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

[Anonymous Coward]

Gotta start somewhere.

The decedents of John D Rockefeller have been applying pressure to ExxonMobil over their knowledge of climate change research from decades ago.

The tide will eventually turn against the fossil companies, and if any of them have been covering up their knowledge of climate change, you can bet they'll get taken to cleaners sooner or later.

The problem and its impacts are getting to the point where it cant be ignored.

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

[Wrath0fb0b]

To be fair, the oil companies are rich because people want to continue buying their oil to drive their cars and heat their houses. They use that money to buy political influence, suppress research and do other evil things to continue supplying that demand. That doesn't morally excuse their evil deeds or mean we can't go after them, but it's the continued demand for their product that enables them to fight back so hard and effectively.

In other words, the morality of what they do and the conditions that enable them to do it are two separate topics. I don't know how to fix people to be more moral (at least not any ethical ways ...), but I do think we can better fight them by following Elon's example and making a better product at a lower price that people actually prefer.

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

[sdinfoserv]

And TAX BREAKS to these same oil and gas companies while they push FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) and disinformation and attack real science is OK?
please....

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

[greenwow]

Seattle has been doing something like that the past year. A state income tax has been ruled unconstitutional, but the city still decided pass one and waste money taking it to court. It's like the city council doesn't realize that people will just move out of the city.

Re:Political tax

[WillAffleckUW]

Not really. You're already paying carbon taxes. You're just not aware that they're included in the total price to buy or sell goods and services to many states (with carbon taxes), countries (with carbon taxes), and provinces (with carbon taxes).

Most trade agreements allow you to deduct the carbon taxes assessed locally first from the total carbon taxes assessed in the country you buy/sell to, so in practice, you reduce the carbon taxes you pay the foreign government, other state, or other province and the carbon taxes you pay locally go into your local economy.

It's a fiction that you don't already pay carbon taxes. You are. Every car you buy made in Germany, S Korea, China, India, Canada, Mexico, Sweden, etc already includes carbon taxes. You just don't "see" them. Your dealer and the importer pay them for you, but you ARE paying them.

Even when you buy a US car, or US oil, you are probably already paying carbon taxes. For cars it's probably imposed on between 30 and 80 percent of the final sale value. For US oil, the services used to find, process, and distribute the oil all have parts that go to carbon taxes. Maybe the drill was made in Mexico, but you don't "see" it in your final cost, but it is in fact collected and paid.

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.

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.

So it's a bog-standard Socialist grab for Other People's Money.

Got it.

Re:Political tax

[Anonymous Coward]

When the majority of the land mass experiences very cold temperatures for approximately 6 months each year it is difficult to find environmentally-friendly heating sources. Natural gas is not environmentally friendly otherwise the hipsters and millennials would not be crying about bovine flatulence. How is the weather in California working out for you WrathofBob? Yeah, California is being punished by God for your hatred of the President.

Re: Political tax

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much. The company doesnt have any money, but the shareholders do. I doubt any city employees or citizens own Exxon stock in their 401k's. Surely no NYC resident relies on Exxon products for their livelihoods. The state AG just needs to prove that it was Exxon oil and not BP, Shell, or any other company. Iran sells oil, so why not sue them?

Re: Political tax

[bistromath007]

Without the car, the gas stays in the fucking ground and doesn't do shit.

Re:Political tax

[gurps_npc]

For most wealthy companies, you would be right. But we aren't talking about most wealthy companies, we are talking about the descendants of J.D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil.

As such, they are not rich because people want to use their product. They are rich because J.D. Rockefeller committed more crimes than pretty much any other 1% ever.

He made secret deals with railroads to prevent them from shipping other companies oil. He spied on his competitors, passing out bribes left and right. When congress tried to break up his illegal monopoly, he hid from the subpoena for YEARS. They illegally bought up cheap public light rail and shut them down, replacing it with more expensive, oil burning buses.

Any other company, I would say, yes, being rich does not mean you are guilty. Most wealthy people are not evil. But the oil companies have a history just as bad, if not worse, than big tobacco.

Re: Political tax

[just another AC]

http://www.petroleum.co.uk/pla...

"roughly 5% of total petroleum used goes to the production of plastics"

cars aren't the only way you use petroleum (or gas as you guys call it) so your point isn't really true

Re: Political tax

[Anonymous Coward]

The mass exodus out of NY, combined with less tax revenue means the state is desperate to rob someone with deep pockets. Oh look, Oil Co!!!

Re: Political tax

[Wrath0fb0b]

You know oil companies pay 30-40% royalties on oil leases, on top of corporate taxes. 3 of the top 10 taxpayers are oil firms.

Even if they underpaid royalties (I doubt it), that doesn't help them without a robust demand for their product.

Re:Political tax

[Wrath0fb0b]

In no way do I think Rockefeller or anyone else are "not guilty". I just think the most productive and promising way to fight them is to come up with better alternatives so as to reduce the demand for their products. In the long run, those crimes they commit don't do them any good if it doesn't get them access to a product that people want.

We aren't going to make a better future by dragging them down, we are going to make a better future by making them obsolete.

Re: Political tax

[ArmoredDragon]

Soo... what do you expect then? An immediate halt to the world's oil supply? That would be the overnight death of NYC. And if we never had it to begin with, we'd all be shitting in outhouses right now while the rest of the world modernized, while New York is stuffed with 5 tons of horse shit per 10 square feet.

That's just a lawsuit that will never be won. Nonetheless, how much will their legal team cost?

Re:Political tax

[SirSlud]

They very issue is they have such undue influence that we have better alternatives, but they're difficult to implement under the policy influence these companies have. And really its disingenuous to suggest we can't do both at the same time. "Hey, NYC politicians and lawers, go work on energy saving technology and federal policy, nobody else is doing it!" (I guess that last one is kinda true at the federal level at the moment, see my first point.)

Re:Political tax

[Applehu Akbar]

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

New York State has no business commenting on carbon emissions until it opens Shoreham.

Re: Political tax

[KeensMustard]

To be sued, there would have to be some sort wrongdoing or neglect that causes harm.

Car Drivers contribute to the harm, but will also pay for that harm, as economies collapse and bill for for mitigating further climate change and the bill for adapting the inevitable change all become due. So we will pay anyway. But will Oil Companies pay their share? And what constitutes that share?

Let's be clear: organisations and entities that actively seek or have sought to delay action on climate change have cost the rest of us dearly. In the case of oil companies, they knew the effects and cost of climate change form the beginning, but sought to mislead by creating the denialist movement, and sponsoring the likes of Judith Currie and Anthony Watts to be their mouthpiece. These originating entities, their mouthpieces (who at this point, are being deliberately misleading), and anyone else who profits from lying about climate should certainly be considered more culpable than someone who drives around minding their own business.

Re: Political tax

[Q-Hack!]

So when will you people start allowing us to generate more non-fossil electricity?

No one is stopping you from generating more non-fossil electricity. We just don't want you impeding our use of fossil fuels.

Re: Political tax

[Demena]

No, they just buy their own politicians. They do not need to vote when they own both candidates.

Re: Political tax

[Anonymous Coward]

This obvious warming is hard observational fact, from land, sea, and satellite measurements all around the globe - not a model. Here is the dataset.

I guess reality itself must be alt-left.

Re: Political tax

[Reverend Green]

Putingrad.... is that in Arkansas?

Re: Political tax

[Reverend Green]

Oil companies are rich because of database entries that say they own the land and production equipment.

Re: Political tax

[Xest]

Actually it makes complete sense unless you're just trying to irrationally defend fossil fuel companies.

Consider this, say you use nuclear power to power your home, and you find out after years of research that the nuclear power plant 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.

The region responsible for governing that area of the environment realises from the research what's going on, we can criticise them for acting to slowly but does that:

a) Mean they should sue you instead because your home was powered by the nuclear power provided by the company dumping the waste in a damaging manner and you knew about it in the news and continued to power your home before the city got round to acting?

b) Make it any less valid to sue the company?

We have double standards when it comes to waste left over by power companies, for some reason we have people like you defending companies that produce and burn coal for power generation who dump the waste into the environment on a continuous daily basis, but if a company dealing with nuclear waste dumps their waste in the environment, absolutely no one defends it and it's treated like the gravest crime known to man, so we hold those companies to drastically higher standards.

Yet, the death toll for people killed from disease caused by fossil fuel burning such as asthma, the impacts of it on the environment in terms of both direct pollution, and longer term affects like global warming, is in the hundreds of millions, if not billions.

So I ask again, why is it so wrong to hold those profiting from it and their companies to account? We'd do it with nuclear waste without question so why not the waste generated by fossil fuel?

Besides, most people are already held accountable for fossil fuel use, my biggest expense in life is far and away the cost of petrol, and the cost of gas and electricity. Everything else - water, phone, internet, food, costs peanuts in comparison to the cost of using fossil fuels, yet I'm given no other practical option. I have no problem with the companies themselves paying up too, because whilst it'll hit me in the pocket by increasing my expenses even more it'll open the door for much cheaper suppliers to storm the market, like wind, solar, and nuclear suppliers (and yes, nuclear IS far cheaper than oil and gas when externalities are taken into account).

By not making fossil fuel companies pay for their total costs (i.e. including externalities - the costs they push onto others through their actions such as increased costs of healthcare insurance/tax) we're basically just subsidising them, and whilst I don't believe in absolute free markets (I believe there needs to be controls) I do believe that the defacto subsidies paid by the tax payer to cover the costs of fossil fuel externalities to the tune of trillions of dollars across the globe shouldn't be a thing - even a small subsidy to prop up an industry that would otherwise fall into the history books due to not being economically viable is too much, let alone the trillions of dollars in subsidies these industries get by offloading their costs onto everyone else and who cause substantial physical harm to millions of people in the process.

Statistically, the benefits the fossil fuel industries are given over anyone else are insane. The freedom from prosecution for harm and pollution, the subsidies they receive, and so on and so forth wouldn't even remotely be entertained by any other industry, there'd be substantial uproar and for good reason. The challenge is because they do receive trillions in subsidies they can afford to PR the shit out of the problem so that people like you think they're not the issue making it a self-sustaining problem. We need to break the cycle and stop giving these companies a free ride, they need to compete in the free market like everyone else, and when they do, they'll lose, because everyone else is far cheaper and cleane

Re:Political tax

[Dog-Cow]

There's no law against hastening or causing climate change.

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

[Dog-Cow]

What utter stupidity. If the oil companies are buying influence, the lawsuit isn't going to get off the ground. Instead of a lawsuit, why not just change the laws?

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

[ErroneousBee]

Isn't plastics in the ocean environment one of the worst?

Re: Political tax

[Hal_Porter]

Oil stopped NYC from literally drowning in horse shit

http://www.s8int.com/crichton....

Stepping back, I have to say the arrogance of the model-makers is breathtaking. There have been, in every century, scientists who say they know it all. Since climate may be a chaotic system-no one is sure-these predictions are inherently doubtful, to be polite. But more to the point, even if the models get the science spot-on, they can never get the sociology. To predict anything about the world a hundred years from now is simply absurd.

Look: If I was selling stock in a company that I told you would be profitable in 2100, would you buy it? Or would you think the idea was so crazy that it must be a scam?

Let's think back to people in 1900 in, say, New York. If they worried about people in 2000, what would they worry about? Probably: Where would people get enough horses? And what would they do about all the horse****?

Horse pollution was bad in 1900, think how much worse it would be a century later, with so many more people riding horses? But of course, within a few years, nobody rode horses except for sport.

Now, apart from Bill de Blasio virtue signalling antics, NYC generates very little horsehit.

