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Judge Rules Big Oil Can't Be Sued For Climate Change Costs (cbsnews.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: A U.S. judge who held a hearing about climate change that received widespread attention ruled Monday that Congress and the president were best suited to address the contribution of fossil fuels to global warming. So he threw out lawsuits that sought to hold big oil companies liable for the Earth's changing environment. Noting that the world has also benefited significantly from oil and other fossil fuel, Judge William Alsup said questions about how to balance the "worldwide positives of the energy" against its role in global warming "demand the expertise of our environmental agencies, our diplomats, our Executive, and at least the Senate. The problem deserves a solution on a more vast scale than can be supplied by a district judge or jury in a public nuisance case," he said. Alsup's ruling came in lawsuits brought by San Francisco and neighboring Oakland that accused Chevron (CVX), Exxon Mobil (XOM), ConocoPhillips (COP), BP (BP) and Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A) of long knowing that fossil fuels posed serious risks to the environment, but still promoting them as environmentally responsible.
> at an acceptable cost.
the sea will rise approx. 200 feet. if all ice melts. is that acceptable ?
Even the worst case examples put forth by scientists don't predict ALL ice melting. Sea levels won't rise 200ft.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
why judges should be required to accept the input of nonlegals like, you know, scientists and software professionals.
Never heard of Friends of the Court? Amicus curiae to the Latin speakers.
Please learn about how the judiciary works before you spew misinformation.
CO2, soot, lead... Yeah I hold the oil companies responsible. Not least because when it became clear what was happening they were extremely slow to do anything about it, just like tobacco sellers.
The courts are a good venue for this kind of thing, especially in the US where politicians are owned by corporations.
Not even close
If any group "owns" politicians, it's public-employee unions. Much more so that corporations.
And there are actual facts backing my assertion up.
Your view of the world is 'interesting'. You think 'Big Oil' is a thing, like a group that holds meetings and makes decisions.
Yes, in fact they were and they did, in the form of the American Petroleum Institute.
In a 1998 memo, they outlined their "action plan" for a campaign to cast doubt on climate science. Which they implemented pretty much as written.
(despite the fact that they had already-- in 1980-- identified climate warming due to carbon dioxide as a problem.)
(news article here.)
The cities attorney was quoted as saying:
"Our litigation forced a public court proceeding on climate science, and now these companies can no longer deny it is real and valid."
I actually wonder who he's referring to. BP a major investor in Wind power in the USA, who's CEO is pushing for a price to be put on carbon? Royal Dutch Shell a major investor in electric charging infrastructure? Chevron with their work on Solar power? Conoco Phillips who have published on their homepage: "We recognize that human activity, including the burning of fossil fuels, is contributing to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere that can lead to adverse changes in global climate.". Or maybe Exxon who have published a page dedicated to the very art of not denying climate change is real and valid http://corporate.exxonmobil.co....
Congratulations San Francisco! What a .... errr ... win?
Now can we please eliminate the San Francisco city attorney who is constantly expelling CO2 while contributing nothing at all of value to society.
Source:
https://www.ecowatch.com/clima...
Citing inside climate news is like citing the daily mail.
There's any number of sites that have the memo on them. I cited those two because they have the actual scan of the memo on them, not merely the text file, and added the New York Times article, as a mainstream media source, but if you don't like those, I can send you a few dozen other links to the file. Or you could just google it.
By the way, everything you're accusing Exxon of is actually what a group of environmentalists and plaintiff's lawyers decided to do,
I gave a citation and links to three different sources. Where is yours?
Ah, you don't have a citation, you're making that up. Right. That's a trick right out of Göbbels, that "the cleverest trick used in propaganda" is to accuse your enemies of what you yourself are doing.
with funding by various Rockefeller foundations (among others). The main people that would benefit from this case being successful would be the class action attorneys, who would stand to make hundreds of millions if not billions.
Have you fully thought about the fact that the fossil fuel industry is a trillion dollar industry? Mere "hundreds of millions" is less than penny ante to them.
Who is more likely to fund a campaign, an industry that has a trillion dollars at stake, or some random collection of lawyers who say wait, maybe if we believe the science, some time in the far distant future some laws might or might not get written that might or might not allow a new grounds for lawsuit? Oh, wait, we know the answer to that, because we already have the American Petroleum Institute memo laying out their campaign and asking for 2 million dollars in funding... for the first year.
Yes, that's right-- the API considered this so important that they could ask fossil fuel companies to contribute a whopping 0.0002% of their cash flow to deal with it.