Guest essay by Nick Pope Contributor
The state of California is suing ExxonMobil, alleging that the company deceived the public about how effective recycling plastic products is and facilitating pollution.
Democratic California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed the lawsuit against ExxonMobil in San Francisco County Superior Court, asserting that the company participated “in a decades-long campaign of deception that caused and exacerbated the global plastics pollution crisis.” In addition to being one of the biggest American players in the oil and gas industry, ExxonMobil is also a top producer of the chemicals and other inputs used to create plastic products, according to The Washington Post.
“For decades, ExxonMobil has been deceiving the public to convince us that plastic recycling could solve the plastic waste and pollution crisis when they clearly knew this wasn’t possible,” Bonta said of his lawsuit in a Monday statement. “ExxonMobil lied to further its [record]-breaking profits at the expense of our planet and possibly jeopardizing our health.”
California filed its lawsuit against ExxonMobil just one day after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law that will ban the provision of plastic bags at the point of sale in stores. The new lawsuit against the oil, gas and petrochemicals giant aligns with “climate nuisance” lawsuits that have been filed in Democrat-controlled jurisdictions in recent years, which generally allege that major companies like ExxonMobil misled the public about their products’ role in climate change and should be held accountable for doing so.
ExxonMobil slammed California’s lawsuit in a statement shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“For decades, California officials have known their recycling system isn’t effective. They failed to act, and now they seek to blame others. Instead of suing us, they could have worked with us to fix the problem and keep plastic out of landfills,” an ExxonMobil spokesperson said. “The first step would be to acknowledge what their counterparts across the U.S. know: advanced recycling works. To date, we’ve processed more than 60 million pounds of plastic waste into usable raw materials, keeping it out of landfills. We’re bringing real solutions, recycling plastic waste that couldn’t be recycled by traditional methods.”
Bonta is rumored to have interest in running for governor to replace the term-limited Newsom in 2026, though the attorney general recently told the San Francisco Chronicle that he will not announce a prospective run until after November’s elections. Eco-activist groups, including the Sierra Club and Baykeeper, will be joining a Monday virtual press conference held by Bonta’s office to discuss the new litigation, the attorney general’s office said.
Judith Enck, a former official for the Obama Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) who now runs an activist group called Beyond Plastics, commended Bonta for filing the lawsuit.
“This is the single most consequential lawsuit filed against the plastics industry for its persistent and continued lying about plastics recycling,” Enck said in a Monday statement. “Attorney General Bonta is leading the way to corporate accountability and a cleaner and healthier world. This lawsuit will set an invaluable precedent for others to follow.”
Steve Milloy, a senior legal fellow at the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute, slammed the lawsuit in a Monday post to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
“The communist failure that is California is suing ExxonMobil because radical greens lied to everyone about the feasibility of recycling,” Milloy wrote in his post.
Bonta’s office did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
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It is time everything fossil fuel created was removed from California and a border wall built to stop Californians from emigrating to other states to avoid their own stupidity.
Not all Californians necessarily voted for the current shower in Sacramento.
How much notice do you propose giving Willis (Eschenbach), at an absolute minimum, to escape before putting in place the last element of that “wall” ?
W.E. would probably escape on a sailboat and send posts about manta ray pets from a coral atoll.
You would be surprised how many higher earning Californians have a realistic bug-out plan already in place.
Then again, there are also ~3 million residents of the San Fernando Valley whose “Big One” earthquake plan is to drive to the Four Seasons in Thousand Oaks for a few weeks until the insurance payments and rebuilding are completed.
Anyone remember when garbage cans were used without plastic liners?
California needs to ban the use of plastic for waste/trash/garbage bags/liners. Apparently it’s ok to use paper for applications like this.
Ugh the smell
Truth is excepting San Franfeces, Sack-o-tomatoes and Lost Angeles the rest of California is a pretty great place. Far easier to wall in just those three places. Actually a physical barrier isn’t necessary. Let us just convince fossil fuel energy suppliers to withdraw from those markets.