Re: Political tax

[Hal_Porter]

Marxism said that capitalism was bound to collapse due to the 'tendency of the rate of profit to fall' and that a planned economy was the inevitable future.

Environmentalism says that capitalism is bound to collapse due to environmental damage and that a planned economy was the inevitable future.

It's no coincidence that at the end of the Cold War when Communism collapsed in the USSR and Eastern Europe and the Marxist notion that capitalism was doomed lost credibility a lot of people who saw themselves as future economic planners decided to adopt environmentalism instead of marxism as a justification. In fact Marxism never really went away - rather than the bourgeoisie oppressing the proletariat it mutated to be {whites, men, straight people} oppressing {non whites, women, LBGT people}. Amusingly the people who believe this tend to be much more bourgeoise than the ones who don't.

As Brendan O'Neill put it AntiFa activism has become the bourgeoisie 'getting a bus into town and punching a working class Trump supporter in the face'

https://westernfreepress.com/2...

[Brendan O'Neill] - I don't understand what's wrong with having principles especially on freedom of speech. You should have principles on freedom of speech and also there isn't this neat divide between principles and practical everyday life, they inform each other and that's the example I gave, of in Britain, where we have public order legislation that can ban a march and that came in as a consequence of the refusal of the left to defend free speech and freedom of association for Nazis. These have consequences. If you give up your principles, it has devastating consequences in everyday life. I think I disagree, but I think this is entirely about freedom of speech. I think that is the issue in relation to all of this stuff. I think freedom of speech is the foundational freedom, it's the freedom that makes everything else possible, it's the freedom, the right to vote, the right to association, the right to political organization, none of those make any sense or are even workable without freedom of speech, without the right to say what you want to publish, what you want to distribute, so the fact that there is a new left or students or society in general that is increasingly uncomfortable with freedom of speech should concern us enormously and you know in relation to antifa, antifa poses as this kind of radical lefty, kind of you know like the International Brigades that went off to fight the fascists in Spain, do me a favor, the antifa is a bourgeois, censorious, shrill anti-democratic, anti-working class. For George Orwell, anti-fascism meant going to Spain and risking your life to kill actual fascist. For antifa, it means getting a bus into town and punching a working class Trump supporter in the face, that's not the same thing.

I.e. the new form of Marxism has invented the class alignment of the original one. Now the idle rich are the good guys and the working classes are sexistracisthomophobes. Who - horror of horrors - emit CO2 because they have actual jobs.

Re: Political tax

[TheRaven64]

Who needs to vote, when candidates can't win without spending a lot of money and you can financially support both candidates on the tacit understanding that they either act in your interest or will lose your support next round?

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

[danbert8]

Who stands to lose if more strict actions are taken to control greenhouse gas emissions?

Umm, the poor? Sure it's nice to live in a first world society where you can bullshit on Slashdot every day... But if you are desperate enough to risk your lives for a pot full of gasoline from a spilled tanker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., there is probably something you have to lose if more strict actions are taken to control greenhouse gas emissions.

Re: Political tax

[danbert8]

Anyone can buy oil and sell it on the open market... You don't have to be an oil company. Even NPR can do it.
https://www.npr.org/sections/m...

Re: Political tax

[danbert8]

In the same way you have wealth because a database entry says you own a house, a car, and have a bank account balance?

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.

Re: Political tax

[Xest]

"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."

Erm, that's exactly the point - we hold nuclear waste to far higher standards even though it kills literally many orders of magnitude less people than fossil fuel pollutants have. The point is precisely that when we discover something is bad we take action - we make things illegal, we seek compensation for damage done through the courts, or do you think the illegality of nuclear waste is some kind of universal declaration generated by nature itself when the universe first popped into existence at the moment of the big bang?

But then, I guess that's the risk you run of shitting verbal diarrhea into a conversation when you post drivel without actually reading the content of the thread in question.

Re:Political tax

[cascadingstylesheet]

For most wealthy companies, you would be right. But we aren't talking about most wealthy companies, we are talking about the descendants of J.D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil.

Well by that logic, we should ban Kennedys.

Re: Political tax

[Gamer_2k4]

Actually it makes complete sense unless you're just trying to irrationally defend fossil fuel companies.

Consider this, say you use nuclear power to power your home, and you find out after years of research that the nuclear power plant 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 not quite the same, though. A better comparison would be suing companies that mine uranium because the powerplants that use it dump their nuclear waste in an unsafe way. Which, of course, would be ridiculous.

Re: Political tax

[Tom]

Soo... what do you expect then? An immediate halt to the world's oil supply?

That isn't what this is about.

An immediate halt to manipulating public opinion about climate change is more like it.

Before you can fix a problem, you first need to agree what the problem is. The very methods of tobacco and now oil companies to muddle the waters, bring out false studies, bury correct studies, etc. etc. is aimed to prevent or delay that something is done about the problem - because these companies profit from the problem, and don't pay for the negative effects they cause.

Re: Political tax

[greythax]

If you mounted a huge pr campaign that nuclear waste wasn't the cause of all this radiation poisoning going around, and using millions to buy politicians to subvert the best interests of the people they represent, could I at least sue you for fraud?

Or, in your philosophy, are only individuals responsible for their own actions?

Re: Political tax

[sycodon]

Amen.

This is like suing the farmer for providing you food.

If not for Oil and the derived products, these fuckers would still be shoveling horse shit and burning candles for light and wood for fuel.

What the Oil companies should do is simply boycott NYC. Stop all deliveries of fuel oil, natural gas and gasoline.

Re:Political tax

[mr.mctibbs]

There is however the law of nuisance. The fact that an activity you've engaged in hasn't been made criminal doesn't absolve you of liability for the damage it causes to the property of others. I thought all you libertarians understood this.

Re: Political tax

[Tom]

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.

That is how tobacco lawsuits started. Unable to prove that smoking causes cancer, unable to prove how much it contributes, unable to prove the tobacco companies knew.

But after an initial wave of failures, things turned around. A few leaked documents proved that tobacco companies did know, that they did bury the studies that proved it, and advances in medicine provided the evidence for smoking causing cancer.

And in the past almost 20 years, we've seen the opposite: Lawsuits against tobacco companies are largely successful.

Someone has to get the ball rolling. Yes, maybe this lawsuit will fail, but it provides one step on the ladder, and there will be more lawsuits learning from the mistakes of this one, and one day, if they are not out of business by then, oil companies will actually pay some of the externalized costs of their business.

Re: Political tax

[greythax]

CO2 Doesn't have to be toxic to be harmful. NYC and other coastal towns have quite a bit of property that stands to suffer damage from an industry that fought like hell to "muddy" the science for several decades. It was important enough that the industry spent millions of dollars lobbying, which is not something companies do without a clear goal.

But luckily, all of this pontificating is useless, because once the case goes to court, if it is legally baseless as you suggest, it will be dismissed.

My personal belief is that cities like miami, that suffer massive amounts of property damage due to circumstances most scientist agree we were capable of mitigating have standing to sue federal governments at the very least, and probably companies that perpetrated public fraud to profit.

Re: Political tax

[Hal_Porter]

NYC would descend into chaos if the countryside stopped supplying it. It's always struck me about the worst place in the world to be if there's some sort of apocalypse.

Re: Political tax

[danbert8]

Your complaints about oil here are no different than any other natural resource be it iron to make steel, rare earth metals to make electronics, or even gold. They all require environmental damage to extract, refine, and use.

We are not just using fossil fuels out of habit, we are using them because they are extremely useful and valuable and there aren't any viable alternatives that can provide the same benefits.

Re: Political tax

[danbert8]

Cities like Miami are at higher risk of flooding and hurricanes based on their location. Should federal governments and companies be responsible for increasing that risk by an incalculable amount? Surely the Federal government already pays more than the fair share of providing disaster relief and rebuilding funds to offset any of their role in increasing the risk. As for the companies, it's going to be a hard sell that companies should be responsible for emissions that the entire state has contributed to... It would be one thing if Miami residents knew climate change was making their city more at risk and were above average in reducing emissions and prevention. It's another entirely if they expect companies to pay for the damages while they continue increasing their own risk.

It's like blaming the pet shop for selling dogs to people because your yard is full of your own dog's shit that you refuse to clean up. Did the pet shop know dogs shit? Yes. Did they downplay the shitting aspect of dogs when they made the sale? Yes. Did you know full well that dogs shit when you made the purchase? Yes. So maybe instead of demanding the pet shop start cleaning up dog shit, you invest in stuff to deal with the shit yourself.

Re: Political tax

[greythax]

Downplaying is different than the store hiring a vet to tell you that dogs don't cause dog shit. You buying a "shitless dog" that shits up your yard is not your fault.

Re: Political tax

[ChrisMaple]

Surely no NYC resident relies on Exxon products for their livelihoods.

That's what they think, until the lights go out and the water stops coming out of the faucet. Or perhaps NYC runs on coal.

Re: Political tax

[ChrisMaple]

Reasonable people balance benefits against disadvantages. If you're dying of thirst, you shouldn't sue the person offering you a cup of water because he didn't remove every speck of dust from the cup.

Re: Political tax

[plague911]

The same reason why we sued tobacco companies.

Tobacco/oil companies KNOWINGLY lied about the bad impacts of tobacco/oil. They are perfect mirrors actually.

The owner may or may not know about the impacts

Re:Political tax

[orgelspieler]

Shell was never Standard Oil, AFAIK. I almost said BP, but it looks like they ingested Sohio. What an interesting family tree of companies that is.

Re: Political tax

[plague911]

It runs on nuclear.and wind and NG

Re: Political tax

[kenh]

But the pollution still comes from the gas, not the car.

So you're saying that all the greenhouse gasses come from the drilling, refining and distribution processes, actually burning the refined oil in a car produces no 'pollution'? Fascinating.

Re: Political tax

[Xest]

To a degree sure, it's a similar problem with plastics in many ways too which is another challenge.

But you're wrong about the latter, I'm not sure why anyone would pretend nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, and so on and so forth just don't exist. Obviously they do, and many countries are hitting greater milestones with them each year - some countries even managing to power themselves entirely from non-fossil fuel sources. Even for plastics we don't have to use fossil fuels, there are alternatives.

But I am a realist, I fully appreciate we wont get rid of them altogether, but the only reason we're not eliminating them at a faster rate than we are is precisely because they're so heavily subsidised to keep their prices artificially low which is exactly the point of my original post.

I fully advocate making them compete on their natural market rate without the subsidies, because that way we'll reach a natural balance of their usage far faster than we are now, and without the complexity of having to give other energy source direct subsidies also just to let them try and compete - that kind of thing is a waste of everyone's time, and it's just a fudge to mask over the real fundamental problem.

Re: Political tax

[david_thornley]

CO2 is not pollution at any level we emit today.

That kinda depends on your definition of "pollution", doesn't it? It's clearly causing harm.

No one considers the CO2 itself to be toxic at any atmospheric concentrations.

Sure it is. We're not going to hit those concentrations, but I'm not sure that raising it below that rate is harmless to people.

This lawsuit is politics, pure and simple.

Of course it is, but that's not a bad thing. Fossil fuel companies have been making profits partly because they get to externalize a lot of the costs they cause, and the proper way to internalize these costs is government intervention, hence politics.

Re: Political tax

[david_thornley]

There are ways to help the poor that don't involve allowing people to seriously damage the planet and lie about it for profit.

Re: Political tax

[danbert8]

There is no such thing as a free lunch. Nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, and so on and so forth exist but also have externalities. In addition to them not being without a downside, they are for the most part not as easily transported and stored as fossil fuels are. The reason fossil fuels are so valuable and useful is primarily due to energy density, availability, and mass storage.

