Rosenblum, E AG
kickass AG
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10 24
for the first time, a gas utility could be on the hook for its role in deceiving the public about the climate crisis. Multnomah, Oregon, has added NW Natural — Oregon’s oldest and largest supplier of “natural” gas, also known as fossil or methane gas — to the list of defendants in a lawsuit that seeks to make fossil fuel companies pay $52 billion for their role in the deadly 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome.
NW Natural “has routinely misrepresented” the climate harms of gas while undermining the energy transition “in an effort to frighten customers and discourage policy makers from using their authority to protect the public,” according to the county’s amended complaint. The company has portrayed gas as “safe, clean, and environmentally friendly,” despite the fact that methane, its primary component, is 80 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
In its original complaint, Oregon’s most populous county argued that oil and gas companies’ decades-long climate deception helped lead to the heat dome that killed 69 people in Multnomah — an event scientists said would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change. The 2023 lawsuit seeks to recover costs incurred from other extreme weather events and make Exxon, Chevron, McKinsey, and other defendants pay for a range of adaptation measures to protect residents from future ones. The updated complaint now adds that NW Natural “engaged in an enterprise of misrepresentation about the effects its products would have on the climate, and that the use of its products could cause an extreme heat event to occur.”
That enterprise has reportedly ramped up in recent years as the company fights a growing push for policies to limit emissions and phase out their product. The utility has run advertising campaigns touting “renewable natural gas,” targeted children through school books depicting gas as safe and clean, and created front groups posing as local grassroots advocates to fight electrification and promote “consumer choice,” according to evidence cited by the complaint and further detailed in additional reporting, investigations, and challenges to state regulators.
“As we learned in this country when we took on big tobacco, this is not an easy step or one I take lightly but I do believe it’s our best way to fight for our community and protect our future,” Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson said in a press release.
Like many fossil fuel and petrochemical companies, NW Natural sponsors sporting events, concerts, and small nonprofits in the region reliant on external funding. The utility’s embedded presence in the community makes it all the more important for the county to “highlight the insidious nature of their communications,” said Carra Sahler, a Multnomah County resident and Director and Staff Attorney at the Green Energy Institute at Lewis & Clark Law School, which has represented advocacy groups in cases against NW Natural for customer rate hikes.
Sept 13, 2024 via X
“People want to trust that their utility is doing the right thing, that the utility is providing the information necessary for them to make choices about their energy use,” Sahler said. “It feels like we’ve crossed into a new era where there is no way forward but to stop [NW Natural] from spreading misinformation.”
“Renewable natural gas”
On a “low carbon energy future” page on its website, NW Natural claims it “has an important role to play in helping our region move to a lower-carbon, renewable energy future in a more resilient and affordable way.” The company goes on to boast its investments in so-called “renewable natural gas,” or gas acquired from decomposing organic matter at livestock operations and landfills.
For years, the utility has used customers’ money to fund ad campaigns promoting “renewable natural gas,” blasting out the slogan “Less We Can,” and insinuating that the company is already providing the “renewable” energy source to Oregon homes. The utility calls RNG a “carbon neutral resource,” but its own filings with Oregon regulators show that’s not true: two of its extraction sites at Tyson slaughterhouses in Nebraska, for example, have a climate footprint.
The company also appears to overstate its use of RNG in its operations. At the Tyson slaughterhouses, the Nebraska-sourced gas is piped mainly to Nebraska customers rather than Oregonians, ProPublica reporters found. And according to the company’s reports, RNG makes up less than 1% of the total gas acquired by NW Natural — a statistic the company blames on “uncertain support from policy makers and regulators, coupled with ongoing barriers created by certain climate advocates.”
According to ads and internal powerpoints scrutinized by DeSmog and documents revealed by ProPublica, the RNG ad campaigns were part of a strategy to beat back the growing “anti-fossil fuel chorus.” That strategy also involved convincing the state legislature to greenlight a state-produced inventory of Oregon’s “technical potential” for “RNG,” and using the highest possible estimates — the amount of RNG Oregon could produce if it had unlimited money — to successfully lobby for another bill to make ratepayers cover the added costs of the biogas, and establish voluntary goals for its use, which the utility would then use to battle regulation.