Looks like the oil industry is losing their grip on society. The fracking industry is employing less and less people in the US, so fewer people will be able to look over the damage done to the environment for the sake of more jobs. Saudi Arabia is trying to get away from their dependence on oil for their economy. China will hit peak oil demand in the next two years, African countries will industrialize with cheap EVs and renewables. The west hit peak oil demand in the early 2000s, now EVs will lower demand even more.
Read the room, the mad dash for the exit has started.
Read the room……
You are a gullible zero-brain idiot.
Once Trump is elected, Saudis will need to find other markets for their oil.
Oil climbs on China stimulus, Middle East conflict and hurricane risk (msn.com)
Africa’s Oil Industry Is Set To Flourish In 2023 | OilPrice.com
EVs would totally useless in Africa as they are still struggling to obtain electricity for other purposes due to the World bank etc refusing funds for reliable electricity supplies.
So as usual with a luser post.
EVERYTHING that he/she/it said is provably WRONG. !!
Earlier this year, I experienced a United Airlines experiment whereby they gave us passengers bamboo eating utensils with our meals. These came wrapped in plastic of course, on a plastic tray, along with plastic dishes, cups and containers, for butter, salad dressing, etc. Salt and pepper packets were still paper.
As I tried to use the bamboo fork on a breakfast sausage, it broke and splintered. I lamented at the stupidity as looking about the cabin it’s apparent that nearly everything inside the plane is made of plastic.
A major conservation organization (Trustees of Reservations) in Wokeachusetts, about a decade ago, built a new building- with a big meeting room. Looks nice. Has a bamboo floor. I questioned one of their honchos, just to nag him, saying “why did you install a floor made with bamboo from some tropical nation- when right across the street, I see a mature forest of red oak, which would have made a nice floor”. He didn’t like that question and stalked away. I suggest hypocrites are the lowest form of life. I tolerate unsophisticated folks, but not hypocrites.
Bamboo grows in temperate climates too, and it grows like weed – compared to oaks. But he would have told you that if that conversation really happened.
Get lost, stinking troll.
WRONG- tropical and semi tropical- look it up. That organization pushes the climate emergency- but installs a bamboo floor- I think they said this bamboo came from Indonesia. And it’s very nice to look at.
I live in a temperate climate and know people who have bamboo in their garden. They also have a hard time getting rid of it, it grows like weed and almost impossible to kill, as top growth and their extensive root network survives our winters just fine.
Scotland is now (semi) tropical?
https://www.scottishbamboo.com/About_Bamboo.htm
The bamboo you can use to make a floor is very large- nothing that will grow in Scotland- and besides, that’s not the point, the point is that a conservation group which pushes to end all ff and forestry- buying tropical bamboo for a floor when it’s in the middle of a large forest region- is stupid and hypocritical.
A new “compliance” strategy?
Bamboo shoots under the toe nails? 😎
Not to mention that most Africans are dirt poor. Now I picture them all driving EVs. Somebody come up with an image of that with AI, please. 🙂 I wanna see their EV parked outside of their grass/mud hut.
Nigeria the country has 200 million citizens. There are cities.
right, and very poor- so not likely to go green any time soon- only the wealthy can earn green credits to get into Green Heaven
How Ethiopia’s EV Boom Is Shaping the Future of Clean Transport | Firstpost Africa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSNUo3ye2HU
Africa is huge and diverse, tha’s like saying all americans are rednecks living in trailer parks.
So the luser want to cause even more stress on an electricity supply that already has big shortages.
Not only that but Ethiopia only has 50 charging stations in the whole country.
TOTALLY USELESS…in other words.
You can’t run EVs without electricity, luser. !!
I have some friends from my local church that went to Kenya to teach at a church.
They commented to us afterward that the power often daily went out. The locals accepted that as “normal”.
That shouldn’t need to accepted as “normal”.
The damage done to the environment by wind and solar industrial estates, for the sake of the fake climate agenda.
That is what you really meant to say, wasn’t it.!
btw, did you know that EVERYTHING in your pitiful existence is there because of the fossil fuel industry and its many bi-products.
You couldn’t live without them, even in your granny’s basement.
“ will industrialize with cheap EVs and renewables.”
Is not even a physical or economic possibility, EVER.
NOTHING can be manufactured with wind and solar, especially not EV’s
We’ll outsource most of our manufacturing to Asia so that it appears that we are reducing emissions, when in fact this increases transportation inputs. Globally this creates more emissions for this reason, and also from the fact that Asia has lower standards.