You can call externalities a "subsidy" as much as you want, but pretty much everything can affect the population at large. You can't account for every impact of one industry sector and call it a subsidy because every other sector also has externalities that affect the population. Do you consider hydro subsidized because eminent domain force relocated populations from flooded areas? How about the fact they don't pay for earthquake damages from geologic changes from creating a lake? Changing weather patterns, different animal populations, increased mosquitoes... I could go on all day.

The way you make a fair competition is you assume a baseline amount of quality of life and don't impose artificial costs on sectors you don't like if they don't make a meaningful reduction in the quality of life. Coal powerplants in China that cloud entire cities with toxic clouds? Yes, that is a direct cost and you might consider it a subsidy for coal since they don't pay for the pollution. Powerplants in the US that the EPA regulates as far as their emissions limits based on safety considerations for the public? Not really as applicable. Energy companies already spend huge amounts of money to reduce emissions of harmful chemicals to protect the public. The exception is CO2, which as I stated before is not toxic at any atmospheric levels and any claim to direct damages via climate change is a huge stretch to "heavily subsiziding."

Re: Political tax

[david_thornley]

And we'd like you (or someone involved) to pay for the costs of fossil fuels.

Re:Political tax

[david_thornley]

The best way to come up with better alternatives is to economically encourage them, and discourage fossil fuels. Then we can let the market decide.

Right now, fossil fuel companies are rich partly because everybody on the planet pays some of their costs. If we find a way to assign the costs appropriately, that will spur the market for non-fossil-fuel energy and vehicles.

And, in the meantime, we know that some of them have been lying for profit, which is usually called "fraud". These companies have known about global warming for a long time, and have been funding people to deny it.

Re: Political tax

[robkeeney]

... NYC generates very little horsehit.

Gotta disagree. Pretty much everything that comes out of NYC is horseshit.

Re: Political tax

[swillden]

No, they just buy their own politicians. They do not need to vote when they own both candidates.

And yet they can still be sued. Why is that?

Re: Political tax

[plague911]

NYC is a port city, with little to no supply from the US countryside in the immediate vicinity. Yes NYC would be up a creek if the world flipped upside down. It however, would actually fair better than the landlocked areas in a mid level catastrophe.

Re: Political tax

[plague911]

Where does most livestock come from? Boats

Where do most crops come from? Boats

Where is what's left of U.S. manufacturing capability? We don't buy anything american made anyway.

Actually despite what you said the rural communities depend on NYC for their food products etc. All of it lands in the ports and get ships out from NYC, not the other way around.

Re: Political tax

[danbert8]

It's clearly causing harm.

[Citation Needed]

Can you really show clear evidence that you or another individual has been directly and measurably harmed by the portion of atmospheric CO2 that has been emitted by human activity? That's what you should need in court to show any sort of damages...

Re: Political tax

[Xest]

But you're arguing that because micro-externalities exist for those sources, that it's okay for fossil fuels to receive literally trillions of dollars in externality subsidies, that's obviously an entirely non-factual argument - the fundamental point is that even if you take all externalities for all fuel sources that oil, and coal are still subsidised so far beyond the others that they're not price competitive. The only reason they are is because the externalities are so large, and yet offloaded - you mention relocation from flooded areas with hydro, and yet people get compensated for this (okay maybe not in dodgy 3rd world backwaters, but we're not talking about fringe cases, we're talking about the general case). Creating lakes doesn't cause earthquakes, fracking for fossil fuels however, does.

"Powerplants in the US that the EPA regulates as far as their emissions limits based on safety considerations for the public? Not really as applicable."

So you don't think somewhere between $500million to $4tn a year (depending on which estimates you trust) is a subsidy that's applicable?

It's still fairly clear you don't actually grasp the scale of fossil fuel externalities, nor do you grasp the effects of the pollutants even with EPA emissions regulations (in fact, even with the much cleaner standards in Western European nations even). As I said - there are more papers than you could read in a reasonable time on Google, go pick some, from disparate sources across the political spectrum to get a balanced view. The idea that the odd of a hydro dam creating a lake that causes an earthquake is a thing that's both as likely to happen and even remotely as costly as hundreds of millions in healthcare costs is a farcical argument and reeks of desperation - you might as well admit outright you're just a massive fan of the the fossil fuel industry and cut the bullshit if you can't even be remotely objective about the topic.

Re: Political tax

[ravenshrike]

The fires in California are from allowing detritus to build up and the fact that Cali looks to be going into one of it's geologically many century long droughts. The 20th century was for California exceedingly wet. The mudslides were a direct result of the fires. As for the hurricanes, Harvey was exceedingly large and slow, not powerful. Combine that with the extensive buildup in floodplain you have going on in the Huston area and the problem becomes readily apparent.

Re: Political tax

[danbert8]

Literal trillions of dollars as calculated by whom? You magnify the "subsidies" of fossil fuels while handwaving over alternatives. Creating lakes DOES cause earthquakes and historically a lot more damage and death than any quakes directly attributable to fracking or disposal wells (which has a whopping 0 deaths attributed to it). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I happen to be a fan of the fossil fuel industry and would like to point out that I am aware of the externalities you point out, but I believe many of the estimates are highly inflated based on the assumed cost of "climate change" which is attributed to only negative events and not positive ones. You also continue to gloss over entirely the externalities of the alternatives. You also lump coal and oil together even though coal is far more polluting and far more deadly to extract than oil. I am all for phasing out coal and it is being done (primarily being replaced by natural gas thanks to fracking). Oil is here to stay for quite a long time though despite the external costs.

I have admitted my bias and I try to be as objective as I can. My problem is blanket assumptions of assigning blame and cost to fossil fuels based on complex events where a direct causal link is fuzzy at best.

The idea that the odd of a hydro dam creating a lake that causes an earthquake is a thing that's both as likely to happen and even remotely as costly as hundreds of millions in healthcare costs is a farcical argument and reeks of desperation

Desperation is dismissing a counter argument without doing a basic Google search to see if the counter argument might be valid... In fact, you completely dismissed the idea that shifting around a huge mass on the crust by creating a reservoir might have massive implications to the surrounding area and consequently everything downstream. Did you count the cost of the evacuation below the Oroville dam last year in your "subsidy" of the hydropower industry?

Re: Political tax

[Xest]

"Literal trillions of dollars as calculated by whom? You magnify the "subsidies" of fossil fuels while handwaving over alternatives."

If you're going to persistently refuse to understand the subject whilst insisting you're right regardless I'm going to stop wasting my time. As I said - a simple Google search will find you hundreds of results, so to answer your question in terms of whom, literally every journalist and scientist that's ever objectively studied the subject. As Google is apparently way too confusing for you though, I'll make it easier:

The IMF: https://www.wsj.com/articles/i...

National Academy of Sciences: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10...

Side note on the above: "The damages are caused almost equally by coal and oil, according to the study, which was ordered by Congress." - you argue oil is better than coal, it's really not, presumably when you say you like fossil fuels what you really mean is that you're an oil man if you believe what you said.

Forbes Journalist: https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...

MIT Economics Prof: http://news.mit.edu/2016/carbo...

World Nuclear Association: http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...

Union of Concerns Scientists: https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-e...

Skeptical Science: https://skepticalscience.com/p...

Cambridge University: https://www.cisl.cam.ac.uk/bus...

How long do you want me to keep going before you decide to stop being in denial? You can't pretend this is bias or partisanism - as I've said all along, there's a reason why left and right come to the same conclusions when they study this. You cannot pretend the likes of Forbes to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the US government to the IMF, and Cambridge University to the World Nuclear Association are somehow bedfellows that all sit on the exact same end of the political spectrum - they don't, that's nonsense - they all agree because it's true, and if you disagree it's because you're being irrational.

I did as you said regarding earthquakes from dams, and yes, whilst I'm willing to admit I hadn't appreciated quite how harmful some of them had been, I think you still fundamentally fail to understand the differences in scale - we're talking less than a million deaths from them across all time, and yet fossil fuels kill tens (possibly squeezing into hundreds) of millions globally not just in one off incidents, but on an ongoing basis every year. There's still not even a remotely equivalent comparison - the externalities of fossil fuels are still many orders of magnitude higher on healthcare alone - even if you reject the global warming argument, and ignore the geopolitical strife caused by fighting over fossil fuels, you're still seeing orders of magnitude more externalities (and deaths) on fossil fuels based just on the topic of healthcare and nothing more alone. When you factor in the other realities - war, climate change and so forth, it's like comparing a spec of sand to the size of the plant and saying the two are equivalent.

I've Google'd the shit out of trying to find any kind of study showing that other fuels externalities are equivalent to fossil fuels. Guess what? Nothing, whilst it's consistently poss

Re: Political tax

[KeensMustard]

Actually, NYC should sue dinos as they are the ultimate source of oil.

WRONG

This is all stupid, wasting tax-payer money suing people over "climate change" that may or may not be related to the human parasites on Earth advancing from waving wooden clubs around to driving SUV's. Why not sue humanity then as we are all participating, even now.

You and your buddies have had 20 years (or more) to produce evidence for your bullshit assertions about climate. You've failed to produce even a little scrap of evidence. What did you think was going to happen, that we would just carry on being polite? Time for you, and your deceiving little pals, and those who fund your little club of deception and lies, to start paying for the damage you've caused. And I don't mean 'pay' in a metaphorical sense.

Think of this as an exact repeat of what happened to big tobacco.

Re: Political tax

[ArmoredDragon]

That isn't what this is about.

An immediate halt to manipulating public opinion about climate change is more like it.

If manipulating public opinion was against any laws, especially when it is for the worse, then Greenpeace should have been sued out of existence long ago for the EXACT same reason, namely in that they're actively lobbying in favor of environmentally deleterious positions (and unlike the oil companies, they're actually winning.)

Besides, it's free speech. If you want to state an opinion, then you're allowed to do so. If you disagree, then go lobby your congresscritter to repeal the first amendment because it makes you feel safer knowing that people can no longer say things that you don't like.

Re: Political tax

[Wrath0fb0b]

Doesn't that make it even more amazing that they are the top taxpayer in the US even though they allegedly have all these great breaks?

Re: Political tax

[Reverend Green]

Exactly the same way.

Re: Political tax

[mcswell]

"sponsoring the likes of Judith Currie and Anthony Watts": You're a liar.

Re: Political tax

[Goragoth]

No, the problem is idealism of any form. Idealism is just intellectual laziness and the inability to process complex issues. The answer isn't communism, Marxism, capitalism and any other stupid ism you can come up with (except pragmatism). Problems in complex systems have complex solutions.

Re: Political tax

[david_thornley]

If a company releases radioactive or carcinogenic waste in a town, and five people get cancer in a period where you'd statistically expect one, by your criteria there's no grounds for a lawsuit. No individual can say their cancer is caused by the waste, because there was a reasonable statistical chance it would have happened anyway.

If you want something really specific...

Hurricane Sandy had a big storm surge that flooded a lot of New York, causing a lot of damage. Global warming had increased sea level, so the storm surge was somewhat higher than it would have been with the same storm and no global warming. This meant that the surge went further, considerably further because the ground isn't at a 45-degree angle, and caused more damage. The extra damage is clearly measurable, and clearly caused by AGW.

Re: Political tax

[Tom]

Besides, it's free speech.

I belong to the kind of people who categorically deny that organisations have a right to free speech. Unless we want to drown deeper into a world dominated by faceless, irresponsible entities we need to keep basic human rights human rights.