Targeting schools
NW Natural’s campaign to “promote the continued use and consumption of fossil fuel gas by influencing public opinion” also “targets the next generation through children,” according to Multnomah’s complaint, which cites “gas-related” activity workbooks sent by NW Natural to schools. The books, which target children as young as kindergartners, use puzzles, word games, cartoons, and other activities depicting fossil gas as safe, clean, and beneficial for society, reporting from DeSmog found.
Screenshot from formal testimony to the PUC on April 22, 2022, cited in Multnomah’s complaint.
A group funded by the utility, called Bonneville Environmental Foundation, also planned an event for teachers — which was ultimately canceled after students planned to protest— called “Clean Energy Teacher Training: Exploring Renewable Gas.” The utility promised each teacher who attended the session in Portland a $200 stipend, plus reimbursement for mileage if they traveled more than 50 miles.
In 2022, a coalition of nonprofits and state representatives sent a letter calling on Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum to investigate the utility’s “misleading advertising,” stating that “it is particularly concerning that school children are being subjected to misinformation from corporate entities of any kind, but especially by a fossil fuel corporation selling a product that is harmful to children’s health.” In 2023, the group once again called on the AG to “investigate and sue NW Natural if appropriate.”
In response to concerns raised by a coalition of local environmental and consumer advocates, the state Public Utility Commission ruled in April that NW Natural can no longer charge ratepayers for pro-gas advertising targeting schoolchildren.
Battling climate action
NW Natural hasn’t just advertised fossil gas as a cleaner, “renewable” fuel — it has also fought policies to reduce emissions and shift toward electrification. Reports show the utility hired a scientist to oppose bans on gas in new construction, worked with a public relations firm and its front group to “defeat policies detrimental to the natural gas industry,” and sued the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission over the state’s landmark Climate Protection Program that aimed to reduce emissions.
The company even posed as a local grassroots group to oppose a partial ban on new natural gas construction by Eugene’s City Council in 2023. Just days after the ban was passed, “Eugene Residents for Energy Choice” was registered with the Oregon Secretary of State. Funded by NW Natural to the tune of nearly $950,000 in a span of two weeks, the group collected signatures to revoke the ban — which was ultimately repealed by the city council.
Recently, state regulators accused NW Natural of misleading consumers about Oregon’s carbon crediting program after the utility claimed in a newsletter that the program would raise rates without reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
NW Natural’s actions are part of a much larger push by the gas industry to fight regulations, including longstanding campaigns by the American Gas Association — an industry trade group of which it is a member, and where its CEO, David Anderson, [sits on the board]
https://substack.com/redirect/29c56708-84aa-4364-b1fc-3a6c46f36cba?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw
. As more communities pass laws to tighten standards for appliances and limit new construction of gas pipelines to homes and businesses, the group’s campaigns to counter scientific evidence that using gas stoves is harmful to human health have resurfaced.
Another new defendant
Multnomah County’s amended complaint adds one more new defendant to the case: the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. The nonprofit ran the 1998 “Oregon Petition,” which claimed to capture signatures from 17,000 scientists who agreed there was “no convincing scientific evidence that human release of greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”
In reality, the petition was not signed by 17,000 scientists, but included fictitious names, deceased persons, and celebrities, according to the complaint. The project was designed to look as though it was approved by the National Academy of Scientists, but was actually authored by Fred Seitz, cofounder of the Exxon-backed think tank GMI.
“A signal to the gas industry”
In June, the county won a procedural victory when a federal courtruled that its lawsuit could move forward in state court.
Pat Parenteau, an environmental law professor and senior fellow at Vermont Law School, said the evidence of the utility’s deception cited in the complaint fell short of the “massive” amount of evidence plaintiffs have cited against oil companies. Further evidence of NW Natural’s deception could expand through the course of discovery and additional reporting, he added.
Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, agreed that gas utilities’ “histories of climate deception have not been as thoroughly mined as those of the oil companies,” but noted that additional evidence could land more utilities in court for climate deception.
“It does send a signal to the gas industry that these sorts of plaintiffs are looking at them more closely than they have in the past,” Gerrard said.
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an 6 23
no lnx
fox News' willingness to promote the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump has cost the right-wing cable news outlet a lot of time and money.
In April, Fox News agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787,500 to settle a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit. And Fox News is still facing a separate $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion competitor Smartmatic.
On Monday, June 5, Democratic Oregon Ellen Rosenblum announced that she was conducting an investigation of Fox Corp.'s board of directors — which, she alleges, may have failed to live up to its obligations when it promoted the Big Lie. The Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund, according to the Associated Press, owns over 250,000 shares of Fox stock.
READ MORE: 'Extremely poor judgement': GOP Oregon House minority leader apologizes after her son gives a Nazi salute
Rosenblum is conducting the investigation with Oregon State Treasurer Tobias Read, a fellow Democrat.
Rosenblum announced, "Treasurer Read and I believe thatFox's board of directors breached its fiduciary duties by allowing Fox News to broadcast false claims that Dominion and Smartmatic rigged the 2020 presidential election. We hope to hold the board accountable and protect the long-term value of Oregon's investment in Fox Corp."
Oregon's state attorney general has a track record when it comes to pushing back against MAGA election lies.
In December 2020, 12 Republicans serving in the Oregon State Legislature sent Rosenblum a letter asking her to join far-right Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in his Texas v. Pennsylvania lawsuit — which urged the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the election results in four states that President Joe Biden won: Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin.
READ MORE: Smartmatic vows to 'expose the rest' of Fox News' 'misconduct'
But Rosenblum did the exact opposite. Instead of joining Paxton in Texas v. Pennsylvania, she expressed her total contempt for his lawsuit — which the High Court rejected.
On December 11, 2021, Rosenblum tweeted, "Today I joined 22 AGs in filing a brief opposing Texas' last-minute attempt to have the U.S. Supreme Court take the election from the American people. Texas has no business interfering in other states' elections! The sooner the Court rejects this latest outrage, the better."
READ MORE :'I'm stuck with Fox': Unredacted Tucker Carlson texts highlight post-election turmoil at Fox News
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
George Will: Fox News’ $787.5 million Dominion settlement was 'good for the law' ›
Watch: Jake Tapper cannot control his laughter when mentioning Fox News’ 'highest journalistic standards' ›
'They did nothing wrong': Mike Lindell loses it over Fox News’ 'strange' Dominion settlement ›
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
Dominion speaks out after Fox News settlement ›
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http://insideclimatenews.org/news/02062016/lamar-smith-exxon-information-request-house-science-panel-environmental-groups-climate-change
jun 2016
several state attorneys general, advocacy groups and philanthropic foundations have refused to comply with a broad request from a group of House Republicans for documents that might be related to state investigations of ExxonMobil Corp. over climate change.
In their letters to Rep. Lamar Smith, the Republican chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, most of the organizations said the lawmakers were overstepping the panel’s jurisdiction in order to conduct a partisan fishing expedition while threatening the groups’ First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and association.
Last month, 13 Republican members of the Smith committee issued letters to 17 state attorneys general and eight environmental groups and philanthropies. They demanded records on whether the groups and the state attorneys general worked together in coordinating probes of Exxon or other fossil fuel companies.
“The right to petition government and to disagree with certain government officials is a core value protected by the First Amendment,” said lawyers for 350.org, a nonprofit environmentalist group, in a letter to the committee.
“Because your letter does not and cannot provide any legitimate justification for this infringement upon First Amendment rights, our client respectfully declines to provide documents in response,” the 350.org letter said.
Prosecutors in New York, Maryland, California and the Virgin Islands are investigating whether Exxon’s statements and actions on climate change violated consumer or investor protection laws or racketeering statutes.
