“Exxon Mobil launched a legal counterattack Monday against seven cities in California that want state courts to force the oil company to pay for infrastructure improvements to help them adapt to climate change.
The oil giant argued that it and other Texas-based energy firms have become the target of a “conspiracy” among liberal state attorneys general and other officials seeking to blame it for driving up emissions that are causing the earth’s temperature to rise.
“ExxonMobil finds itself directly in that conspiracy’s crosshairs,” the company’s attorneys explained in legal documents filed in a Texas state district court Monday night.
“Even though it has long acknowledged the risks presented by climate change, supported the Paris climate accords, and backed a revenue-neutral carbon tax, ExxonMobil has nevertheless been targeted by state and local governments for pretextual investigations and litigation intended to cleanse the public square of alternative viewpoints,” Exxon argued.”
Personally, I hope that our friendly “professional nutcase” Bill McKibben gets some fallout for this. Here’s Bill trying to shut down a gas station:
h/t to WUWT commenter “TA”
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They could use the 97%!! of C02 is naturally produced.
Of the remaining 3% show how much they are responsible for (not much).
Exxon’s timing is well thought out. They know there is no justice for oil companies, only politics. This will end up in the supreme court and Exxon will win with a 5-4 decision because Trump choose the most recent Justice. If Hillary had made the appointment the her fellow criminal corrupt liberal’s would have won.
I welcome these AG’s making their case in a court of law.
They have no chance but will encourage a settlement.
Exactly
So many adages were ignored. You can’t serve two masters and do an outstanding job for both. I think of Gandalf standing on the stone bridge in Moria, striking his staff, and saying “You shall not pass!”. He didn’t then step back. If he had, he would have been forced to repeat it, and step back again. Where would he have ended up?
If Neville Chamberlin and Stalin had told Hitler, draw back to your borders and do not invade your neighbors again, how many millions of people would have stayed alive. You must stand up for your convictions with courage and the will to not give up.
Do business people and scientists not have to take ethics courses these days? Many, many years ago as a senior in EE I had to take one and it gave me a good education on how to deal with gray areas and questionable situations. It doesn’t seem today that CAGW folks spend even a second thinking about what the costs they demand will do to possibly millions of people.
Hitler and Stalin were allies at the start, as shown by their coordinated attack on Poland.
Please don’t misinterpret what I said. I’m sorry if I didn’t explain myself well. Stalin was a evil person. If he had been upstanding and done what he should have done, many, many people would have lived. There are a number of saying that address karma. What goes around, comes around. Ain’t karma, a bitch. You’ll reap what you sow.
Jim. Wouldn’t it have been even better if FDR had been there with a strong military to back up their demand. The Japanese would probably not attacked either. How many people and cities would have been spared? Michael Lewis Quote: “The only thing history teaches us, a wise man once said, is that history doesn’t teach us anything.”.
Maybe the quote is from Hegel?
I’ve read reports that the Japanese leadership was convinced that if they were able to successfully attack Pearl Harbor, the Americans would immediately sue for peace. They believed this based on the fact that America had dramatically shrunk the size of the military after WWI and the efforts made to appease Hitler.
As well as American and British inaction towards previous Japanese acts of aggression.
Targets are designed by civil engineers.
Weapons are designed by mechanical and electrical engineers.
That’s racketeering, right? Betcha that racketeering laws didn’t envision that government bodies would be doing the racketeering, but that’s liberals for ya.
I worked for a global metals mining group in the 70s, who went heavily green to deal with the rise of green activism at that time. That same company now realises that move was a major mistake, and they didnt realise the green idealogues would not stop at just a single compromise, and just move on to the next issue.
The company now openly states it should have originally taken the green groups head-on and not allow them to entrench their totalitarian views with the public and the media. This particular company has now actually rolled back some of its earlier positions.
Once agin, if things go to court, the discover process will be quite enlightening when damages are attempted to be proven. Show me the justification=Money!
Here’s a very good and concise explanation of this story.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/01/climate-change-california-hypocrisy-turned-up-to-11.php
These crusading politicians really must assume everyone else is stupid. Sue Exxon for the certain damage from rising sea levels, etc. and then tell potential investors in their bonds that that was unlikely.
Now with Trump in office they stop cow towing since it bit th m in the hind quarters anyway. The tide of political correctness flows in the other direction but the damage they did themselves cannot easily be undone.
EXXON executives rolled the dice , tried to play nice , and are paying the price .