If you want to state an opinion, then you're allowed to do so. If you disagree, then go lobby your congresscritter to repeal the first amendment because it makes you feel safer knowing that people can no longer say things that you don't like.

There's a big difference between me stating an opinion and a multinational company spending millions on a PR campaign.

Re: Political tax

[david_thornley]

And if it hadn't been for fossil fuels NYC wouldn't be nearly as big as it is today...

And, of course, Ted Kennedy contributed enough that we should just forget about Chappaquiddick, right? And all those directors produced movies good enough that we should disregard their personal sexual activities? Unless we want every court case to balance assorted effects of unknown magnitude and construct alternative realities to compare possibilities, we should keep to the point in court cases. In this case, the point is that fraud by fossil fuel companies led to increased use of fossil fuels, causing more global warming, which is hurting New York City. That's enough for a judge an jury to worry about.

You're also saying that suing a particular company is wrong because of the general industry it's in. We buy cars; should we be able to sue if one is defective and kills people?

Re: Political tax

[KeensMustard]

[ Citation Needed ]

Re: Political tax

[danbert8]

I think the problem with our discussion is we are talking about two different things. I am talking about economic and human costs of power generation in the United States and you are talking about the entire world. The United States is not subsidizing fossil fuels, even considering the cost of externalities. Some industrially developing nations may be.

Yes, worldwide fossil fuel usage causes a lot of air pollution and deaths as a result. I mean China and India have horrible air quality and the US has historically. According to the WHO: "Some 88% of those premature deaths occurred in low- and middle-income countries, and the greatest number in the WHO Western Pacific and South-East Asia regions." (http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs313/en/) It's just not happening in modern times with modern particulate regulations. In fact, I would argue even with the high amounts of air pollution and the increased number of deaths due to it, the quality and length of life for those people has been improved by using fossil fuel energy despite the negative externalities. The life expectancy in those southeast countries with high air pollution is remarkably still going up and the mortality rates going down... (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?end=2015&locations=CN&start=1960&view=chart)

And all of this is meaningless compared to the original discussion about climate change. CO2 isn't even listed in the WHO outdoor air quality concerns...

Re: Political tax

[Xest]

"I think the problem with our discussion is we are talking about two different things. I am talking about economic and human costs of power generation in the United States and you are talking about the entire world. The United States is not subsidizing fossil fuels, even considering the cost of externalities. Some industrially developing nations may be."

Nope, again, let's stick to the science rather than making arbitrary assertions - take your pick of the links I provided or any of the many others Google can find for you - the US is still blowing at minimum hundreds of millions on subsidising fossil fuels through externalising the costs onto members of the public.

I do not believe there's a country in the world right now that doesn't hold fossil fuel power plants to far lower standards than just about every other type of power generation. You can't simply whitewash the problem in the US by saying "India and China are worse".

"The life expectancy in those southeast countries with high air pollution is remarkably still going up and the mortality rates going down... (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?end=2015&locations=CN&start=1960&view=chart)"

You're suggesting correlation implies causation, obviously that's a flagrant affront to scientific argument. I get that you have a vested interest in fossil fuels but come on, let's not go full retard here.

If you want to argue that you feel that it's valid that offloading the costs of fossil fuels through implicit subsidies is acceptable then fine, go for it - you're more than welcome to make this argument. But you can't just simply deny the evidence and start resorting to logical fallacies like implying correlation equals causation to make a false narrative reality - reality isn't something that's in your power to change no matter what you might say, so the fact still stands that fossil fuels have massive hidden costs that are paid indirectly, and hence massive defacto subsidies that dwarf anything given to any other methods of power generation. I've provided more than sufficient evidence to highlight this, and arguing correlation equals causation is somehow a counter to that is very obviously farcical.

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]

That's kind of what I was thinking. These idiots are suing the oil companies and yet they are some of the biggest contributors to pollution while they happily use oil to power all of their shit.

Absolutely fucking ridiculous. They can't blame someone for wrongdoing while they themselves benefited from the use of their products without a care in the world until now.

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

[Ichijo]

They can't blame someone for wrongdoing while they themselves benefited from the use of their products...

So VW owners cannot sue VW for the emissions scandal?

Re:Alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Alternative

[Ichijo]

And then, because overfishing is bad, NYC should ban fish sales and consumption, right?

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

[David_Hart]

And then, because overfishing is bad, NYC should ban fish sales and consumption, right?

I think that you forget that some fish comes from fish farms...

Re:Alternative

[Cederic]

Fine, let them import fish from fish farms (that don't use plastics or other oil based products, including fuel for boats).

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

[Miamicanes]

Of course. Because we all know New York City would be "greener" & healthier if every apartment burned wood for winter heat, and Manhattan had millions of horses burying its streets under ankle-deep poop daily...

http://www.historic-uk.com/His...

Re:Alternative

[darthsilun]

Can't be a hypocrite without hypocriting.

Wow, who knew Donald Trump posted to /.

Re:Alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

But efficiency isn't really the point, is it? NYC is going after the five biggest contributors to alleged climate change, not the five least-efficient contributors to alleged climate change.

In other words, if Anonymous Coward Oil Inc. had a magic process for refining oil such that it produced twice as much energy per climate-change emission as Exxon's oil did, but it also sold three times as much of that oil as compared to Exxon, then NYC would be chasing after ACO. Despite the fact that completely replacing Exxon with AOC would be a significant net victory for climate-change emission rates.

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?

Re:Alternative

[AmiMoJo]

When I read threads like this I realise that the case for being environmentally responsible is winning. Otherwise why appeal to absurdity? If there was a genuinely good argument against it, it would be made.

Re:Alternative

[munch117]

Except they're not. Per capita, high rise apartment complexes pollute a lot less than anything else. Add to that the subway and being in walking distance of a lot of things. Compared to, say, bay area suburbanites, new yorkers are absolute angels when it comes to climate change. I guess there are a lot of bay area suburbanites on Slashdot that don't want to hear that.

Re: Alternative

[TechnoCore]

The headline in that article does not say the same thing as the article itself. So what you believe is incorrect. While the treaty was signed in 1997, the base year for reduction calculations was 1990. Making the first graph in the article, eh missleading. To quote a comment to that article:

Russ R.
April 5, 2013 at 2:20 pm
You gotta read beyond the headline.
First: 5.2% was a weighted average collective target for all participating developed nations. The US target was 7%.
“The 5.2% reduction in total developed country emissions will be realized through national reductions of 8% by Switzerland, many Central and East European states, and the European Union (the EU will achieve its target by distributing differing reduction rates to its member states); 7% by the US; and 6% by Canada, Hungary, Japan, and Poland. Russia, New Zealand, and Ukraine are to stabilize their emissions, while Norway may increase emissions by up to 1%, Australia by up to 8%, and Iceland 10%.”

Second, while the treaty was signed in 1997, the base year for reduction calculations was 1990 (or 1995 for certain GHGs).
“The agreement aims to lower overall emissions from a group of six greenhouse gases by 2008-12, calculated as an average over these five years. Cuts in the three most important gases – carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N20) – will be measured against a base year of 1990. Cuts in three long-lived industrial gases – hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) – can be measured against either a 1990 or 1995 baseline. If compared to expected emissions levels for the year 2000, the total reductions required by the Protocol will actually be about 10%; this is because many industrialized countries have not succeeded in meeting their earlier non-binding aim of returning their emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000, and their emissions have in fact risen since 1990. Compared to the emissions levels that would be expected by 2010 without emissions-control measures, the Protocol target represents a 30% cut. The Protocol should therefore send a powerful signal to business that it needs to accelerate the delivery of climate-friendly products and services.”

So, if I’m going to nitpick details 7% below 1990 level is a bigger target than 5.2% below 1997 levels.

But that doesn’t take away from the main point that the US has indeed reduced emissions substantially in the last 5 years, thanks to a shale gas boom and an economic bust.

Also... https://www.theguardian.com/en...

Re:Alternative

[aevan]

When genuine arguments are self-evident to anyone lacking a vested interest in a side... they aren't so much 'appeals to absurdity' as they are 'mockery of hypocrisy'.
Virtue Signalling is rather abhorrent. Being environmentally responsible... that, that I'll support. This is just pathetic (un)populism though.

Re: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.

That city would be... Chongqing, if I'm not mistaken.

Re:Alternative

[NicknameUnavailable]

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.

We need to stop with all the half-measures, just blockade NYC so they can't take resources from the more productive parts of the world or flee to it with their filthy NYC ways, the problem will then solve itself and they will in the process contribute to lessening the Human strain on the planet. But of course that won't happen, because they're just hypocritical globalists who use global warming to hinder political and business adversaries.

Re:Alternative

[JoshuaZ]

Sure, see http://e360.yale.edu/features/greenest_place_in_the_us_its_not_where_you_think. Also, see https://www.eia.gov/state/rankings/ for the state-level data. That said, I think that considering this to be something that would constitute a conflict of interest enough to doubt the source is pretty silly.

Re:Alternative

[JoshuaZ]

Your personal anecdote is not data. For example, the fraction of people in rural areas are using solar and geothermal power is very small. Moreover, a major part of the difference is car travel v. public transit (in fact this alone accounts for one of the major reasons that NYC is more efficient than even other cities). If you want, I can easily give you other sources detailing the same thing (such as http://e360.yale.edu/features/greenest_place_in_the_us_its_not_where_you_think). Calling actual data "nonsense" and responding with personal anecdote is not productive.

Re:Alternative

[Tom]

You missed the point.

We all live in the real world, today, and have to operate within those parameters. NYC is trying to do that, and the addition of shifting pension fund money around shows that they realize they are contributing to the problem and are taking steps to change that.

The energy companies, on the other hand, knew about climate change and the role of fossil fuels half a century ago, and what did they do about it? Try to bury the problem.

Same as the tobacco industry did.

Only fair if they face the same consequences. Not for being oil companies, but for intentionally manipulating public opinion in the name of profit, to the detriment of everyone else.

Re:Alternative

[david_thornley]

And so we see Slashdotters strongly advocating that people be punished if they say anything about corporate fraud. How nice.

Re:Alternative

[david_thornley]

I'd assume that ACO would be advertising their relatively clean processes, and not lying about the effects of what they sell. That would make them pretty much immune from these lawsuits.

Grab some popcorn

[chrism238]

Like cases against tobacco companies, this one will take 50 years or more.

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.

Re:Grab some popcorn

[SlaveToTheGrind]

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.

Yeah, I think the fact that it was filed by a huge class action law firm tells the story pretty clearly. They've probably taken it on contingency and are looking for a huge payday. Which will of course fix everything they claim to be wrong.

Re:Grab some popcorn

[rmdingler]

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.

Yeah, I think the fact that it was filed by a huge class action law firm tells the story pretty clearly. They've probably taken it on contingency and are looking for a huge payday. Which will of course fix everything they claim to be wrong.

Ah yes... the theoretical right of the least important and influential to redress the wrongs of society in court in David vs. Goliath fashion.

If only we lived in a society where the lawsuits were driven by a desire to fix the wrongs, rather than simply profit from them. But then, we'd need to fill the Congress with farmers, convenience store clerks, and IT workers instead of lawyers.

Re: Grab some popcorn

[Anonymous Coward]

it does resemble a revenue stream used by some European nations, though they seem to specialize in taxing non-domestic companies.

Do you have an example of a European country taxing foreign companies differently from domestic companies? I've never heard of this.