InsideClimate News and later the Los Angeles Times, as well as other journalists, have reported on the history of Exxon’s emerging understanding of climate change science in the 1970s and 1980s. Those reports also detailed Exxon’s subsequent efforts to undermine the scientific consensus that combustion of fossil fuels was leading to potentially catastrophic global warming.
In addition to 350.org, organizations rejecting the Republican lawmakers’ request included Greenpeace, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Rockefeller Family Fund, and the attorneys general offices of New York, Washington, Massachusetts, California, Maryland, Connecticut, New Mexico, Virginia, Oregon, Vermont, Maine and Washington D.C. Smith is a 15-term Texas Republican with a record of challenging the validity of climate science.
Smith’s office referred questions to the committee. A committee spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment. It’s unclear whether the other organizations or attorneys general responded.
Schneiderman’s office wrote the lawmakers’ demands were “premised on a series of incorrect statements and assumptions” and presented “serious constitutional concerns, including the lack of congressional jurisdiction over state law enforcement activities.”
In refusing to cooperate, Oregon’s Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum made it clear that her office would not be bowed by Smith.
“In sum, the Oregon Attorney General intends to continue to look into possible violations of state law, and she will continue to work, when appropriate, with other states’ law enforcement officials,” according to a letter written by Frederick M. Boss, a deputy attorney general.
In separate letters to Smith Wednesday, the non-profit organizations cited the First Amendment in objecting to the demand for their documents, arguing that the committee members were standing up for Exxon’s free speech rights while trampling theirs.
“To be clear, Greenpeace will always cooperate with any authorized and legitimate inquiry of Congress or anyone else into one of the most pressing issues of our time, one that will affect our children and their children for generations to come,” wrote Greenpeace’s attorney, Abbe David Lowell, a prominent Washington defense lawyer.
The Greenpeace letter blasted the lawmakers for seemingly concluding in advance that “the activities of the state attorneys general ‘were efforts to silence speech.’” Citing published reports that the prosecutors are investigating whether Exxon violated securities and consumer fraud laws by “making false statements,” Lowell wrote that “the law does not protect the dissemination of false statements.”
“These alleged false statements occurred in public and were made to affect the behavior of consumers and investors,” according to the letter. “In other words, while Greenpeace’s work on climate change has been to follow the science, the fossil fuel industry is being investigated for trying to cover up that science.”
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund likewise told Smith it was refusing the request because the documents were protected by the First Amendment.
“It appears like a partisan effort by a group of Republicans in the House trying to shut down public debate on a vital public matter on behalf of the fossil fuel industry,’’ said Stephen Heintz, president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, in an interview.
In the foundation’s official response, attorney Harry Sandick said: “It is not clear to us what valid legislative purpose lies behind the request for documents to the extent that the committee seeks to regulate the conduct of state attorneys general.”
The Union of Concerned Scientists said in its four-page letter that the lawmakers’ request exceeded the powers of Congress.
The organization acknowledged that the Science Committee does have jurisdiction over environmental and scientific programs. But the lawmakers’ request goes far beyond any such mandate, UCS said in its letter.
“To permit legislative inquiry to proceed on less than an adequate foundation would be to sanction unjustified and unwarranted intrusions into the very heart of the constitutional privilege to be secure in associations in legitimate organizations engaged in the exercise of First and Fourteenth Amendment rights,” the UCS attorney wrote. The Fourteenth Amendment deals with due process and relations between states and the federal government.
Attorney General Ellen F. Rosenblum Oregon's 17th Attorney General A former federal prosecutor and state trial and appellate judge, Ellen Rosenblum was first elected to a four-year term as Oregon's 17th Attorney General in November, 2012. She was re-elected to a second term in 2016 and to a third term in 2020.
