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Ask Slashdot: Can a City Really Sue an Oil Company For Climate Change? (wired.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The city of Richmond, California, is suing Chevron, its largest employer and its largest public-safety scourge. But while industrial accidents like refinery fires are commonplace in the low-lying industrial town, that's not what this lawsuit is about. Richmond and six other California cities are suing oil companies for contributing to the changing climate, which threatens to inundate their shorelines. "In an era of federal deregulation and rising seas, these lawsuits feel increasingly urgent," writes deputy editor Adam Rogers. "The question is whether the courts will even see them as plausible."
The lawsuits face two big legal hurdles: getting scientific proof that climate change (and specific companies causing climate change) are to blame for the cities' woes, along with overcoming oil companies' contention that cities can't sue them at all, since at the federal level, they're beholden to the Clean Air Act. But the urban plaintiffs have a plan for that. They are not asking for new regulations or bans; they're asking for reparations for a problem they say oil companies willfully hid from them. "Oil and gas, like cigarettes, are products. The companies that sell them are liable for the damages they cause," says Sharon Eubanks, an attorney at Bordas & Bordas who was lead counsel in the Justice Department's RICO case against the Philip Morris tobacco company. "They have misled the public about the product's dangers."
The lawsuits face two big legal hurdles: getting scientific proof that climate change (and specific companies causing climate change) are to blame for the cities' woes, along with overcoming oil companies' contention that cities can't sue them at all, since at the federal level, they're beholden to the Clean Air Act. But the urban plaintiffs have a plan for that. They are not asking for new regulations or bans; they're asking for reparations for a problem they say oil companies willfully hid from them. "Oil and gas, like cigarettes, are products. The companies that sell them are liable for the damages they cause," says Sharon Eubanks, an attorney at Bordas & Bordas who was lead counsel in the Justice Department's RICO case against the Philip Morris tobacco company. "They have misled the public about the product's dangers."
As long as the people of the city drive cars and burn various fuel oils, it's their fault, too.
Even the POTUS doesn't believe in climate change (induced by men)
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
And David doesn't win. The oil companies have revenue that is larger than the GDP of some countries. They have infinitely more legal power as well. I doubt this will go anywhere and the only folks that suffer are the tax payers of Richmond, CA. Their tax dollars are going to get wasted on a folley.
Depends if a Democrat or Republican is Mayor. Party City has a paper factory and smoke stack in downtown San Fransisco and there's nothing the people can do.
It's really not surpising Democrats are covering up 9-11-2001 and Operation Crossfire Hurricane. If Trump had been involved there'd be a never-ending investigation for sure. ae911truth dot org
it's no wonder the rich are getting richer when public funds can squandered by a self serving group of plutocrats and bureaucrats on a self serving and corrupt judiciary.
Nothing will change until we the people change.
What about 3) the fact that the city and all its inhabitants were happy to take advantage of over a century of oil production? They were willing and happy participants until it became politically incorrect to do so. Many politicians on both sides took money from the oil companies and passed laws to help them drill and refine, and were glad to do so because of the jobs and income it provided. Everyone whose house has electricity or drives a car are just as liable as the people drilling it.
We all know how the tobacco farmers were made to pay for growing their toxic product, and driven into bankruptcy,
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
The problem is people buying the oil and burning it. Don't go blame the company selling it to you.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Suing a company for providing what customers want and need? It would be different if they were NOT giving what people wanted or were misleading their customers or they were directly damaging the environment or workers during/in production. Suing for climate change really makes little sense. This is a regulatory issue. It would be like suing car makers because cars create traffic jams, suing cattle ranchers because cows emit methane, suing paving companies because people are killed on roads more than when not on roads, or suing salt miners because salt is used a lot in winter climate areas and can contaminate the surrounding soil.
If you want to address climate change, then first and foremost, create innovative and competitive alternatives. Find ways to minimize the impact of existing systems. Find ways to reduce demand through efficiency. Educate people and consumers. And down the list, use sensible economic incentives to stimulate the above.
Of course a city can sue an oil company for climate change. You can sue anybody for anything.
But will they succeed? Well, that's up to the courts.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
No Davis, you're a moron.