Re:Grab some popcorn

[Namarrgon]

I'm not sure we actually KNOW that the current warming trend is entirely man made

We know to a high level of scientific certainty. In fact, the evidence strongly suggests the world would still be slowly cooling, if it wasn't for our greenhouse gas emissions.

Given that the science behind this specific part of the question is far from conclusive

It absolutely is; that's why every scientific institution on the planet endorses the conclusion that we're causing the warming we're seeing. We can even quantify it - the IPCC AR5 WG1 summary says our emissions of CO2 alone have caused a radiative forcing of 1.68 W m^2 (+/- 0.3), plus another 0.97 W m^2 from methane - which dwarfs the cooling effects of atmospheric dust and nitrates at about -0.42 W m^2 in total. We know it's our CO2 that's causing it because a) we can easily measure the CO2 levels rising rapidly, and b) isotopic analysis shows a match with carbon from fossil fuels (not to mention the observed levels happen to agree nicely with our calculated emissions, and that nothing else has been observed that could come close to causing the effect we're seeing).

None of this attribution has anything to do with our land temperature models (which btw are working just fine).

What's still uncertain is exactly how much warming we'll see, and when. Not what's causing it.

Re:Grab some popcorn

[houghi]

It is strange that people are still uncertain about climate change. I think we should go after those who fund the FUD around it for years. But where do we start? They are probably companies that have an investment in denying the climate change. But what companies would that be?

Re:Grab some popcorn

[danbert8]

What's also uncertain is if the warming that will occur will be net negative, damaging, debilitation, or devastating to human populations. Looking at only damages from storms and attributing all, or even just the most severe storms to climate change is a poor way to measure the cost of climate change. It also doesn't help that people continue to want to live and property values continue to rise in some of the most disaster prone areas... Meanwhile large sections of the human population that might be benefiting from a warmer climate are not being counted.

Re:Grab some popcorn

[Anonymous Coward]

ell, when I was a kid, there was snow every single Christmas. Last several years in a row, not a speck of snow.

Yeah, that's what happens when you move from Montana to Vegas.

Re:Grab some popcorn

[TheRaven64]

Please don't make arguments like that, because that's exactly the same flawed logic that climate change deniers use. All this tells you is that something in your local climate has changed. The global warming argues that pumping large amounts of energy into the atmosphere as a result of an increase in the greenhouse effect will result in either a new equilibrium condition or a more chaotic global climate. Both going from never snowing to snowing each year or going from snowing each year to never snowing are consistent with this hypothesis, but for local climates they're also explainable by a number of other mechanisms. To either support or contradict a hypothesis like global warming, you need to look at global data.

Re:Grab some popcorn

[Tom]

I'm not sure we actually KNOW that the current warming trend is entirely man made,

Yes we do know that.

If you don't know, it's because of exactly the PR efforts of oil companies and others with a vested interest to confuse people, create FUD and dillute one of the strongest scientific arguments ever made in the history of the world.

The case for man-made climate change is so rock solid, we have more scientific evidence of it than we have about gravity or water being wet. No question has been studied for so long by so many. This is in part because of all that propaganda against the facts, and in part because climate is a very complex topic.

To say that we don't actually know about man-made climate change is utterly ridiculous. Denying the existence of the sun on a cloudless sky at noon is a more reasonable position to take.

Re:Grab some popcorn

[david_thornley]

After all, the planet went through multiple temperature changes long before humans existed

Sure it did. We don't care about them. We weren't there to be affected.

What we've got right now is very rapid warming that will disrupt human civilization. That we should care about.

Re:Grab some popcorn

[david_thornley]

We've got some reasonable predictions on that. In fact, the sort of extreme weather global warming helps cause has already had some pretty expensive effects.

Re: Grab some popcorn

[david_thornley]

Not entirely. Presumably the pension funds were invested in fossil fuels for financial reasons, and the divestment they're doing will result in lowered returns. The boatload of cash can be used in part to offset that.

Re:Grab some popcorn

[david_thornley]

I'm without a dog in the fight

So, you're pretty well off and live at a high elevation? So you will only be hit financially by the disruption? Or you're old and expect to die soon? Most people have a dog in the fight whether they know it or not.

Re:Grab some popcorn

[KiloByte]

Well yeah, it's just a single data point. But it's a data point that's obvious to an average voter, not just scientifically minded people like you and me. That's why I continued with that "war on Christmas" remark.

Also, the number of locales that changed from consistent snow to consistent positive temperatures is so overwhelming compared to the number of locales with the opposite, that it's a valid argument by itself.

Re:Grab some popcorn

[bobbied]

Seriously?

They obviously don't teach the scientific method in school anymore... Ever hear this one? "Correlation does not prove causation"

Before you dig out your CO2 concentration and temperature charts and try to show how similar they are if you arrange the plot scales and offset the dates just so.... Remember that.

Remember, I'm NOT claiming the climate isn't changing... It most certainly is. I'm just not sure we can know just how much man's activity is responsible, and we obviously are not able to accurately forecast what it really means. So far, in the last 2 decades we've only proven that we are horrible at predicting the future with our climate models, and even worse at predicting the actual effects of the changes.

Finally, we'd be remiss to not mention that fossil fuels have been a key energy source driving the industrial revolution and massive advances in the world's standard of living. There would be a lot more death, illness and starvation without fossil fuels. Are you ready to give up all the advances and do away with fossil fuels? I'm not, I like people being better off, and if that means we move New York to higher ground.. So be it.

Re:Grab some popcorn

[Namarrgon]

The IPCC Working Group 2 report covers that.

Yes, there are certainly some positive benefits from climate change (which are indeed described in the WG2 report), and in the long term (hundreds/thousands of years), once the pace of change has settled down, some (mostly higher) latitudes will likely be significantly better off. However lower latitudes will likely be significantly worse off, and as more energy is pumped into the climate system then extreme weather events are likely to increase too.

But in the short term, the impacts are almost all negative, some massively so. The main reason for this is the rapid pace of the changes - our infrastructure and agriculture are all designed and located for our current climate, so as the climate changes (and we can already see it changing), then we will have to move/fix/protect/upgrade/relocate large amounts of our society along with it. Coastal cities will need levees to deal with higher storm surges, large areas of farmland will need more irrigation or flood protection, etc etc - and any countries or communities that can't afford those adaption costs (or have nowhere to move agriculture or population to) will suffer. The worst off will have to leave, creating refugees that will worsen international tensions - leading the DoD and NATO to class climate change as a "threat multiplier" that is already having visible effects.

Estimating the net monetary costs from these impacts is not easy, but some studies have been done, and they've all concluded the costs of later adaption far outweigh the costs of earlier action to mitigate climate change.

Re:Grab some popcorn

[Tom]

They obviously don't teach the scientific method in school anymore... Ever hear this one? "Correlation does not prove causation"

Obviously they don't teach it where you went to school. And obviously you don't realize that a large part of every science these days is statistics, and understanding this difference is an essential part.

You are basically standing there saying that things falling down proves nothing about gravity and you wonder why everyone is laughing at you.

'm just not sure we can know just how much man's activity is responsible,

Yes, but many thousands of scientists who have spent the better part of their career on research to answer this exact question are sure.

So far, in the last 2 decades we've only proven that we are horrible at predicting the future with our climate models, and even worse at predicting the actual effects of the changes.

You don't even understand the difference between weather and climate. The climate has actually confirmed well within the error margin to the predictions, and the more they are updated the better they get. Which, btw. is also an essential part of the scientific method.

Finally, we'd be remiss to not mention that fossil fuels have been a key energy source driving the industrial revolution and massive advances in the world's standard of living. There would be a lot more death, illness and starvation without fossil fuels.

Completely agree with you. Here's the thing, though: When you suffer from depression, you can take medicine and it will help you get out of that black hole. But it also causes considerable damage to your nervous system, the first sign of which is addiction. The side-effects are preferable to a depression, but there is a point where you need to stop taking the shit, or you are doing more harm than good.

Fossil fuels did a big part in moving us out of the dark ages. But if we keep burning them much longer, we will go back to another dark age. There is a point to quit taking the shit, and that point is pretty much now, because there actually is a point behind which our climate models can't predict because of positive feedback loops that just might start a runaway greenhouse effect. If you want to know how that turns out, check the climate data for Venus.

Re:Grab some popcorn

[bobbied]

SO much promise, so little actual thought being put in...

What if I said that I think your dire predictions about the Earth looking like Venus are a bit over blown... At least this side of our Sun turning into a red dwarf, at which point we will all be dead anyway. We are headed to a planet like Venus? Come on, that's crazy, even with the most dire scientific predictions I've heard.

Just this morning I read a new story about a couple of actual researchers who discovered a massive flaw in nearly every climate model we've ever used which could change by half the amount of energy reaching the surface. It had to do with cloud cover assumptions based on the time of day being wrong. That's going to bite into your dire "The Sky is Falling!" predictions of all those accredited climate scientists if it turns out to be true. I think you are making this out to be worse than it actually will be, by a long shot. But you have to amp up the "we are all going to die" rhetoric don't you?

The *real* problem here is that we are not in a place where alternate sources of energy to replace fossil fuels with the same or better cost don't exist. The choice then becomes one of reducing our standard of living to reduce our dependence on oil, a process that punishes the poor more because they cannot afford the increased costs. What's the right thing to do? I'm not so sure that dumping oil is the correct path, nor the damage this will do to the ecconomy is worth it.

Re:Grab some popcorn

[Tom]

What if I said that I think your dire predictions about the Earth looking like Venus are a bit over blown...

Maybe they are, maybe they are not. The point was that this is a thing we genuinely do not yet know and understand. Both on Earth and Venus (we are not yet sure how Venus became what it is today, how it evolved over time, where it started, etc.)

Just this morning I read a new story about a couple of actual researchers who discovered a massive flaw in nearly every climate model we've ever used which could change by half the amount of energy reaching the surface.

And like everything, this will be checked and verified or falsified, the models will be updated and new predictions will be made. This has been going on for 30+ years. The funny thing is that over all that time, the basic conclusions have not changed. In that climate change is real, it is in a considerable part caused by us, and it is getting worse.

Are you really so blind? Ice is melting. Sea levels are rising. Even the US military is already spending real money on real impacts of climate change and to prepare for more of them. They are not exactly known for being unpractical pie-in-the-sky people.

But you have to amp up the "we are all going to die" rhetoric don't you?

Nobody listened to "excuse me, I think there might be a small problem that we can get under control if we do a few small corrective actions in the near future".

We are not going to die, of course. Well, we are, but most likely of natural causes. Climate is a slow thing. It will be our grandchildren who suffer the consequences.

The *real* problem here is that we are not in a place where alternate sources of energy to replace fossil fuels with the same or better cost don't exist. The choice then becomes one of reducing our standard of living to reduce our dependence on oil, a process that punishes the poor more because they cannot afford the increased costs. What's the right thing to do? I'm not so sure that dumping oil is the correct path, nor the damage this will do to the ecconomy is worth it.

Agree with you on that again. Alternative energy sources need more research and development, and it will take some time until we have a real alternative to fossil fuels. But that exactly is the reason why we need to start doing that now, not later. Because later might be too late.

And yes, we might have to make a few hard choices about standards of living, or at least ways of living. Why, for example, do millions of people drive for kilometers every day in order to sit at a computer? Telecommuting is one step that can reduce petrol consumption, and might actually raise instead of lower the standard of living. Car sharing and car pooling can also cut into this commuter effect with only a small effect on standard of living.