Wokeachusetts state government brags that it’s now the most energy efficient state. They don’t say that it’s because it’s the most de-industrialized.
And yes, plastic recycling is just another GREEN SCAM, especially in Democrat run states.
The plastic recycler in South Australia closed up shop as soon as the subsidies stopped…. because it was totally uneconomic to continue.
African Oil and Gas Exploration is Going Strong – African Energy Chamber
The Future of African oil and gas: Challenge, and growth (spe.org)
Just curious but where in Africa, a really huge place. North Africa has a history of fossil fuel production, but what about south of the Sahara?
Nigeria, Angola, Gabon, to name a few.
“Africa will have the second-largest growth in gas supply by 2050”
More Nostradamus stuff. Africa is a continent with about 50 countries.
Pffft, no they won’t. Mostly because EV’s and renewables are anything but cheap. Why do you think it’s mostly wealthy Western countries piling on the wind turbines? When the average annual wage in Africa is less than USD10,000 how do you think they’re going to afford even a cheap Chinese EV? And how long do you think one will last on the generally poorly maintained roads with massive potholes, assuming the road is paved in the first place? Who’s going to build the charging infrastructure and who’s going to pay for it? Even if they were built, they will likely be stripped for parts and copper in days.
You should maybe go and visit a few places in sub-Saharan Africa, then come back and tell me about EV’s and wind turbines. And I don’t mean a week in a hotel in Sandton either.
Has to make its way up the stairs from granny’s basement first !
What! and experience daylight!!!!!
Hope he remembers to walk the stairs and boycott the elevator…
A week in Mauritania should do it.
“The fracking industry is employing less and less people …” this same mistake is made over and over again. The jobs in the fracking industry itself are insignificant beside the jobs that the oil and gas create right across the whole of society. Hypothetically, if the fracking industry was fully automated so that it had no employees at all, it would probably create even more jobs in total.
First employment bonus is the people hired to build and install, operate and maintain the automated equipment.
And, of course, there would need to be people who monitor the system and fix it when it breaks. And people involved with shipping the product.
A fully automated fracking industry would not have zero employees.
This same mistake is made over and over again. “less and less” -> “fewer and fewer”.
Gotta feel sorry for this pathetic soul, apparently so desperate for attention that he clings to nonsense like a dog with a Frisbee.
People have been pointing to the government-run recycling scam for many years, and the Left has perpetuated it. Even Penn and Teller did a bit on it. Now another “Exxon Knew” distraction to promote another corrupt politician and avert attention from another California Fail.
Grauniad 24th September 2024 “Northvolt to cut 1600 jobs amid electric car downturn”
The Swedish company “announced redundancies across three sites yesterday, including 1000 in Skelleftea, in northern Sweden, where it is suspending the expansion of Northvolt Ett, Europe’s first homegrown battery gigafactory………..”will also cut 400 jobs in Vasteras, in central Sweden, where Nothvolt labs is based, and 200 in Stockholm, home to it’s head office”
Yes, “the mad rush to the exit has started.”
Why don’t you join the mad dash?
“Saudi Arabia is trying to get away from their dependence on oil for their economy.”
That’s just economic common sense. Doesn’t mean they believe the climate hoax.
+ they’ve been “trying” for decades.
“China will hit peak oil demand in the next two years”
Don’t bet on it- but of course you’d believe anything their propaganda ministry says.
“African countries will industrialize with cheap EVs and renewables”
Wow, you’re uh… deranged to believe that. So much so I wonder if you aren’t here just to drive up the comments. It’s easy, after all, to pretend to be a climatista- doesn’t take a high IQ.
“China will hit peak oil … African countries will industrialize”
When I was a kid I bought a book that translated Nostradamus, just for fun. It was such boring babbling.
You are dumber than Simon
“Saudi Arabia is trying to get away from their dependence on oil for their economy.” and what do you understand the Saudis are trying to sell…sand??? having spent 5 months there as a helicopter pilot in Desert Storm, there is nothing but SAND…and oil wells…too dry to grow anything. Oh well…there are not any people in all that vast desert except a few Bedouin sheep herders. Maybe they could revert to the 3d world country they were before discovery of oil in the early part of the 1900’s!