....cant stop it, apocalypse coming, hoot hoot! Off to Radio Shack to loot, toot toot!
sue the drivers for not biking to work
Chevron is the largest employer in the city. The city has been making money off oil for about sixty years, and now claims it was "mislead". Chevron should send the city thirty silver dollars.
Soaking Chevron for much-needed funds to support its indolent citizens, and raping white girls.
Yes, a city can sue an oil company for damages because they've already done it.
Also, as soon as the PLCAA is overturned (that's the 2005 law that makes firearms manufacturers the only industry that is exempt from civil lawsuits when their products harm people), you will see an overwhelming avalanche of lawsuits that will flip the entire gun control discussion in the US. Making corporations accountable for the external costs of what they do will be the legal trend of the coming decades. They've been getting a free ride long enough.
You are welcome on my lawn.
An individual, or a city, can sue anyone else for any reason. So the answer is "yes, they can really sue". It's a free county. But whether they have any chance of winning is a different story entirely.
This is obviously just a bunch of virtue-signalling by west-coast SJWs. But they're going to bite off more than they can chew. They were not paying attention to the news. Chevron just finished making mincemeat out of a corrupt lawyer who was also attempting to shake them down for bogus environmental claims, using bogus judgements from bribed judges in some South American banana-republic. Chevron is not going to settle this scam suit either. They're going to go after these clowns, and make them deeply regret their bogus lawsuit.
Kilaeua has spewed out more junk into the atmosphere in its latest eruption that everything saved by Prius cars in a year. So sue the volcano.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Money and power don't always win in court. See Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein for example.
True, we're all complicit in climate change for using fossil fuels. But the allegation here is that Chevron actively lied and suppressed information about their product. That might be tough to defend.
These companies had and also exhibited knowledge of the damage they caused since the 70's. You don't know what you're talking about, you coal fired retard.
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Sorry, electricity and fossil fuels are not synonymous you retarded republican faggot. Go back to school.
They should sue cows. They produce more detrimental compounds on a larger scale.
Hypothetically, assuming they win, what do they plan to do with the the money? I cannot help thinking of this as a search for some cash which would be spent on issues having nothing to do with climate change.
... judging by the facts and stuff.
A better question is one of standing.
Product liability may or may not apply.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Seriously, I would like to see those that have had their CC's stolen to be held accountable. Once a few of these CIOs are held accountable, then businesses will change very quickly and security will matter more than saving a few dollars.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Then you are complicit as well, hypocrites.
it's about the oil companies running a decades long campaign to hide the effects of fossil fuels on the environment, often to prevent research into alternative and cleaner fuel sources.
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or don't believe in it then you won't seek alternatives. It's the age old question of "Who killed the electric car?".
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
With much of the San Francisco Bay Area and Central Valley expected to be underwater by 2100, it's going to take a lot levees to hold back rising water levels. The city/state/federal governments WILL NOT raise taxes to pay for this. With retirees outnumbering workers in 2030, the tax base will decline for 70+ years. Politicians in good conscience can't tax retirees who benefited from BIG OIL all their life.
Re: Not sacrificing freedom for expedient change.
Would you say the same (don't sacrifice freedom to get the rapid change) if the expedient change needed was sending an expensive rocket to shift to safety a giant, life killing asteroid that was predicted, with 97% certainty, to be going to impact Earth in 9 years?
So the freedom loss, say, was a proposed extra 5% income tax to be paid by every worker for 3 years, needed to pay for the super-accelerated "Manhattan project" to design, build, launch the system to prevent the asteroid impact.
Just curious what your opinion on that would be.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
You must really want to get the SLS up. Although I have to hand it you, that sort of thing just might get you enough money to get the damned thing off the pad.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Suing an oil company for climate change is like suing a farmer because you're fat.
What's truly immoral is trying to prevent us from solving the climate problem. I would rather sue Greenpeace for this crap:
http://english.yonhapnews.co.k...
When a city government can't keep it in their fiscal pants, they always find someone else to blame and foot the bill. Pension fund broke because they trusted a financial adviser who screwed the pooch and then said "Not my problem"? No worries, just raise taxes or create new ones. Nice work if you can get it.