But private car traffic is also a big strawman. The container ships that bring all our gadgets from China are incredible polluters. Here is one of many articles on the subject. Moving our economy away from extreme globalisation back into local manufacturing would do wonders not just for the job market, but also for the environment. And yes, prices might rise, but people who have jobs again could afford them again. And this is actually easy to do: Pollution is externalised costs. If we can agree to put import taxes on goods based on the pollution their transport created, e.g. make pollution no longer an externalized cost factor, local manufacturing will be economically interesting again. Not for everything, China will probably remain a big factory, but shipping $1 plastic toys around the world will most likely stop being profitable.

That's just some thoughts. Yes, we might have to change how we live. Some of that will take away a few comforts. Some of

Re:Grab some popcorn

[danbert8]

...in the long term (hundreds/thousands of years), once the pace of change has settled down, some (mostly higher) latitudes will likely be significantly better off. However lower latitudes will likely be significantly worse off...

Looking at a globe, there appears to be far more landmass at higher latitudes than lower latitudes... So what you are saying is that despite a potentially better off climate in the long term for our species, you'd rather sacrifice the long term benefits for a short term gain. Maybe instead of spending money to stop CO2 emissions and to build taller levees on the coasts, we spend those emissions and resources to relocate and focus future building in areas that will benefit from climate change? Nahh, people love the short term benefits. Build those beach houses on an atoll barely above sea level in a hurricane prone area. When it gets wiped out, you'll have a nice sob story so the person with a house on the side of a mountain in Colorado will pay taxes and donate money to help you rebuild.

I'll support immigration reform (plenty of land to benefit from climate change in Alaska...) and tax benefits to relocate away from the coasts over building ever higher walls to save New Orleans and many other coastal cities from the inevitable.

Not Gonna Happen

[Shogun37]

Even ONE of these companies has more cash on hand to fight this than NYC. Expect this to get tied up in court, until the heat death of the universe. Not saying that NYC might not be right, but this will be seen as a life or death fight. Probably, this might not be much more than a money grab, seeing as how NYC already taxes everything that moves (and quite a few that don't.) Going to be interesting, to say the least.

Didn't Shakespeare Write About This?

[dryriver]

To combust fossil fuels, or not combust fossil fuels? That is the question— Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to cherish The Dollars and cents of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of electrical Tesla cars, And, by opposing, end them? To die, to sleep— No more—and by a sleep to say we end The heartache and the thousand natural shocks That environmentalism is heir to—’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished! To die, to sleep. To sleep, perchance to make profit—ay, there’s the rub, For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this drilling site, Must give us pause. There’s the respect That makes dogshit of everybody's life.

Re:Didn't Shakespeare Write About This?

[ClickOnThis]

Get thee to a nunnery.

Oil Tax

[h8sg8s]

This is what you do when what you really want is an "oil tax" but know your already heavily-taxed citizens wouldn't stand for it. NYC would have a leg to stand on if, before filing a lawsuit, they banned all internal combustion cars in the city as well as turning off all petrochemical heating in the and all electricity from petrochemical sources. Until then, this is just a joke.

Re:Oil Tax

[bobbied]

Agreed, this is basically a joke, until NYC banns the import f all fossil fuels and energy sources which are derived from fossil fuels including electricity.

Have fun pushing the subway train in the dark and staying warm though the winter.

Re: Oil Tax

[omnichad]

They actually can't do that. The federal government has jurisdiction over interstate commerce.

Re: Oil Tax

[bobbied]

Yea I know.. I was telling the CITY to do this, they are the ones who filed suit. Until they do, I don't figure they are actually serious about the damage fossil fuels they are claiming and are just looking for a payday.

Surely they can regulate the importation and sale of fossil fuels within their borders and sever any electrical connections on their own. Show us they are serious about this and I'll give them credit for being consistent... Stupid, but consistent.

Re: Oil Tax

[omnichad]

Surely they can regulate the importation ... and sever any electrical connections

No and no. What part of "States don't have the power to regulate interstate commerce" for you not understand?

You could regulate the sale - for example, taxing it. But Jersey is a few miles away. People only have to drive across the state line to fill up. Yeah, that will get frustrating real quick, but consumers don't have a more viable alternative just yet.

Re: Oil Tax

[mark-t]

Income tax in the lower tax brackets is comparable to the USA, but at higher levels, the tax can get much higher than the USA. I think at the highest level a person can be giving up 40% of their income just in income tax.

Also, Canadian employees have to pay their own EI premiums and pension (comparable to social security in the USA), which is deducted from their gross pay, rather than being paid by the employer as it is in the USA. The net result, even where the income tax level itself is comparable, is that Canadians have a lower level of take-home pay than those in the US.

And you think *YOU* have it bad for gas? The cheapest place to buy gasoline in all of Canada is in the province of Alberta, where it is currently sitting at about $1cdn per liter, which works out to $3.50 usd/gallon. Where I live, the price is over $5 usd/gallon.

Re: Oil Tax

[Mashiki]

The cheapest place to buy gasoline in all of Canada is in the province of Alberta, where it is currently sitting at about $1cdn per liter, which works out to $3.50 usd/gallon. Where I live, the price is over $5 usd/gallon.

So you're in a remote location but that's a problem? But let's also convert the price, it's actually $2.99/USD/gallon for fuel in Alberta(Pop 4m), that's because you forgot the conversion. In Ontario(pop 14.7m) however, you can easily hit $5/USD/gallon. Bread is also $8/loaf, and it's $40 for 24 cans of coke or pepsi in that location. Most prices for fuel in the US is around 2.25/USD/gal to $2.80/gal. Which works out to being $2.84/CAD/gal to $3.51CAD/gallon.

Right now, gas is running about $1.20/l or $4.50/gal Canadian. Or $3.59Gal USD in most of Ontario.

Re:Oil Tax

[david_thornley]

In other words, let he who is without sin file the first lawsuit? It's stupid to sue someone for fraud if you're a customer?

Re:Oil Tax

[bobbied]

No.. It's "I'm going to continue to buy your goods while I sue you for selling dangerous goods."

Would you sue somebody for making an unsafe car, while you continue to by the same exact car every time you need a new one? What does that say about how dangerous it is?

I'm telling NYC that I don't think they are serious about safety if they don't stop using the dangerous product in favor of the alternates that exist. Just filing the lawsuit isn't enough. Be consistent..

Re: Oil Tax

[mark-t]

I'm not in anything resembling a remote location, actually. I live in the third largest city in Canada.

Re: Oil Tax

[omnichad]

If the oil is not drilled in NY, the point still stands. My guess is there's not a lot of that.

Also, do you propose having a border gate for the city? Cars and trucks can just drive back and forth - even tanker trucks. This was about the importation portion, not the sale.

Re:Oil Tax

[david_thornley]

It's perfectly legal and OK to buy dangerous goods, and NYC has done a lot more to reduce per capita CO2 production than most US cities. It's also perfectly legal to say your goods aren't dangerous if that's what you honestly believe.

What the oil companies did is to find out that global warming was happening (there's internal documents) and lie about it to keep their businesses going. That's fraud. This almost certainly increased overall global CO2 emissions, and that harms NYC.

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..

[Anonymous Coward]

The oil companies should turn around and sue the city for allowing it's citizens to burn fossil fuel without requiring them to offset the carbon with trees etc.

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..

[aaarrrgggh]

Exactly; should the utilities be able to claw back dividends paid to the pension funds?!

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.

Re:Interesting idea..

[matthewd]

In addition, check NYC bond offerings. Have they disclosed the known risks of climate change when they need to borrow money? Or are they hiding these risks from investors and committing some financial fraud?

If the known risks of climate change were disclosed surely borrowing costs would be higher.

Re:Interesting idea..

[matthewd]

And if they hadn't "covered it up" (going back to the 70's/80's, if I remember the claims correctly), what action would the cities have taken to mitigate the release of CO2?

If cities feel duped by oil companies that their product is destroying the environment and poses an existential threat, what would they have done differently had they known?

Ban cars, trucks, gasoline, oil, plastics and chemicals produced from crude oil?

IANAL and IANAJ, but I should think a logical requirement for the cities to prevail should be for the cities to demonstrate there is some reasonable action that they would have taken had this "fraud" not been committed.

Re:Interesting idea..

[Anonymous Coward]

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

This isn't true.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/exxonmobil-climate-change-oil-gas-fossil-fuels-global-warming-harvard-a7908541.html

At the very least Exxon mislead and suppressed evidence that GHGs were driving some portion of climate change. It will be interesting to see if this court case proves that Exxon was lying, and what the future ramifications of those lies are, in much the same way that Big Tobacco has been taken to task over their lies regarding tobacco's health impacts.

Re:Interesting idea..

[quantaman]

And if they hadn't "covered it up" (going back to the 70's/80's, if I remember the claims correctly), what action would the cities have taken to mitigate the release of CO2?

Possibly nothing.

The point isn't that cities specifically would have done X if Oil Companies hadn't deceived them about climate change.

The point is the product produced by Oil Companies harms cities, and the Oil Companies covered up that harm.

IANAL and IANAJ, but I should think a logical requirement for the cities to prevail should be for the cities to demonstrate there is some reasonable action that they would have taken had this "fraud" not been committed.

IANAL either but the cities should only need to show that if not for the fraud then someone would have taken action to reduce the damages.

And that's a trivial bar to clear. Non-carbon energy sources were around for this entire period and would have received much more investment and development. The Kyoto protocol which would have reduced CO2 emissions, and damages, failed in large part because of the disinformation campaign from the Oil Industry.

Without the cover up we'd have much less CO2 in the atmosphere and thus fewer damages, both now and especially in the future, from global warming.

Re:Interesting idea..

[drinkypoo]

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

Bullshit. For example, Chevron bought up the battery patents from the Honda Insight and then refused to license them. Or how BP (and DuPont) have a biofuel arm which has been suing GE Energy Ventures' biofuel arm to prevent them from making and selling butanol.

Re:Interesting idea..

[quantaman]

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.

They're cheaper only if you don't count the externalized costs of the environment damage, costs that they deliberately hid.

There's two ways to deal with that.

The standard liberal approach is government regulation.

The standard libertarian approach is a lawsuit, which is exactly what NYC is doing.

Re:Interesting idea..

[Namarrgon]

The American Petroleum Institute, in particular its members Exxon and Chevron, have been funding denial and manufacturing doubt ever since their own scientists told them of the risks of continued fossil fuel use back in the 80s (here is an empirical study describing their efforts to deny and deliberately misrepresent climate science findings, including from their own scientists).

And the reason fossil fuels appeared as cheap as they did was because the huge emission and pollution costs were being borne by the public, rather than the industry. If these externalised costs were factored in, the price of coal-fired electricity would triple (study) - and the RoI for investment in alternatives like renewables or nuclear would have been much larger. Likewise, the health and other external costs of oil exceeded $56 billion annually back in 2005, adding at least 23 to 38 cents per gallon (again without including climate costs).

External costs are a market failure. Regulation is one option to correct that failure, but it's not the only possible option. Feel free to choose a solution that fits your political preferences, but ignoring or hand-waving away the problem won't make it go away. You'll still be paying for it, with excessive health premiums, illnesses and lost productivity, and tens of thousands of avoidable deaths every year.

Re:Interesting idea..

[Anonymous Coward]

The downside with lawsuits after the fact is a) they're too late to prevent the damage, b) they rarely end up compensating the public who suffered the damage, and c) all too often the damaging entity no longer exists to be sued.

Re:Interesting idea..

[LynnwoodRooster]

Additionally, wasn't NYC and the State also a willing participant in the sale of gasoline and financial partners in the money people paid (tax) on the gasoline? They license people to sell the product, they financially benefit from the sale of the product, then turn around and sue the supplier of the product for allowing it to be sold and consumed in the first place!

