NYC Sues Oil Companies Over Climate Change (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: New York City is seeking to lead the assault on both climate change and the Trump administration with a plan to divest $5 billion from fossil fuels and sue the world's most powerful oil companies over their contribution to dangerous global warming. City officials have set a goal of divesting New York's $189 billion pension funds from fossil fuel companies within five years in what they say would be "among the most significant divestment efforts in the world to date." Currently, New York City's five pension funds have about $5 billion in fossil fuel investments. New York state has already announced it is exploring how to divest from fossil fuels. New York's Mayor, Bill de Blasio, said that the city is taking the five fossil fuel firms -- BP, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Shell -- to federal court due to their contribution to climate change.

Court documents state that New York has suffered from flooding and erosion due to climate change and because of looming future threats it is seeking to "shift the costs of protecting the city from climate change impacts back on to the companies that have done nearly all they could to create this existential threat." The court filing claims that just 100 fossil fuel producers are responsible for nearly two-thirds of all greenhouse gas emissions since the industrial revolution, with the five targeted companies the largest contributors. The case will also point to evidence that firms such as Exxon knew of the impact of climate change for decades, only to downplay and even deny this in public.

Comments

Political tax

[Dan East]

Tax dollars at work. Unless the armies of attorneys are doing the work for free out of the goodness of their hearts.

Re:Political tax

[gurps_npc]

Obviously, we should only spend money to stop poor criminals, because it is too expensive it to go after the rich ones.

If you want to complain about someone being innocent, do so.

Right now, all you are doing is telling the world how easy it is to bribe you.

Re: Political tax

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many ways to offset the pollution.

Why sue gas company instead of the car owner burning the gas?

Make no sense, this is just further bizarre social justice. The polluters suing the people who have them the means to pollute.

Re: Political tax

[bobbied]

There are many ways to offset the pollution.

Why sue gas company instead of the car owner burning the gas?

Make no sense, this is just further bizarre social justice. The polluters suing the people who have them the means to pollute.

Because the Car owner is a voter and doesn't have that much money, but a big bad Oil Company doesn't vote and presumably has a lot of cash.

Re: Political tax

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they're rich because they got cheap access to public resources and haven't had to pay for any of the externalities.

Re:Political tax

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Unless the armies of attorneys are doing the work for free out of the goodness of their hearts.

The attorneys hired by de Blasio gave him campaign contributions . . . out of the goodness of their hearts.

Now de Blasio is kicking some of that back . . . out of the goodness of his heart.

The whole thing is political posing, just like the folks in Congress with their Net Neutrality impotent proposals.

"Let's have a vote to call the repeal of Net Neutrality, dirty, dirty, dirty, nasty, nasty, nasty!"

Re: Political tax

[Dog-Cow]

Petroleum used in plastics doesn't really impact the climate, though.

Re: Political tax

[Dog-Cow]

You start off with stupidity, so I didn't bother reading the rest of your diatribe.

has just been dumping it's nuclear waste in the environment where it's been seeping into water supplies and the food chain and causing massive damage.

That's illegal. Providing gasoline for sale is not. The difference should be obvious, even to NYS politicians, but I guess stupidity has no limits.

Re: Political tax

[Kiuas]

Why sue gas company instead of the car owner burning the gas?

Because it's quite clear at this point that the oil companies have been doing their utmost to obfuscate the discussion on climate change and spread outright misinformation.

Ask yourself this: why is the US the only developed country in which climate change is still a matter of 'debate'? Why is it that a matter of natural science that the experts of the relevant fields are in agreement about is being presented as an issue up for debate? Who benefits from there existing doubt over this? Who stands to lose if more strict actions are taken to control greenhouse gas emissions? The fossil fuel companies. The firms have a direct monetary incentive for there to be little or no environmental regulation. They also have vast wealth and hence vast lobbying power which they have used and are using to promote views and politicians that are entirely contrary to well understood science.