Of course, the only people getting rich on this are the lawyers who get paid stupid amounts of money whether they win or lose. THOSE are the people who should be taxed heavily. But, of course, the lawyers run the government so they aren't going to tax themselves.
It seems you love to blame the PRODUCER and DISTRIBUTORS of methamphetamine. Bit hypocritical aint it??
In the US at least, nearly anybody can sue nearly anybody over nearly anything. This doesn't, of course, mean they can win. And I expect that Chevron has a lot more lawyers with a lot more talent and experience than does Richmond, CA.
As to their grounds...sorry, I'm no lawyer. There are reasonable grounds, but whether there are reasonable legal grounds is a separate question. So is whether the reasonable grounds can be proven.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
That's not the point though. In this case "David" is not right and does not deserve to win. You can hardly blame the oil companies for causing climate change when it is your use of their oil products which causes the harm. The oil companies are not the ones burning all the oil and producing the CO2, we are! Nobody is forcing anyone to burn oil people choose to do so either because there is no alternative, the alternative is too expensive or because they are unwilling to reduce their standard of living. We are working on developing cheaper, more effective alternatives but that takes time.
At some point, people have to take responsibility for their own actions. What's next? People suing fast food and candy companies claiming they are responsible for making people fat (No I'm not going to google that to check because I have a very sad feeling that it has probably already happened!).
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Creimy Dumpty sat on the wall,
Creimy Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses
And all the king's men
Couldn't put Creimy Dumpty
Together again.
Creimy-Dumpty official video by CVS (435M views, 12M subscribers):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Chris: here is an IQ test for you: please tell us what is the difference between the first half and the second half of the video?
P.S. That video is really funny anyway, it's like watching you stumbling over and over again. Of course, with 435,000,000+ views and 12,000,000+ subscribers, it is in a different ball park than the one you are used to be into.
Why sue one individual oil company when the disaster is caused by an industry on a global scale? Wouldn't it be more suitable to sue an organisation such as OPEC?
Why not go after the car industry as well for having actively decommissioning public transport in favour of cars in some areas?
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
What kind of a silly response is that. The question was whether you could sue, not whether you could win. The answer is obviously yes, to this example and to every single one you listed. I could sue you for the stupidity of your post.
You answered a question that wasn't asked.
The argument is that the oil companies have knowingly spread false information about climate change - false information that they knew to be true based on their own internal research - resulting in delays in legislation.
So their deception and the damaging results thereof are what the companies are being sued for.
Cars with internal combustion engines might not be good for the environment, but they're a HUGE improvement over ankle-deep horse shit.
In the late 19th century, every big city on earth was perpetually days from getting buried under mountains of horse poop. In Victorian-era London, authorities estimated that every road in the city would be knee-deep in poop & impassable within 3-5 days if anything disrupted the city's nonstop poop-removal efforts.
For big cities, cars were nothing short of a gift from god compared to the mess created by shitting horses.
If you extrapolated the amount of methane generated by horses in London circa 1880 to hypothetical levels we'd have in cities like LA, Tokyo, and Mumbai TODAY with the same per-capita "horsepower", the climactic effects of CO2 are probably pretty tame by comparison.
Sorry traitor, you lost already faggot. Mueller has your bitch hero and is about to string him up. You can fuck his bloated corpse when the traitor expires, though. Assuming you're in prison already also....
that doesn't mean you won't have your lawsuit tossed out, but you can in fact sue anyone for anything at all, up to and including conspiring to steal your bodily fluids
As a libertarian, I am happy to finally find SOMEONE dealing with polluting companies the right way. Not through taxes that effectively are paid by the poor, but through and honest trial where proof is shown and the judge can prevent the problem and force cleanup.
if gas and oil weren't used, the majority of the uses for it would have been coal. people have to heat their houses. without using heating oil, gas and other petro products, coal would have been used instead, which is worse. use of gasoline and oil has actually reduced pollution levels. petro is only responsible for 1/3 of U.S. carbon footprint anyway. what percentage chevron would be of that vs. their total contribution to the whole world amount of emissions has to be tiny.
Nor can you sue spoon companies for being fat, nail companies for flat tires, or sadly, the public education system for allowing these people to graduate.