Stupid , Stupid move .
You’re a poet and don’t know it, Amber.
Amber: I agree on the face of it, “tried to play nice”. Here’s another view of it. They selfishly tried to get special treatment by paying lip service instead of fighting for what is the right to produce a product that is good for the health and vigor of the USA.
“Even though it has long acknowledged the risks presented by climate change, supported the Paris climate accords, and backed a revenue-neutral carbon tax….
Twats.
That was your first, second, and third biggest mistakes.
I’m still looking for the appropriate Darth Vader meme, but this will do for now:
These AGs aren’t really expecting a tobacco style settlement. This is all about signalling their virtue so they can make the next rung up the political ladder, perhaps even governor! They will milk this for all the publicity that they can get, and then when it gets difficult, the lawsuits will be quietly settled. Maxine Waters is pursuing a similar strategy with her Imprach Trump campaign to draw attention away from her public corruption problems while giving her political capital to withstand the accusations.
Exxon Mobil have only themselves to blame .
Appeasement is a futile exercise with the green blob as has been pointed out by other contaminators.
The big problem is that the share price and dividend is the driving force underlying all decisions made in the board room .
Some times a major hit is worth taking to secure long term profits .
The directors need to grow some balls and take states head on and if they insist on suing for the so called harm that oil derived fuels are causing to the climate they have to withhold deliveries of fuel to these states and make sure that all other suppliers are doing the same .
It might cost a few billion but can anyone imagine the chaos that this would cause and the attorneys would soon be screaming for the fuel to be turned back on .
Or maybe they would petition the UN to force the oil companies to turn on the taps .
This was in our news papers today .
A lawyer for a convicted murderer in New Zealand went to the UN to get compensation for him because had asked to be put into solitary confinement and he was held there for 19 days and the longest that some one can be held in solitary is 15 days under some obscure convention ..
The UN ruled that the murderer should be compensated $20000 only $5000 per day and he had demanded to be held in solitary , .
The world is getting crazier every day .
DeLoss McKnight:
I disagree; I believe another tobacco settlement is exactly what these AGs want. The tobacco settlement worked out extremely well for the states: ~$200 billion over 25 years — not a bad return on their litigation costs. Plus they got the PR benefit of fighting the evil tobacco companies. Hardly anybody recognizes it for the extortion job that it was or that the money is coming from smokers’ pockets instead of tobacco company profits.
This is an attempt to impose a fuel tax by litigation while appearing to save the world. It’s a win-win for greedy politicians. Expect more of it.
Alan: Oh, I expect we’ll see a lot more litigation; that’s the world we live in today. I agree too that it’s an attempt to get a fuel tax without the bother of voting for it. And maybe the oil companies will cave in and go for a settlement without a fight. Litigation is hideously expensive and bad publicity. I agree that the AGs would LOVE such a capitulation. But if the oil industry does fight, they will have a much better outcome than the tobacco companies. The benefits of oil and measurable and enormous. Proving that CO2 is harmful to the environment will be much harder than smoking causes cancer and numerous other health problems. The tobacco settlements came after decades of thousands of product liability lawsuits. The tobacco industry saw the settlement as a way to end those lawsuits. The oil industry hasn’t had this kind of problem to the magnitude that the tobacco industry. Their lawyers will be quite capable of defending their interests, as you can see from this opening salvo. Unlike the tobacco litigation, the AGs know they would have an enormously difficult time proving a case in court, lasting far longer than the typical AG stays in office. That’s why I think this is more of a PR stunt than a serious attempt. Unlike certain other predictions, this one should be falsifiable in our lifetimes (hopefully!). From the sidelines we’ll have fun watching how this plays out.
As an aside, thank you very much for all of the work that you and the other moderators do to make this blog work. It has been very educational for me, a non-technical layman. And while there are some ad hominem remarks here, for the most part the level of discourse is erudite and civil. That’s hard to find on the inter-tubes.
No response yet to a FOI request against Oakland about the claims made in the original lawsuit.
http://records.oaklandnet.com/request/23205
The Exxon deposition is here: https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/ExxonDepositions.pdf
All US oil companies should stop providing product to states that sue any one of them ( seeking to blame it for driving up emissions that are causing the earth’s temperature to rise.) until the case is settled.
If the case is proved against oil….no one supply’s into that state…for ever (for the good of the climate), then if officials try to buy any oil products for the state, then they can also be sued for damaging the climate.
