Exxon Mobil Climate Change Lawsuit Kicks Off In New York

[appalachiablue]

Source: CBS News

A trial kicked off on Tuesday to establish whether Exxon Mobil, the country's largest fossil fuel company, lied to investors about the cost of carbon emissions to its business.

Exxon, long in environmentalists' crosshairs for trying to cast public doubt on climate science, is accused by New York's attorney general of misleading investors about how climate change will affect its business.

"This will only be the second climate-change case ever to go to trial in the United States," Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, told CBS News.


Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/exxon-climate-change-lawsuit-kicks-off-in-new-york-2019-10-22/

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Buzzfeed News: The New York attorney general is taking ExxonMobil to trial in a historic case Tuesday, accusing the oil giant of misleading investors about the company’s financial risks due to climate change.

Under the direction of Attorney General Letitia James, this is the first climate fraud lawsuit to go to trial in the United States. James is acting under New York’s Martin Act, a 1921 anti-fraud law meant to protect investors against false statements, even ones made without proof of intent to deceive.

The historic lawsuit comes as more and more legal action is being taken against Exxon and other fossil fuel companies by cities and states seeking to hold them accountable for their contribution to climate impacts..It is possible that Exxon’s former chief executive Rex Tillerson, who left the company to serve as President Donald Trump’s initial secretary of state, could testify. New York’s investigation previously revealed Tillerson used a second secret email address as the company’s CEO.

..The investigation followed parallel investigations by InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times showing how the oil company’s own researchers confirmed that fossil fuels have contributed to global warming in the 1970s and 1980s. (Subsequent reporting revealed oil researchers were studying climate change back in the 1950s.)

The information about Exxon’s climate research threw the company’s later efforts to cast doubt on climate science and fund misinformation campaigns into sharp focus...
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zahrahirji/exxon-climate-fraud-trial-new-york

[Bayard]

1. But, but, but......

They are fighting climate change. Just look at their ads touting their wind and algae farms as alternative energy.

[crickets]

2. Go get 'em. K&R

[appalachiablue]

3. Scientists Tell How Exxon Invested Heavily In Climate Research, Then Dumped It

Telling their story before a Congressional committee for the first time, two former ExxonMobil scientists on Wednesday detailed how the oil giant turned its back on the research they did for the company 40 years ago on the looming threat of climate change. They gave their testimony in Washington, D.C., just as Exxon went on trial in New York on allegations that it misled investors about climate change risks, underscoring how political and legal risks have dovetailed for a corporate giant that for years tried to sow doubt about the risks of carbon emissions.

Geochemist Ed Garvey described how Exxon shut down the carbon dioxide research program he worked on for the company from 1978 to 1983. After the collapse of world oil prices in 1982, Garvey said, "they began to sell off things like lithium battery research and other divisions of Exxon research as they retrenched and focused solely on oil." One of the programs that was jettisoned was his project to monitor carbon dioxide concentrations in the air and ocean surface from a dedicated station aboard one of the company's supertankers.

"There was really a sea change ... where they had gone from this very broad-based, very future-looking energy company to becoming an oil company," Garvey told the hearing, held by the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. After deepening the company's understanding of an environmental problem it suspected could harm its business, Exxon put its muscle behind efforts to manufacture doubt about the reality of global warming.

"I cannot see into Exxon management's heart," said physicist Martin Hoffert, describing his distress at the company's newspaper ads in the 1990s contradicting the science on fossil fuel emissions' link to global warming. That work was his focus when he was a consultant to the company from 1981 to 1987. "Whatever its intent—willful ignorance, stymying an effective response to preserve quarterly profits, or simply an incomprehensible refusal to incorporate their own world-class research and results into their business plans," Hoffert said, "what they did was wrong. They deliberately created doubt when their internal research confirmed how serious a threat it was."

EDIT

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23102019/exxon-scientists-climate-research-testify-congess-denial

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127133005