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Big Oil companies are once again asking the U.S. Supreme Court to help them escape accountability for their climate lies. The justices have rejected five separate requests by Big Oil to take up issues in climate deception cases since 2021 — including earlier this year when they turned down a request virtually identical to the one now before the Court.

Also in this issue:

Plastic is actually costing Americans a lot of money ⬇️

The first wrongful death case against Big Oil is back on track ⬇️

Exxon’s “ugly history” of deception in Latin America ⬇️

Let's dive in.

Here's the Latest

The financial and family ties between Supreme Court justices and oil majors facing climate lawsuits are facing renewed scrutiny. Justice Alito, who owns stock in oil companies and has previously recused himself from several climate deception cases, is drawing criticism for hearing a petition in a case that could have a big impact on Big Oil. Justice Barrett, who as a circuit judge recused from cases involving Shell — where her father was a top lawyer until 2007 — stopped doing so once she reached the Supreme Court. And new details about financial ties between other justices and Big Oil were recently reported in The American Prospect.

An ExxonMobil-funded coalition of think tanks spent years sabotaging support for international climate treaties across the Global South, according to newly unearthed documents reported by DeSmog and the Guardian. In other words, Exxon was “quietly financing climate denial in developing countries.”

“That’s a pretty ugly history. Exxon seemed to think that if you could make developing nations, and all nations, skeptical that climate change was a crisis then you’d never have a global climate treaty.”

CCI Director of Special Investigations Kert Davies on Exxon’s climate denial in the global south.

Plastic is costing Americans $1.1 trillion a year — and that's likely a "significant underestimate," according to a new report by researchers at Duke University. “Fossil fuel subsidies keep plastics relatively inexpensive in the United States. But as our report reveals, the true economic, environmental and health costs to society are far greater,” lead report author Nancy Lauer said.

Dig Deeper

First-ever wrongful death case against Big Oil to proceed in state court

The first-ever lawsuit seeking to hold Big Oil companies accountable for the death of a family member in a climate disaster will continue moving forward in Washington State court, after a judge rejected fossil fuel companies’ arguments to move the case to federal court.

Misti Leon sued ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Shell, and other oil and gas companies in May for fueling the extreme heat that killed her mother, Julie Leon, on the hottest day in Washington State history during the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome. Scientists found that the heat event would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change.

"This is an important step toward putting these companies on trial and securing accountability for the Leon family," Timothy Bechtold, an attorney representing Misti Leon, said.

READ THE BLOG

On The Record

TAP INTO THE CLIMATE ACCOUNTABILITY CONVERSATION

This is actually a complete catastrophe, and it’s really quite terrifying. And it also just makes me quite angry that it doesn’t have to be this way. This has been caused by the climate crisis, by fossil fuel companies."

Jamaican British climate activist ​​Mikaela Loach, whose family was hit by Hurricane Melissa, on why hurricanes should be named after oil executives.

Legal Action Against Big Oil

Boulder, Colorado, filed a brief on Monday urging the Supreme Court to reject the fossil fuel industry’s requests to review the city and county’s deception lawsuit against ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy. Earlier this year, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Boulder’s case could advance toward discovery and trial. The justices rejected a nearly identical Big Oil petition earlier this year in a case from Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. In its brief, Boulder points out that state and local governments “have always had the authority to provide remedies for in-state injuries arising from out-of-state conduct,” comparing their case to those against opioid and asbestos manufacturers that also deceived the public about their harmful products.

A top lawyer for ExxonMobil is vowing to crush climate lawsuits, according to a new E&E story. The comment, made by Exxon’s assistant general counsel for litigation at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention in Washington, comes while Big Oil is lobbying Congress to pass a liability waiver that would shield Exxon and its fossil fuel peers from dozens of climate accountability lawsuits filed by communities across the country.

In Belgium, frontline communities are taking petrochemical maker INEOS to court over the construction of a new plastics facility. Early projections indicate that the facility could produce three times the amount of emissions the company claims, triggering more pollution-related deaths than facility jobs.