Re:Interesting idea..

[AmiMoJo]

Even if they weren't spending money on FUD, the fact is that they produced energy at the lowest cost TO THEM. The rest was distributed unevenly among everyone.

Re:Interesting idea..

[Namarrgon]

the same companies that fund almost ALL climate research

[Citation needed], but nice try at deflection. CRU itself says:

The Unit undertakes both pure and applied research, sponsored almost entirely by external contracts and grants from academic funding councils, government departments, intergovernmental agencies, charitable foundations, non-governmental organisations, commerce and industry.

Then there's NOAA and NASA, whose funding is from the government, not the fossil fuel industry, not to mention universities all over the world that run primarily on government grants. Do you have any evidence for this "$1 billion a year" from Big Oil? Or is it all undeclared, like Willie Soon's?

If Big Oil is such a proponent of climate change research, then how come over 80% of their public statements about it are misleading or outright denial?

Re:Interesting idea..

[poptix]

Precisely this.

You can't fund something, profit from it, then sue the company you funded for doing their job in the legally mandated most fiscally responsible and (legally) profitable way of doing so for more profit.

This is all about politicians trying to make news. The sad thing is that many of the "oil companies" (energy companies) have been investing in clean energy now that it's viable without subsidies, this will probably cause funds to be diverted from that.

Re:Interesting idea..

[david_thornley]

The oil companies suppressed nothing

False. They suppressed climate research, and funded campaigns to get climate science vilified.

they produced energy at the lowest possible cost is all.

Corporations have an obligation to stay legal while reducing costs. The oil companies didn't. They deliberately lied to keep their profits coming. That's fraud.

Also, it isn't the lowest possible cost to all. There's a whole lot of externalities going on that really should be folded into their prices to allow the market to work properly.

Re:Interesting idea..

[bobbied]

Boy, did you fall for the propaganda.. The Chevron issue is a patent infringement case where Chevron was attempting to protect its patents from those who where allegedly violating their license terms. They are not refusing to license the technology, it was licensed, they are attempting to enforce the terms of the license.

But it doesn't fit your "Oil Companies bad" narrative so you don't see it that way I guess..

Re:Can alcoholics sue a distillery now?

[Anonymous Coward]

The alcohol industry hasn't tried to cover that up with a massive provable effort in fraud, though. Sorry bitch polluter apologist / drunk

Sue people who use oil

[cyberspittle]

lol

Isn't divesting meaningless?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you buy stock from an oil company as opposed to a third party, how can they profit from your 'investment'?

Correct response from oil company should be...

[SuperKendall]

Wait, you guys did WHAT with that oil we sold you? Do you know how hard that crap is to get out of the ground and make nice and smooth?

Well I guess if you can't care for oil properly that means *no more oil for YOU*.

Re:Correct response from oil company should be...

[MellowBob]

Thank you for punishing us for selling to you what you need to live! Please, Sir, can I have another?

Re:Correct response from oil company should be...

[bobbied]

Well I guess if you can't care for oil properly that means *no more oil for YOU*.

Oh if only the world were so lucky then we could switch over to wind/solar/nuclear in under a year.

Sue the Oil Companies out of existence and we will have to do that you know..

Re:Correct response from oil company should be...

[roc97007]

Well I guess if you can't care for oil properly that means *no more oil for YOU*.

Oh if only the world were so lucky then we could switch over to wind/solar/nuclear in under a year.

Sue the Oil Companies out of existence and we will have to do that you know..

The survivors would anyway.

Reminds me of a reporter's conversation with a young lady during Occupy Wall Street.

Reporter: "But what about all the people that would die?"
Young lady: "Well, people die."

Re:Correct response from oil company should be...

[phantomfive]

Well I guess if you can't care for oil properly that means *no more oil for YOU*.

Oh if only the world were so lucky then we could switch over to wind/solar/nuclear in under a year.

Sue the Oil Companies out of existence and we will have to do that you know..

Do you realize that most oil is not actually used in electricity production?

Re:Correct response from oil company should be...

[danbert8]

I really wish that was a legal option. Every time people go out and mass protest the construction of a new pipeline, companies should turn off the pumps on existing pipelines... It would end protests pretty quick when they could no longer drive to protest sites.

Hell I live in the state of Georgia which is pretty much entirely dependent on two pipelines (actually 5ish pipes) to provide fuel for most of the state (Savannah area gets it by ship), but the legislature killed a new pipeline project that would have connected those pipelines to Florida (who gets zero fuel from pipes since there are no pipelines into the state). It didn't help that that new pipeline would have gone through Savannah and the port owners didn't want the competition and were politically connected... But no, it was all about the environment!

Atlanta went nuts when fuel became scarce when Colonial shut down twice in one year for a week or so. Imagine how quickly opinions on pipelines would change if all the pipes stopped...

Re:Correct response from oil company should be...

[danbert8]

Perhaps, but how much electricity production relies on oil to keep producing power? How do you think all those solar panels, wind turbines, and power distribution systems get built and maintained?

Also, liquid fossil fuels aren't big in the power industry, but gas fuels are becoming increasingly common (often produced along with the liquids) and solid fuels are still quite the staple of electricity production.

Re:Correct response from oil company should be...

[david_thornley]

In other words, when someone complains of corporate misconduct, the corporation should do its best to punish the complainer and everyone else in sight, and leave the customer base in a state of fear lest someone else dare complain. I'm sure you can get children to turn in their parents for re-education if you do it right.

Re:Correct response from oil company should be...

[roc97007]

Exactly.

Re:Can alcoholics sue a distillery now?

[Opportunist]

Care to explain why you used winos and distilleries instead of smokers and the tobacco industry? ;)

Yay, it's popcorn time again!

[Opportunist]

Gather 'round kids, watch the shills from both sides duke it out for our entertainment!

Re:Yay, it's popcorn time again!

[roc97007]

That was actually pretty clever.

What Percentage of NYC Electricity Comes from Foss

[btroy]

I assume since NYC is suing the oil companies, none of the politicians have driven a car, ridden a bus or used any kind of electricity that was produced from anything but clean energy.

Also, please make sure those windmills and solar panels were produced and delivered using clean-energy.

Don't get me wrong, I buy into clean energy, but come on...

Obviously

[MellowBob]

Since oil companies are causing evil climate change and should be punished for it by NYC, the NYC would understand if evil oil companies stop selling oil/gas in NYC.

Re:Obviously

[MDMurphy]

That would be interesting:

On the advice of our lawyers, the continued sale of our products in the city of NY would not be in our best interest. Until the resolution of the case we have stopped selling any heating oil, gasoline or natural gas with the borders of the city of New York.

For some reason I'm reminded of this old joke:

http://www.medical-jokes.com/a...

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:It's probably just a left wing public attorney

[Shogun37]

You're probably right. I would rather we get our worst industries (pollution wise) off the planet, rather than drop back down to 1500's level of technology, but most politicians seem to want to use global warming as either a cash or power grab.

That didn't work for the tobacco companies

[rsilvergun]

although staling until a favorable administration was in place did.

Re:No chance of winning

[demonlapin]

Another DeBlasio fuck up. The city was a hell hole but that fucking Democrat really has done the worst job yet.

Not really about party, in this case. It's not like Bloomberg was really a Republican. However, the best pro-Bloomberg argument I ever heard was that yeah, he was a nanny-state limousine liberal, but at least he wasn't another one of the City Hall hacks that often find their way into the NYC mayor's office.

Re: Can alcoholics sue a distillery now?

[omnichad]

Because that example would reveal that the lawsuits are successful

Re:WTF are they smoking? I wants some

[bobbied]

Subways you have to push, Intersections with Traffic cops instead of lights, horse and buggies back on broad way along with an army of street cleaners to keep the, um, horse droppings picked up. And did I mention the smell of all the people w/o AC in the summer or water to shower with year round if they live above the 5th floor?

then stop selling

[ohgary]

Ok, stop selling any fuel within NYC. Lets stop this global warming. Lets see how much people want global warming when there is no gas to be found in NYC?

Fire, aim, ready

[RightwingNutjob]

Where to start? Here's a few off the top of my head:
1. Petrochemicals are not just used for fuel, they are used to make plastics, fertilizer, and other chemicals (and medicines) that make modern standards of living possible, and prop up the lifestyle of every single New Yorker, from limousine liberal Manhattanite to hipster-doofus Brooklynite and everyone in between.
2. Most CO2 come from burning coal, not oil, and not in Western countries.
3. As others point out, as admitted shareholders, NYC is suing itself here. Great use of taxpayer dollars.
4. Global warming is a hoax. Given the fervor of the lefties about it in recent months, I'm honestly starting to believe that even the science is a hoax, not just the politics of it. Really. Honest to God.

Good

[shufflingb]

Good I hope they take the planet destroying a*holes to the cleaners. That industry has known since 1959 when that left wing loon Edward Teller told them that their product was likely to lead to climate change https://www.theguardian.com/en... and by implication millions of deaths and the destruction of large parts of the planet. Their response - carry on selling the poison.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

You fucking incredible moron! YOU are equally as responsible for climate change as they are, you ignorant self righteous idiot! Get off the fucking internet, sell your car, and go live in a fucking cave if you want to be self righteous enough to blame everyone else for your first world comfortable life. Dipshit. Just pure dipshit.

so, new york city stops getting oil

[roc97007]

Good luck with that.

Re:so, new york city stops getting oil

[iggymanz]

actually natural gas fired generators their biggest source for electrical power (nuclear # 2 by the way) ; but yeah the city was built and exists now because of fossil fuel.

hypocrites and idiots with no conception of how their world works.

sure, it's great to be going to non-polluting sources of energy but that's effort they have to make.

Re: so, new york city stops getting oil

[roc97007]

Right, they have to actually make the effort. But it's far easier to file a lawsuit. Especially if one has lawyers on tap paid for by tax money

Re:so, new york city stops getting oil

[iggymanz]

that is utter nonsense, fossil fuels would be used anyway, warnings about pollution are decades old. New York did use and is using fossil fuels for its very existence, they have no basis for lawsuit. they are the polluters, they burned the fuel and continue to burn it. your "logic" sounds like the parasites who can't accept that their actions have consequences and are looking for handouts for the screwups they themselves made

Cause they are the worst off?

[Kellamity]

Flooding and erosion? Maybe Australia and New Zealand can sue for all the skin cancer?

So if they win

[guruevi]

Will these big companies be able to sue NYC for the profits it had over the years thanks to technological development driven by these companies or will the residents be able to sue for the taxes NYC collected all these years without tending to the well-known erosion and flooding issues that have targeted the city for the last 40 years.

The city allowed significant development below the sea level and its land has been well known to be sinking for centuries, you can find news reports back to the 1820's about the situation that NYC is in.

Sue and Divest?

[MDMurphy]

Other than all the other obvious social engineering comments about going after oil companies rather than people who burn the fuel, I'm also annoyed by the whole divestiture thing.

Who are the oil companies? The guys on the oil rigs? The executives? Or the stockholders? If New York has all these funds that are invested in petroleum companies, wouldn't it make them the owners?

Selling your stock before a big lawsuit ? If they are the owners of the companies they are suing, I'd love to see a court insist they hold onto the stock until the conclusion of the suit. If for some inexplicable reason they win a big settlement it would likely drive down the value of the stock they hold in those companies. Seems fair to me.

Andrew Cuomo

[tomhath]

This is publicity whoring for Cuomo. He'll be announcing his candidacy for President in a few weeks. Expect plenty more of the same over the next couple of years.