Nor can you sue spoon companies for being fat, nail companies for flat tires, or sadly, the public education system for allowing these people to graduate.
Silly Response , You can simply download from 9apps or vidmate app
Sue every one of your own citizens that drives a car, heats their house with oil or natural gas, or flips switches and expects the lights to turn on. They are your enemy.....
There's 2 types of Trumpie - senile and inbred, or young and dumb and inbred. Thanks for demonstrating.
Everyone is taught in high school that burning hydrocarbons produces carbon dioxide.
The oil and gas industry has never tried to imply it doesn't.
Without oil, we have no plastic. You can't make solar panels without oil either.
20,000 years ago, most of Europe, northern Asia, Canada and the northern tier US states were covered by glaciers over a mile thick. CO2 was approx 200 ppm, and there were approximately one million homo sapiens sapiens on the entire planet. The cavemen were not running around in SUVs either. (Was Geico around to offer them cheap insurance?).
Anyhow, temperatures still shot up rapidly, and the glaciers rapidly melted and retreated to mountains in these locations. Only Antarctica and Greenland remain glacier-covered.
Care to explain that as being "manmade global warming", Mr. Richmond city lawyer? Yes, Antarctica and Greenland glaciers *CONTINUE* to melt. But that melt *STARTED WHEN CO2 WAS AT 200 PPM*.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Aside from that, Chevron is the company that employs most of the people in the city. They could sue Texaco or Shell over climate change and get the same points for political theater. Instead they decided to target the company that provides jobs for most of their constituents with this frivolous law suit.
Note to companies - if you choose Texas for your next expansion which hires a bunch of people, you'll find a bunch of good, hard-working employees here, from roughnecks to graduates of the best petroleum engineering program in the country, Texas A&M. You'll find reasonable costs for land, taxes, and other expenses. If you choose California, they'll target you with frivolous lawsuits as a political stunt. Your pick.
Exactly. Why is everyone ignoring the analogy to cigarette manufacturers? As Oreskes and Conway documented in Merchants of Doubt, oil companies used exactly the same strategies (and same people) to cast doubt on the link between fossil fuels and climate change as cigarette companies did to cast doubt on the link between smoking and lung cancer. If cigarette companies can be found liable, why not oil companies?
But can it win?
Climate is now changing every HOUR! In morning, the Sun come up and temperature increase average 1 degree per hour. In the night it cools 1 degree per hour and stays cool for hours on end. Climate is changing every HOUR. Glow ball wamming is oppressing meee!
Actually, Texas is quite beset by frivolous lawsuits as they keep trying to outlaw abortion by surreptitious means and as the gun-toting fanatics obsessively seek to use force of arms against anybody who doesn't want them around.
It also doesn't help that you're shutting down Wal-Mart stores just to oppress the employees, failing to operate schools, and getting caught with rampant corruption. Oh wait, Texas still praises Enron, which effectively waged war on California.
Don't worry though, your prayers to God are being answered. The right to assault somebody for being in a same-sex marriage is totally protected by Jesus.
Just like cigarettes. The customers were assured that the product had minimal downsides, so they adopted it enthusiastically, to the point where they became dependent on it. But they may well have made different choices if they'd known the full truth.
There are alternatives to fossil fuels. If the public hadn't been deliberately mislead by the industry, and if the full costs of burning fossil fuels (health as well as environmental) hadn't been systematically minimised and swept under the rug, then we could have better developed those alternatives much sooner, starting 50 years ago.
You can't claim the oil companies are blameless when they have been caught red-handed burying and buying unfavourable science, hiding the truth about their own product while spending hundreds of millions to trash the alternatives. We need lawsuits like these to establish how much of the blame falls on their shoulders. Not to mention the discovery phases should be very interesting..
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
If the city of Richmond, CA (just downwind of the pot smoke from San Francisco) doesn't like the product Chevron produces, I'm sure Chevron wouldn't even bat an eyelash of closing down the site and moving somewhere else (assuming some desperate community begs them).
> You can hardly blame the oil companies for causing climate change...