Exxon’s response was accurate in stating the California’s recycling is ineffective. California gets money for just about every beverage container sold, with the “promise” of refunding that money when the container is recycled. There used to be numerous recycling centers that had machines to read the label and the center would then pay the person doing the recycling. These centers are now long gone which makes me wonder if the CRV money is being treated as just another tax.
We were California recycling before deposit fees. We got ~85¢/lb. After the fees were enacted we got ~85¢/lb. No Deposit, No Return on Investment.
Probably funds pay raises for the “burros” and politicians.
I just donate all my CRV paid recyclables to my city, which insists that I put them in a separate bin that they collect. All cities in California are bonafide charitable organizations when you donate to them, and since California CRV is an actual dollar amount paid at purchase that retains that value, the value is transferred to the city.
Then I write off that amount as a charitable tax deduction.
re: “California Accuses Oil Giant Of Lying About Plastic Recycling In New Lawsuit”
Wait – what?
I’m under the impressionm it was the greenies who made ‘promises’ about recycling? Amiwrong?
Has anyone (BBC?) verified how much plastic Attorney General Bonta, Judith Enck and the idiot with a username have used and continue to use everyday?
At least one of them could state here just how little plastic there is in their life.
But none will.
Hard to type on wooden keyboards.
And they probably need to wait for their acrylic nails to dry
There is a simple solution to plastic waste: Incineration!
We don’t have to worry about carbon emissions because there is, in fact, very little CO2 in the air. Presently one cubic meter of air at 20 deg C has about ca. 0.8 grams of CO2 and a mass of 1.20 kgs. This small amount of CO2 can heat up such a large mass of air by a very, very small amount. Most of the CO2 from combustion of FF is absorbed by the oceans where a portion is fixed by phytoplankton and a large portion remains as CO2 molecules. The yearly increase of the concentration of CO2 is a few ppmv. So a lot more CO2 can be released.
The concentration of water in this air is 17,780 ppmv. A cubic of this air has 14.3 grams of H2O, the Guerilla Greenhouse Gas. We don’t have to worry about CO2.
“There is a simple solution to plastic waste: Incineration!”
Yes!
California can build a few electrical power plants fueled by plastic waste. Two birds with one stone.
I think but may be wrong- that burning plastic incorrectly releases toxins. I think it has to be burned at very high temperatures.
There already exists technology that can be industrialized to convert plastic back into oil or even methane.
Yes I’m in full agreement after all most plastic is made from natural gas and so the burning of it would classify as a reuse which is one of the Three R’s. 🤔😊
One wonders if these leftists know that the bulk of recyclable materials either go in landfills or are sent in enormous diesel powered maritime vessels to China and other asian countries where it is to be recycled. Where these Asian countries have stopped receiving the vessels and send them from port to port because they are sick of taking California’s trash. Hardly an oil company problem. More of an idiotic leftist/green problem. Again. And we pay and pay and pay for their imbecilic virtue signaling.
> to China and other asian countries where it is to be
recycleddumped in the oceans as microplastics.Fixed that for you.
Yes they repatriate to us in the ocean’s currents.
“Democratic California Attorney General Rob Bonta”. Hmmmm. I think that should be: Democrat California Attorney General Rob Bonta.
BTW, I have looked for and cannot find the brilliant cartoon (as in drawing not animated) which I think appeared on WUWT, where someone goes through all the supermarket items encased in plastic and then questions why a plastic bag to put them in is so dangerous. Please, can anyone give a link to it?
It wasn’t that long ago that the EcoNuts demonized paper bags and banned them in favor of plastics to save the forests. So this is just another marry-go-round of stupidity by environmentalists’ hell bent on destroying anything without concern for consequences or understanding of how society works.
Wait until reusable cloth shopping bags are linked to salmonella outbreaks as meat packages leak and contaminate.
Vegetation becomes fossil fuel so destroy all vegetation now. That should sort it.
And I’m sure Bonta has sworn off the use of plastics in his own personal life…to save the planet and all…right?
Right?