Re:Smoke up whos arse

[CaptainDork]

It's a duality of assholery, either way.

We all should sue Bill de Blasio

[TimSSG]

We all should sue Bill de Blasio, mayor of NYC for being a waster of good oxygen while outputting CO2. Tim S.

No basis for a case

[MobyDisk]

This sounds like politics not law. I doubt they cannot be liable for environmental damages if they were following the environmental regulations. If anything, NYC is liable for not setting sufficient environmental laws to prevent the damage. There is definitely precedent for regulatory bodies to be sued if they knew their regulations were not sufficient. This sounds similar to how a boat captain cannot be sued for mishaps so long as the ship was up to standards and the captain didn't do anything negligent. Basically: If you followed the regulations, you are not liable. Even stranger is that, of course, since CO2 build-up in NYC can happen because of fossil fuels burnt in London, the entire case is completely out the window.

As for the whole divestment thing, that's done all the time and isn't even newsworthy. That's the other reason I suspect someone is just starting an early re-election campaign.

Re: No chance of winning

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not double taxation. You are expected to pay federal like everyone else. Now you just are forced to face how bad your local gov has you bent over.

NYC: here's the solution

[NikeHerc]

NYC, if you're seriously concerned about global warming due to use of fossil fuels, disconnect all the electric lines going into the city if the power source is driven by fossil fuels, then prevent the sale, use, or transportation of fossil fuels within the city. If you don't stop the consumption of fossil fuels, then you are nothing but slimy hypocrites trying to engender favorable press coverage for political advantage.

one important bit

[adfraggs]

"evidence that firms such as Exxon knew of the impact of climate change for decades, only to downplay and even deny this in public" That's pretty much it. If they knew that their product was doing damage and they worked to suppress this information then that's what they are culpable for. Actually mining and delivery a product that we demanded and paid for ... that's not the kind of thing you sue someone for. But if you sell me something and lie to me in the process, it's the lie that gets you in trouble.

Fix their rails?

[SumDog]

I feel there are questionable elements to the current research on man induced climate change (not to mention there are sooo many other forms of pollution that are way worse that we really need to stop. There's a toxic lake in China where byproduced are dumped from manufacturing all of our cheap crap).

However, I'm for this if they use the god damn money to fix their crumbling rail infrastructure. Penn Station needs to be completely renovated, and the subways are in desperate need of maintenance. But knowing the city officials in terribly corrupt cities like NYC, I'm sure it will all go into the pockets of big money contractors and fat cats.

Much Easier

[rally2xs]

Just outlaw all gasoline and diesel sales in New York State. Problem solved. It would fix that, and them.

Frivolous lawsuits based on junk science

[leereyno]

What's next, lawsuits against XM for destruction of the luminiferous aether?

Or maybe a suit against a logging company for destroying the habitats of unicorns?

Re:Next Up: Stop providing oil to NYC immediately

[Vinegar Joe]

Exactly. Stop the gas and gas tax flowing see NYC politicians hanging from lampposts in 24 hours.

Re: Can alcoholics sue a distillery now?

[Opportunist]

Shhhh, it's more fun when they realize it themselves.

Yellow Cab

[MoarSauce123]

NYC should do its part as well and stop yellow cabs driving around aimlessly in anticipation of customers. Have distributed waiting areas for the taxis to park and a means to call a cab that shows up at the street corner a few minutes later. That will not only minimize the waste of gas, but also reduce traffic, and reduce the fine dust emissions from exhaust and rubber tires hitting crappy roads.

Re:Not the question of whether NYC will lose.

[MoarSauce123]

It is a similar case like the proceedings against tobacco companies. Or do you argue that they were without fault because they did not force anyone to light up?

Re:Reclaiming needless subsidies

[danbert8]

The gas company is the one with the money and they are the source of the problem.

Says the addict who probably still stops to fill up their car several times a month... Pass that buck on. You know climate change is real, but you still have a gas powered car, burn natural gas to heat your home and probably to cook with, and chances are good the electricity you are using to type comments on Slashdot doesn't come from solar or wind...

Re:Can alcoholics sue a distillery now?

[TheRaven64]

A better analogy would be a tobacco company. Can a smoker sue a tobacco company that covered up reports of health damage as a result of smoking and continued to sell their products without any health warnings for decades after they became aware that they cause cancer and death? The answer, by the way, is yes and they have done so successfully.

Only public policy matters

[sjbe]

Says the addict who probably still stops to fill up their car several times a month.

Do you have a better option for transportation than subsidized fossil fuel powered vehicles? No you do not. And why do we only have the one option? Because we subsidize fossil fuels directly to the tune of around $5 trillion per year globally and considerably more indirectly in the pollution we allow to be emitted without cost.

You know climate change is real, but you still have a gas powered car, burn natural gas to heat your home and probably to cook with, and chances are good the electricity you are using to type comments on Slashdot doesn't come from solar or wind...

Grow up. What I do individually doesn't make any meaningful difference. At all. The only way to fight climate change in a meaningful way is with regulations at the nation state level. You pretend otherwise at all of our peril. Your lame attempt to paint me as a hypocrite might have some bite if there was actually another realistic option beside subsidized fossil fuels. Solar only seems expensive because coal and gas don't have to pay for the pollution they cause. Seriously smart guy, explain to me how we transition the general public off of fossil fuel power without taxing the heck out of it and removing both direct and indirect subsidies.

Oh and for the record I actually do have solar panels on my house, I pay for renewable generated power on my electric bill and my wife drives a hybrid that requires zero gas for her daily commute. As soon as there is an option that makes sense I will happily drop my daily driver for an EV. I've replaced every light bulb in my house with LEDs, my water heater is tankless so I don't burn gas needlessly, and I have recently installed a high efficiency furnace and upgraded insulation. While I recognize that none of this will move the needle on climate change, I'm doing my part anyway. And in some cases it actually saves me money which is a nice bonus.

Re:Only public policy matters

[ChrisMaple]

...if there was actually another realistic option beside subsidized fossil fuels

Too many words. Try this:

...if there was actually another realistic option beside fossil fuels

Because there is not now a realistic alternative to widespread use of fossil fuels. This is based on the reality disclosed by chemistry, physics, etc.. Implicit in the claim that fossil fuel providers should be penalized for providing fossil fuels is the belief that there is some magical way to live in an advanced civilization without any pollution whatsoever. This is only one of many lunacies of the political left.

Re:Only public policy matters

[david_thornley]

The fossil fuel providers have been lying about the harm they do in the process. Apparently the political right doesn't care about paying for the damage they cause, or telling the truth.

Legal precedent isn't on NYC's side

[RogueWarrior65]

You can't sue a company for misuse of its products.

Re:Legal precedent isn't on NYC's side

[david_thornley]

You can sue companies for lying about bad effects of their products. It worked against tobacco companies.

Re:Legal precedent isn't on NYC's side

[RogueWarrior65]

You can't sue a liquor company for your DUI conviction or because said DUI convict killed somebody else.
You also can't sue the bar for not preventing you from driving drunk.
Of course, drinking and smoking are all entirely optional in life. It's impossible to exist in the modern world without energy.

Re:Legal precedent isn't on NYC's side

[WeezulDK]

Yet people are suing gun manufacturers using the same logic (selling them the gun that kills someone else)

Re:Legal precedent isn't on NYC's side

[david_thornley]

What liquor company has said its products won't get you a DUI if you drink and drive? It's not a matter of selling a potentially dangerous product, it's a matter of lying about it.

Change the laws

[huckamania]

Until then it is a legal activity.

Re:Change the laws

[Xest]

No, that seems to be a common misconception, until the court rules whether they're legally liable for damages in this court case then we don't know if they've broken the law or not. That's really the point of courts - to decide those things - not random people on Slashdot.

Even if there's no criminal liability that doesn't remove the possibility of civil liability and that still has to be based on the breach of some law, which is really the point of cases like this, to test whether they can be held civilly liable for damages due to negligence or similar.

Re: Change the laws

[esonik]

But if it's a damaging legal activity you can sue for damages. Which is what's happening.

Re:Change the laws

[sycodon]

So...what...you want to outlaw all fossil fuel?

Do you have any fucking idea what that would mean or are you just some asshole SJW who doesn't bother to think through what you are saying?

Libtard alert

[huckamania]

Taking tax breaks that are available to all companies is not a subsidy. You are delusional and outing your condition on slashdot.

Mis-directed?

[kenh]

It wasn't the oil companies that burned the fuel to pollute the air, it was the vehicle operators

This is like holding gun manufacturers responsible for gun deaths, or ammunition manufacturers to be specific, rather than the person that pulled the trigger.

This is like holding fast-food restaurants responsible for their customer's obesity, rather than blame the customer that repeatedly made a poor diet choice.

Why not just take the billions you want from the oil companies, divide it by the number of legally registered cars and trucks in the state of New York and make a one-time assessment of each driver of their fair share?

Re: Reclaiming needless subsidies

[esonik]

Don't worry, the gas users will pay eventually because gas companies will have to raise prices to account for the damages they have to pay and factoring in risks of being sued for more damages.
There are a lot of coastal cities.

just so I am clear

[superwiz]

Does NYC prefer that no product of oil companies reach NYC? If they are suing the Oil companies for providing their product, does that mean the NYC politicians are unequivocally against those products being sold in NYC? So if no gasoline was available in NYC, that would see it as an improvement? Yes, I get that they are suing to recoup externalities, but that's already recouped through tax. They can increase the tax if they think it doesn't recoup the externalities fully. If they are suing, that mean they have to allege that something untowardly has taken place. Which means that they would be Ok with having Oil companies exit the NYC market. Are they? Really? Ironically, the aftermath of hurricane Sandy (when most gas stations in NY/NJ area were off line) would be a nice preview of what would happen.

Criminal Justice system needs to get involved

[TiggertheMad]

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.

One should not get sued over that. One should be imprisoned over that.It is knowingly committing fraud, and technically conspiracy to commit manslaughter, as climate change on the scale we are seeing is going to directly lead to a non-zero number of deaths. (manslaughter, as murder is usually reserved for death with intent, but manslaughter is more typically applied to negligent death cases).

Better target...

[MercTech]

The better target of vindictive lawsuits would be to sue those who did unlawful acts instead of legal acts in years past. Sue the drug pushers and smugglers for reparations for addiction instead. The last time I looked; it was not lawful to make something illegal and apply it retroactively. Or do these high dollar attorneys in NYC see a cash cow of public outrage to milk over an issue that is another nothing burger but lucrative to tie up in court for decades?

Now Version 3

[huckamania]

ICOADS Release 3.0 (R3.0) was completed in June 2016 with data covering 1662-2014, plus preliminary data and products for 2015-present in near-real-time.

Data to suit your needs is not science. One of the many, many complaints I have with Climate Science. Of course many believe that if you don't believe in Climate Change, what ever that implies, than you are not a scientist. Bill Nye believes that AGW has forestalled the next Ice Age. Why he still thinks AGW is bad is just part of what makes him and Al such great spokes models.

Re:I can picture it now

[WeezulDK]

Or the doctor from that movie diagnosing the climate: "I see what your problem is, your climate's all fucked up and your shit's out of whack" lol

Crude prices up recently, so a good time to divest

[rmdingler]

Versus when others chose to divest portfolios: Harvard University activists were an early proponent of divesting from companies associated with fossil fuels, but the wheels of change moved so slowly, the legendary portfolio actually lost money from fallling oil prices before the pressure to sell off these assets reached a crescendo.

After finally winning the divestment prompted the sell off of petroleum and coal assets at a time of market downturn.