.
- Hurricanes are in decline, both in frequency and energy.
- Rainfall is also down slightly.
You can google those claims to find them if you like because the datasets are all public, except maybe the third which is a bit obscure so I'll give it here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00221...
the small- and medium-size precipitation systems both exhibit significant decreases during 2001–2020 with trends at −1.13 and −2 mm/h per century, respectively. The large-size precipitation systems exhibit nonsignificant increasing trends during 2001–2020.
These quotes are from the IPCCC (which represents the consensus of thousands of climate scientists) sixth assessment report from 2021:
"The frequency and intensity of hot extremes (including heatwaves) have increased, and those of cold extremes have decreased on the global scale since 1950 (virtually certain). This also applies at regional scale, with more than 80% of AR6 regions1showing similar changes assessed to be at least likely."
"The frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation events have likely increased at the global scale over a majority of land regions with good observational coverage. Heavy precipitation has likely increased on the continental scale over three continents: North America, Europe, and Asia. Regional increases in the frequency and/or intensity of heavy precipitation have been observed with at least medium confidence for nearly half of AR6 regions, […]"
"More regions are affected by increases in agricultural and ecological droughts with increasing global warming (high confidence)."
"The average and maximum rain rates associated with tropical cyclones (TCs), extratropical cyclones and atmospheric rivers across the globe, and severe convective storms in some regions, increase in a warming world (high confidence)."
All from https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-11/
This stuff is complex, as is correctly interpreting the available data. But sure, go with the opinion of four random Italian dudes over the consensus of literally thousands of subject matter experts.
1. Start by having an official State/County/City forcibly takes money from taxpayer.
2. Lawyer Golf Buddy of said ^ official mentions his yacht isn't new anymore.
3. Said official hires golf buddy to do the legal stuff for some frivolous lawsuit, billing at a discount rate of $750/hour. Good frivolous lawsuits are ones that get the constituents excited yet are completely hopeless.
4. Lawyer golf buddy attempts to milk the hopeless court case as long as possible, as he gets paid no matter what happens.
5. Buy new yacht. Invite government official over after he retires.
The county should've done their research, that heat dome was a natural occurrence and they will become less common with climate change. But everything is climate change to some people. Perhaps the county owes the oil companies 51 billion for the heat dome that won't happen to them that otherwise would've?
I actually hope more of these types of lawsuits come, so that people will begin to cite actual climate science and begin to become aware of what is the result of it and what isn't, like this heat dome.
Should the oil companies have hid the data on global warming? No. Would the world be any different if they didn't try to hide the data? Also no.
I think they're asserting that the world would have been different. I find it plausible, if not certain.
Energy companies would have been happy to push solar or nuclear everywhere if there was any market/regulatory demand that justified the effort.
Even if oil companies decided that "oops, we shouldn't exist" and decided to cut production to zero and give back their shares to everyone (which is arguably what they have been trying to do until the current administration began threatening them), that vacuum would have to be filled with something. And it would probably be filled with a nationalized oil company that is un-sue-able like most of the rest of the world has.
To the best of my mind there is not a developmental need or even a market demand for war crimes and genocide. I really have no idea what kind of equivocation you are trying to make.
Maybe it should be illegal to produce oil, but even if such laws are eventually passe they won't be retroactive. Ex post facto laws are unconstitutional for good reason.
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!
Clearly there's room for recognizing the value of gasoline and other fuels to our society and for trading off pros and cons of their use.
Not having trucks to deliver food to my grocery store would make me "sad" personally.
Source: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
"However, if—as the data seem to show—extreme cold is relatively unimportant, then a few degrees of warming will not yield a large reduction in cold-related mortality. Moreover, if extreme heat is important, then the same few additional degrees might cause a substantial increase in heat-related mortality."
As is argued elsewhere in this topic, energy companies already have billed everyone for the benefits provided by their product. What the lawsuit is alleging is that they haven't taken responsibility for recklessly misleading the public about negative externalities associated with their product and that they should be punished for it.
Utterly asinine. One of few legitimate roles of government regulation is to address issues of externalities. This is an issue to address with regulation, not litigation.
What is pretty sure in my view is that future generations will hold us morally responsible for thoroughly wrecking the planet, between climate change, the mass extinction, micro plastics, cruelty against farm animals, etc.