Tobacco companies a few decades past were doing the exact same deal and promoting false science to try and obfuscate the link between smoking and cancer, even though from internal documents it's quite clear that they were aware of the issue, and were actively promoting a view they knew to be false for their own economic benefit. This is no different. In fact a lot of the marketing companies that were in charge of the diversion tactics of the tobacco companies have since transitioned into the fossil fuel business. It's quite easy to do: you set up different 'think thanks' with environmentally friendly names, and you hire some scientists, often not even from relevant fields who're willing to shill for you. Then you produce non-peer reviewed pseudo-science papers on the matter. Then you drag these shills on tv and elsewhere into the media to advertise how there really is no problem and all the academics are just wrong. Once you've established enough doubt among the general public about the matter (I mean after all there was a 'scientist' on tv saying he doesn't think it's happening, so clearly it can't be settled right?) you spend some hundred or so million a year lobbying politicians to oppose any regulation on your industry. The fact that this strategy still works as well as it did in the past shows how easy it is to fool the majority of people who do not understand how science works.

If I manufacture a product the use of which does harm not just to me, but the entire ecosystem of the planet and all civilizations, and I then knowingly and willingly try to misrepresent or hide the damage it's doing to further my own profit, that's deceitful and damaging to everyone. and it's definitely something that one should get sued over.

Re: Political tax

[houghi]

A nice start would be if they stop funding the FUD about climate change. If that would not have taken place, we would be much, much further with solving the problems.

Re: Political tax

[danbert8]

It would be a bit unfair if the "nuclear waste" that's been released to the environment for years is the same substance emitted by every living animal on the planet. CO2 is not pollution at any level we emit today. No one considers the CO2 itself to be toxic at any atmospheric concentrations. It's the "global climate catastrophe" which is where they are claiming damages which is going to be hard to prove a causal link and even harder to establish a monetary value of damages.

This lawsuit is politics, pure and simple.

Re: Political tax

[Xest]

I don't think you understand what's emitted from the burning of fossil fuels, I'll give you a hint, it's not just CO2, and yes, it does contain pollutants. If you think the problem with burning fossil fuels is merely a battle between global warming believers and unbelievers then you're rather missing the point - fossil fuels cause health problems, are finite in nature and have consistently been triggers for war, extraction of them has a higher casualty rate than most other power sources, and yes, they cause substantial environmental damage even outside of the burning of them - mining of them alone is damaging.

There have been literally hundreds of studies on the costs of fossil fuel externalities from countless organisations covering just about every end of the political spectrum, feel free to Google "Fossil fuel externalities" for any number of example papers, articles, and so on. The reason it's not a partisan issue is because even the most right leaning free market libertarians who understand the topic can see the stupidity of trillions of dollars of defacto fossil fuel subsidies as well as even the most left leaning hippy environmentalist.

We're using them out of habit and nothing more, call it politics if you want, it doesn't really matter, it's still a fundamentally good thing to do.

Alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps we should hold those burning fossil fuels responsible for doing so. The largest city in the world's worst polluting nation would be a good start. I propose that we sue New York City for their contributions to climate change.

Re:Alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats you and I buddy, and its not like we have much of an alternative to driving gasoline powered cars, using electricity generated from coal, having stuff shipped via air freight, and heating homes with low grade diesel aka "heating oil" or natural gas.

Re:Alternative

[bobbied]

Perhaps we should hold those burning fossil fuels responsible for doing so. The largest city in the world's worst polluting nation would be a good start. I propose that we sue New York City for their contributions to climate change.

I say we ban the import of Fossil fuels into the city and disconnect them from the carbon powered Electrical grid... Let them make due with bio-fuel, solar panels and windmills.

Re:Alternative

[aevan]

Don't forget the total removal and banning of all plastic-related products as well. Come on NYC, show us the way!

Re:Alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes you do.You just don't like it.

Re:Alternative

[Namarrgon]

What kind of straw man is that? Nobody is suggesting banning all petroleum-based products - the health and climate impacts of plastics are tiny next to fossil fuels that are burned in vast quantities.

What's being demanded is that fossil fuel companies are held accountable for their deliberate misinformation campaigns, and for the hundreds of billions of avoidable health and societal costs that the entire public has had to bear, just so they could keep their bottom lines rosy by delaying as much as possible the inevitable transition to safer energy sources.

Re:Alternative

[JoshuaZ]

People in cities use less energy per a capita than people in suburbs or rural areas https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/translating-uncle-sam/stories/urban-or-rural-which-is-more-energy-efficient and NYC is one of the most energy efficient of major cities by multiple metrics http://edition.cnn.com/2007/TECH/12/31/eco.cities/.