Text him on his smart phone.
humor abounds. commiefornia looks for ways to expand the grift-scheme, and exxon says ‘we helped recycle 60 million pounds of plastic’ (probably about 0.0001% of what they produced).
meanwhile the man on the street stops, looks about, wonders ‘what was that noise’, then gets back to life.
60M pounds is 10 years of plastic production by Exxon. Not the same as recycled per year, which is about 10% of what it produces annually.
That aside, about 5% of plastic is recycled each year. One has to wonder how much that is put out at the curb in a recycling bin is actually recycled by the city/county.
If you’re old enough you remember when small beverage bottles were worth $.02 and big ones $.05 when returned and they actually cleaned and reused the bottles. Now they charge you a bottle “deposit” when you buy the product. Originally the intent was to keep the streets clean. Then they said it was for recycle purposes but found out it cost more to melt glass than make it due to the higher temperature required. So now we have mounds of broken glass but the streets are clean of glass bottles. Kind of like the EV conundrum where harmless CO2 no longer comes out of the tail pipe but is concentrated at the energy plant location.
Environmentalists are the biggest danger to the environment. With plastics, they can be recycled to fuel and other products including more plastics. But environmentalists lobbied hard to exclude recycled waste plastics from the Renewable Fuels Standard making it not economic and actually costly to include plastics in processes that produce renewable fuels. If the Renewable Fuels Standard passed by Congress allowed plastics to receive credits, there would be far less plastics to handle in other ways.
The logic the EcoNuts use is that plastic waste is trapped carbon that will not enter the atmosphere. If you convert plastics to fuels, the formerly trapped Carbon will be converted to CO2 contributing to CAGW. Therefore, don’t recycle plastics and blame the oil industry for not doing so when it is your own fault. Typical transference argument by radicals.
The real problem with recycling plastics is that to be effective, they must be segregated into compatible types that must be handled differently depending on chemical composition. Polyethylene and propylene are easily recycled. Styrenes less so, and esters/phthalates even less so. Shrink wrapping around bottles is not recyclable and is supposed to be removed by the user before putting the item into a recycle bin. Fat chance of that happening, so it makes the whole item very difficult to recycle.
The whole issue of recycling plastics is very difficult to solve, much like recycling glass. Most of it just gets dumped into a landfill anyway with no economically viable way to recover the waste feedstocks.
PETE plastic is readily recyclable I have several blue Walmart tote bags made from recycled pop bottles.
When you stop to think about it, everything eventually gets recycled into a landfill. Where else would it go?
Exxon needs a ruling that California is a vexatious litigant.
Remember, this is the State that outlawed thin plastic shopping bags with the result more plastic was sent to landfills. Their solution? Doubling down and outlawing all plastic shopping bags. This time for sure.
“For decades,
ExxonMobilthe State of California has been deceiving the public to convince us that plastic recycling could solve the (imagined) plastic waste and pollution crisis when they clearly knew this wasn’t possible,”The big challenge of recycling plastics is a lack of marketable items to make from the recycled plastic. Glass can be recycled and used again for a wide variety of products, also most metals. For safety reasons, we cannot use recycled plastic for food containers, one of the biggest uses of virgin plastics. Can’t use it for siding because it can’t take the sun for twenty years.
There are lots of possibilities for recycling plastic…. for example
Plastic chairs are often made from recycled plastic.
The flooring in my house is very nice, and is actually made from 95% recycled plastics and fibre
There is a large scope.. just search for …. “things made from recycled plastic”
How can we prevent or at least control frivolous lawsuits that “use” the system for pursue political purposes – to punish and/or intimidate individuals, corporations, etc.
What do sand, limestone, iron ore, bauxite, cellulose, natural latex, copper, lithium, coal, oil, natural gas, and uranium have in common? They are all materials extracted from the earth and used for the betterment of man in the form of glass, cement, steel, aluminum, lumber, tires, transmission of electricity, storage of electricity, generation of electricity, generation of heat, pharmaceuticals, plastics, pavement, lubricants, and fertilizer. Some of the products, notably aluminum, are recycled. All eventually are returned to the earth. Plastics are not unique in this cradle to grave cycle.
Perhaps those suing Exon/Mobil should also sue those in the value chain for those other products.