Big Oil's day in court is coming
In just six years, a trickle of climate lawsuits has swelled into a flood of some 30 cases.
Today on The Condor, we published “Big Oil faces a flood of climate lawsuits — and they’re moving closer to trial,” a fascinating overview of the lawsuits brought against fossil fuel companies for the damage caused by climate change. Grist’s Katy Soder writes:
It’s been six years since cities in California started the trend of taking Big Oil to court for deceiving the public about the consequences of burning fossil fuels. The move followed investigations showing that Exxon and other companies had known about the dangers of skyrocketing carbon emissions for decades, but publicly downplayed the threat. Today, around 30 lawsuits have been filed around the country as cities, states, and Indigenous tribes seek to make the industry pay for the costs of climate change.
Until recently, most of these cases had been stuck in limbo. Oil companies were trying to move them from the state courts in which they were filed to federal courts, a more business-friendly setting. But just in the past year, the Supreme Court declined to hear their arguments to relocate these cases on three separate occasions, most recently clearing the way for Minnesota’s case to proceed in state court. That means executives from Exxon Mobil, BP, and other oil giants may soon have to defend their actions in front of a jury.
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In his newsletter,
, writes about a new legal approach: “‘climate superfund’ laws that treat disasters like Vermont’s summer flooding as if they were a toxic dump whose cleanup can be charged to the corporation that caused them.” He notes, “That would have been hard even a few years ago, but “climate attribution” science is now robust: it’s increasingly easy to prove that absent global warming we wouldn’t have the endless downpours/droughts/fires. If a chemical company pollutes a site, the superfund law has been a way to make it pay for the remediation—so if Vermont’s flooding cost its taxpayers $2.5 billion to repair, why should they be on the hook?”Vermont could be the first state in the Union to adopt “climate superfund” legislation with New York, Maryland and Massachusetts potentially following its lead.
Read the rest:
PARTING SHOT
The Case for Prosecuting Fossil Fuel Companies for Homicide (Aaron Regunberg and David Arkush writing in The New Republic):
The crime that best captures the nature, scale, and gravity of their misconduct in most jurisdictions might be homicide. In criminal law, homicide means causing a death with a culpable mental state. If someone substantially contributes to or accelerates a death, that counts as “causing” it. If they did so intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly, that counts as “culpable mental state.” So the basic questions in a climate homicide trial are as follows: Did fossil fuel companies substantially contribute to or accelerate deaths, and did they do so at least recklessly, if not knowingly or intentionally? These questions would be presented to a jury. If you think the jury should say “yes,” you’re not alone.
Have a great weekend!