Re: Alternative

[LynnwoodRooster]

It seems the USA actually met the Kyoto Protocol goals for emissions reduction, and I believe it is the only country to do so. We did not ratify that treaty, and so it was never official US policy - but we met it nevertheless. What makes you believe that ratification or failure to do so of the Paris Accord would result in anything different?

Knowingly by their own records

[Anonymous Coward]

The most damning part is we have their records showing they knew, then covered it up and CONTINUE TO LIE. Get a rope.

Interesting idea..

[The Grim Reefer]

York City's five pension funds have about $5 billion in fossil fuel investments.

So if NYC wins, do they also have to take responsibility for being a a co-conspirator? They did help the oil companies by financing what they were doing with $5 billion in just the pension funds alone. What other investments do/did they have with oil and coal I wonder? How much fossil fuel was, and still is used by NYC? Are they going to shut down all of the ports that oil burning ships dock at? What about all of the freight by diesel truck and trains? How about all of the stock brokers on Wall Street that deal with investments in oil and coal? They should go after them too.

I'm all for being responsible for the environment, but this is just stupid.

Re:Interesting idea..

[bobbied]

Fossil fuel energy was a necessary step for modern civilisation, few would argue against that. The issue is that once we knew more about the many negative factors that came with it, we should've quickly started the long process of transitioning to alternative sources with a lot less negatives - but the fossil fuel companies have deliberately and provably obscured that knowledge and impeded those efforts, to their own benefit and to the great detriment of society as a whole. They should be held accountable for all the damage and health costs that could have been avoided, in that time and in the future.

That's garbage talk there... The oil companies suppressed nothing, they produced energy at the lowest possible cost is all.

What happened is fossil fuels remained cheaper than the alternative so the ROI wasn't there to justify alternate sources of energy. The market chooses the cheapest viable alternative. That was fossil fuels. The oil companies just delivered us what we where willing to pay for.

So, in your parlance and using your logic, the problem was regulation that didn't make fossil fuels more expensive... So government is the problem, if we use your logic.

Not that I agree, I think fossil fuels are a fine thing myself and has contributed mightily to the creation of wealth and increased standards of living world wide.

Re:Interesting idea..

[quantaman]

York City's five pension funds have about $5 billion in fossil fuel investments.

So if NYC wins, do they also have to take responsibility for being a a co-conspirator? They did help the oil companies by financing what they were doing with $5 billion in just the pension funds alone. What other investments do/did they have with oil and coal I wonder? How much fossil fuel was, and still is used by NYC? Are they going to shut down all of the ports that oil burning ships dock at? What about all of the freight by diesel truck and trains? How about all of the stock brokers on Wall Street that deal with investments in oil and coal? They should go after them too.

I'm all for being responsible for the environment, but this is just stupid.

I actually think it has a shot.

Not because the Oil Companies emitted fossil fuels in the past, or because they continue to emit them now, but because of the cover up.

I think the central claims would be:
1) Exxon Mobil, BP, etc all knew that global warming was real and that their product could incur major costs on coastal cities like NYC.
2) They conspired to cover up and mislead the public about #1.

If those two facts are true I think they do deserve to pay damages.

The only awkward bit is the fact that a class action lawsuit involving a major portion of the planet makes a lot more sense.

Note, I don't think smaller producers or manufactures would bear the same legal liability since even if they knowingly mislead the public their individual contributions would be too small to incur distinct damages.

It's probably just a left wing public attorney

[rsilvergun]

gearing up for a political run. Although it's possible this is an attempt to tie up some of the resources the oil companies use to lobby against attempts to address climate change.

Personally, if these sort of tactics are what it takes to get climate change addressed I say go for it. If you believe in science you believe in climate change. And unless you're really, really rich you're not going to be in any position to profit from ignoring it. You'll suffer with the rest of us as the price of food, drink, and everything else shoots up and wars break out because of it.

Re:Grab some popcorn

[rmdingler]

I don't know if your timeline estimation is accurate, but it doesn't smell like the tobacco lawsuits.

Governors using the courts and statutes for the extortion of for-profit corporations via lawsuit and fines... it does resemble a revenue stream used by some European nations, though they seem to specialize in taxing non-domestic companies.

I'm without a dog in the fight, and reluctant to pick one, but; at the very least, this smacks of grandstanding, and at its worst interpretation, it is a shameless money grab by a taxing entity run amok.