July 7, 2021
Attorneys General in New York & Five Other States File Brief in Support of Juliana v. United States While Plaintiffs Oppose Attempt By Republican Coalition to Intervene
:{
}:
no lnx
For immediate release July 7, 2021
Contacts:
Julia Olson, 415-786-4825, julia@ourchildrenstrust.org
Andrea Rodgers, 206-696-2851, andrea@ourchildrenstrust.org
Philip Gregory, 650-278-2957, pgregory@gregorylawgroup.com
For interviews with youth plaintiffs, email beth@ourchildrenstrust.org
Attorneys General in New York & Five Other States File Brief in Support of
Juliana v. United States While Plaintiffs Oppose Attempt By Republican
Coalition to Intervene
EUGENE, Ore. – Attorney General Letitia James of New York on Tuesday filed a “friend
of the court” brief in support of the landmark constitutional climate case Juliana v. United
States, spearheading a wave of support from states that also include Delaware JENNINGS, ELLISON Hawai‘i,
http://ag.hawaii.gov/ SHIKADA
Minnesota,ELLISON
Oregon,
Attorney General Ellen F. Rosenblum Oregon's 17th Attorney General A former federal prosecutor and state trial and appellate judge, Ellen Rosenblum was first elected to a four-year term as Oregon's 17th Attorney General in November, 2012. She was re-elected to a second term in 2016 and to a third term in 2020.
and Vermont.TJ DONOVAN https://ago.vermont.gov/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attorney_General_of_Delaware
In their amici curiae motion, the six Democrat-led states noted that the
wide-ranging effects of climate change -- “including the costs of combating rising
sea levels, health risks posed by rising temperatures, and threats to States’ food
and water supplies, among others -- implicate far broader quasi-sovereign
interests in the health and well-being of state residents than those noted by
proposed intervenors.”
Also on Tuesday, attorneys from Our Children’s Trust, which represents the 21 Juliana
youth plaintiffs, filed a brief opposing an earlier attempt by Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas,
Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North
Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia to join the
Biden administration in defending the case.
In June, the coalition of Republican
attorneys general said it wants to “participate in settlement negotiations” to “object to
any proposed settlement” and threatened to go all the way to the Supreme Court to
keep the youths’ case from going to trial.
In their filing opposing the attempt by some Republican-led states to intervene, the
plaintiffs’ attorneys point out that those 18 states are suffering billions of dollars in
losses related to climate impacts from extreme heat, sea level rise, and extreme storm
events, and any economic losses to the fossil fuel sector are far outweighed by severe
economic harm from the climate crisis.
“What the 18 Republican attorneys general seek is unprecedented,” said Julia
Olson, chief legal counsel of Our Children’s Trust. “They want to be allowed to
come into the case to fight the youth and prevent their claims from going to trial or
be resolved through settlement, but they refuse to waive their sovereign immunity
under the U.S. Constitution, which means they would not be subject to any orders
of the federal courts. They essentially want status as interlopers, with all the
privileges to participate as a party-defendant and fight these kids, but with no
responsibility or accountability. What they seek only hurts children in their own
states too.”
The Juliana constitutional rights lawsuit, filed in 2015, argues that affirmative actions by
the federal government under both political parties directly contributed to the climate
crisis – including creating a national fossil fuel-based energy system that is a substantial
factor in causing the plaintiffs’ injuries. By doing so, the plaintiffs argue, the government
has knowingly violated their constitutional rights to life, liberty and property, the public
trust, and equal protection of the law.
The Juliana plaintiffs’ amended complaint -- which the coalition of Republican attorneys
general is attempting to block -- is focused on winning a declaratory judgment that the
nation’s fossil fuel-based energy system is unconstitutional, much like the plaintiffs in
Brown v. Board of Education argued the public school system of segregation was
unconstitutional.
In June U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken ordered attorneys for plaintiffs and for the
Department of Justice to meet for a settlement conference with Magistrate Judge
Thomas Coffin, calling it “a tremendous opportunity” to address the climate “crisis” and
not just a “ministerial step.” Those talks are underway.
If Judge Aiken grants the motion to amend, and the settlement process is unsuccessful,
the case would be able to move forward in the trial court on the question of whether the
federal government’s fossil fuel-based energy system, and resulting climate
destabilization, is unconstitutional.