On the other hand if case fails, it’s business as usual – enshrined in law.
We use embargoes & blockades to make rouge country’s see sense…why not rouge states.
We have them over an oil barrel.
by “rouge state” I assume you mean a Republican one? 😉
[One hopes that he actually meant rogue and not red… 🙂 -mod]
I messed up my first adjustment with a typo- please flush previous effort down the memory hole.
I liked the RETROCACTIVELY
The reality is that there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and plenty of scientific reasoning to support the idea that the climate sensivity of CO2 is really zero. It is not the fossil fuel companies that have been burning fossil fuels but rather those who have been actually buying and using the fossil fuels which has all been legal to do. If anyone is at fault it should be those who actually burned the fossil fuels whose money has kept the fossil fuel companies in business. If the burning of fossil fuel is so bad then it is the duity of government to completely ban the practice. Government should make it illegal to poseess or make use of any goods and or services that make use of fossil fuels. That includes clothing, food, housing or even surfaces made from materials transported by means that have made use of fossil fuels. Take it a step further we must consider that H2O is the primary greenhouse gas and is also produced by the burning of fossil fuels. Maybe government should ban the possession or use of H2O or any substances involving H2O as well. We the people need to be protected from all greenhouse gases including CO2, H2O, O3, and oxides of nitrogen. Anything involving the atoms, H, C, O, or N shiould be baned. Removing all such atoms from the Earth’s atmosphere will definitely result in cooling as the surface pressure is reduced to near zero.
Exactly, we should pass a Prohibition Amendment against water.
It’s just as rational as anything else about the global warming movement.
As far as sea level rising, there is no question that the Earth’s temperature did increase for a while, and naturally that cause some Antarctic runoff which likewise temporarily would add to sea levels. However with the decline of temperatures, that will begin to reduce eventually as Antarctic land ice likewise accumulates; but this only happens at a very slow rate of about 2 inches of snow per year, which only equates to about a quarter inch of rain or ice. So it was simply melting faster than it increased, due to natural causes. But now that the records show that thawing stopped from a respite in temperatures, we should begin to see a reverse. It’s just one more natural cycle where Chicken Little thinks that the sky is falling because night fell.
Looks like the AGW kooks poked the bear one too many times. And now it has woke from hibernation, and it is hungry.
About time, I say.. good riddance to them.
And by the bear, I mean Big Oil. It was only a matter of time.
This will be played out in the courts, notably the 9th Circuit, which was packed with Lefties and Green Weenies long before Obama loaded the dice, nationwide.
Despite any obstacles, it’s about time Exxon started fighting back.
Maybe Rex Tillerson doesn’t have a genuine pair, after all.
All lower federal courts exist solely at the pleasure of Congress. Only SCOTUS has constitutional authority to exist independently of the other branches. This means that a strong conservative majority in the houses would have a nuclear option against activist judges: a bill to disband and reorganize the entire lower federal court system.
I always pay attention to ristvan.
My favorite part of the Exxon motion is the point about the duplicity of the California cities that sued Exxon. The motion notes that, for instance, “San Mateo, claims: “There is a 93% chance that the County experiences a devastating three-foot flood before the year 2050, and a 50% chance that such a flood occurs before 2030. Average sea level rise along the County’s shores are expected to rise by almost three feet by the year 2100, causing multiple, predictable impacts, and exacerbating the impacts of extreme events.” Yet, when the recent bonds were offered “At least two municipal governments [one of them San Mateo] reassured investors that they were “unable to predict whether sea-level rise or other impacts of climate change or flooding from a major storm will occur, when they may occur, and if any such events occur, whether they will have a material adverse effect on the business operations or financial condition of the County and the local economy.”
So did San Mateo lie to the court [in its lawsuit] or lie to investors [in their prospectus]?
Why not both?
Sounds like a good argument in favor of Exxon-Mobil during preliminary hearings. Hard to prove potential future damages when your main argument is retroactively damaged by your own words
Now New York City is divesting its pension fund of oil stocks. Mayor DeBlasio announced that the city is going to sue five oil companies for the presumed effects of climate change which he claims they knew about years ago…..
https://mobile.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/01/10/us/ap-us-fossil-fuel-divestment.html?referer=https://www.google.com/.
Monkey see, monkey do.
What comes after an infrastructure spending claim? Why pensions and other extended debt obligations and the tab for vote buying come next.