We can and should blame them! It is primarily due to fossil fuel companies that we have not acted swiftly enough to reign in dangerous carbon emissions. It is the oil companies that have obfuscated the situation, purchased politicians to push their case, and generally put the brakes on any effort to stabilise our climate. They are responsible for an entire scientific discipline being portrayed as a partisan political creed. They are most definitely guilty, and guilty as hell.
We can and should also bill them for the costs they externalise onto us all. Oil should be priced not just on how difficult it is to find and pump up, but also on the long term costs. Oil is ridiculously cheap. It should be many times more expensive, and the cost difference should be spent on fixing the climate and fixing general air quality.
In the same way, fast food and candy companies work as hard as they can against the interests of their customers. They present their products as innocent but they are dangerous when consumed at the level that the companies promote. That makes it the companies' fault. You are a fool if you think fast food and candy companies are idling away their time while research shows how dangerous their products are. They actively fight this! They are as guilty as hell also.
The urban governments are suing because decades of mismanagement has made them bankrupt and now they want a new revenue stream.
But winning is a different question.
...costs being awarded against the plaintiff. Hopefully the rate-payers of Richmond, CA lynch their representatives soon afterwards.
Maine had no luck suing Ohio etc for burning coal and sending acid rain over on the weekends.
Rotsa ruck fools.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Maybe. But that solves a different problem. What other evil great leader dealt with climate change?
Obama. Clinton.
And that is not the only result of deceit. AGW is not real is another result of the deceit. Millions more deniers are gulled into that (because lets face it, if you're a denier, you're not a high information voter).
And you will find it does NOT fail it. in the 19th century it passed the null test. The null test is now to show why or how CO2 DOESN'T have the effect. Indeed since Arrhenius that was what was used to counter it: it saturated, it was countered by clouds. All of those proved false, because "CO2 produces warming via the GHG effect" IS the null hypothesis. And you need to start explaining why it doesn't to win.
You can't sue spoon makers for obesity.
You could sue spoon makers for blowing your face off if they sold you exploding spoons while mounting a hugely expensive propaganda campaign about how their spoons don't explode (while they knew that their spoons did, in fact, explode).
...Chevron just pulls up and leaves town in response.
The answer is yes, because " getting scientific proof that climate change (and specific companies causing climate change) are to blame for the cities' woes" is irrelevant. They plan to take this to a Jury Trial where public opinion is all that matters.
"threatens to inundate their shorelines"
How the hell do you prove that?
It's common knowledge that shorelines change all the time. It is shortsighted and wrong to expect shorelines to never or rarely change.
Then they would need to prove a specific bit of shoreline was affected specifically due to Chevron as opposed to other causes.
Good luck with that!
Burden of proof is on them. There is no scientific proof CO2 or anything to do with petroleum products have warmed the earth. There is a lot of proof that it's a natural cycle. We are in fact coming out of a mini ice age that were responsible for the Stradivarius violins in fact. "Consensus" isn't scientific. In fact it's anti-scientific. If there's science behind it, use that. There isn't so they can't.
What they should do is counter sue the city for being a nuisance. Trying a gangster style shakedown.
Just a word to the wise, millenials are in their 20s and 30s and they are starting to demand action, not words.
Adapt.
Because this is just the start, and old people are old.
"Help, I can't put liquid dinosaurs in my plug-in electric car to drive to the high speed rail station that runs on renewable energy!"
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
One interesting fact, in the climate change suit, the cities estimated that they would face astronomical costs, potentially running into the tens of billions of dollars
Conversely, in their bond prospectus, they didn't mention those liabilities despite being pretty material facts that could impair their ability to repay the bonds.
So while I surely believe in climate change as a scientific fact, the projection of the cost to a city based on the best (albeit imperfect) current science ought to be the same value for both purposes. Otherwise you're lying to at least one of the two.
Original AC here...
No tinfoil hat. What tinfoil hat indicators do you see?
Oil companies are acting in their own interests at the expense of everyone else. That's unrestrained capitalism, but unrestrained capitalism is batshit insane, so don't do that.
We need regulated capitalism, where dangerous activities are curtailed by law. We should be blaming (and constraining) fossil fuel companies. And candy companies, if it comes to that, but their danger to civilisation is low, so if I only get to pursue one dangerous group, it's fossil fuel companies.