ICYMI

(IN CASE YOU MISSED IT)

🗞️ READ: They survived the hurricane. Their insurance company didn’t.

⛽️ Exxon thinks that disclosing their greenhouse gas emissions violates their right to free speech.

🌎 Research shows oil, gas and coal firms’ unprecedented access to Cop26-29, blocking urgent climate action

⚡️ Big Oil’s Three-Decade Plot to Kill America’s Clean Energy Revolution

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boulder, Colorado, filed a brief on Monday urging the Supreme Court to reject the fossil fuel industry’s requests to review the city and county’s deception lawsuit against ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy. Earlier this year, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Boulder’s case could advance toward discovery and trial. The justices rejected a nearly identical Big Oil petition earlier this year in a case from Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. In its _brief_, Boulder points out that state and local governments “have always had the authority to provide remedies for in-state injuries arising from out-of-state conduct,” comparing their case to those against opioid and asbestos manufacturers that also deceived the public about their harmful products.

paywall

Exxon lawyer vows to crush climate lawsuits

Oil companies are once again pushing the Supreme Court to stop a flood of cases that could force them to pay billions.

Avatar of Lesley Clark

By: Lesley Clark | 11/10/2025

CLIMATEWIRE | A top lawyer for Exxon Mobil says the company — named in more than two dozen lawsuits from local governments seeking compensation for climate change — has no intention of losing the battle against what he called “absolutely relentless” opponents.

The remarks Friday by Justin Anderson, Exxon's assistant general counsel for litigation, come as the oil and gas industry mounts its third effort in a year to persuade the Supreme Court to reject climate lawsuits brought by states and localities across the country.

“I didn't just move my family to Texas from the East Coast to have a bunch of activists and ambitious politicians bankrupt the company,” Anderson said during the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention in Washington. “We are not going to lose this fight.”

Officials in Boulder, Colorado, are scheduled Monday to deliver a rebuttal to the oil industry's Supreme Court push. The justices could decide by the close of the year whether they will get involved.

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In this issue:

Record breaking climate disasters in 2025 ⬇️

Big Oil’s predicted “catastrophic events” are coming true in Jamaica ⬇️

A major win in French court ⬇️

Let’s get into it.

Here's the Latest

Americans are spending more than ever on climate disasters. Of the $20 trillion in GDP growth the U.S. has seen since 2000, $7.7 trillion — or about 36% — stems from spending to recover from or prepare for climate disasters. No wonder Big Oil is scared of paying its fair share.

Climate disasters during the first half of 2025 were the costliest on record, new data shows. Fourteen different weather disasters battered the U.S. in the first six months of the year, racking up $101 billion in damages — and taxpayers are being left to foot the bill.

“We’ve got extremely lucky we’ve not had any bigger disasters than we’ve already had this year. We are basically sitting ducks for when the next major disaster hits.”

Emergency management expert Samantha Montano

Hurricane Melissa is barreling toward Jamaica, bringing an estimated 40 inches of rain and the threat of “catastrophic” flooding. Sound familiar? That’s because Exxon warned in 1982 that if the use of fossil fuels was not reduced, it could cause “potentially catastrophic” climate events.

Voters want to hold Big Oil accountable

Across the U.S., voters of all stripes — and political ideologies — support holding fossil fuel companies accountable for climate change costs. When people hear more about Big Oil’s decades-long deception and the actual dollar costs of climate change, support often increases.

CCI’s polling has found that more than two-thirds of nationwide voters support suing oil companies to pay for climate damages.

READ THE POLLS

Dig Deeper

Big Oil is not a partner in the energy transition, new research shows

Big Oil companies are contributing minuscule amounts of renewable energy to the global market, a new study found — contradicting industry claims that fossil fuel companies are partners in climate solutions. The research comes at a time when fossil fuel companies such as ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, and Chevron are facing a growing number of lawsuits that argue the companies are deceiving the public about their role in the climate crisis through false or misleading advertising and other means.

The study, published in Nature Sustainability, found that, despite years of advertising to the contrary, the largest 250 oil and gas companies own just 1.42% of global renewable energy capacity in operation, more than half of which can be attributed to renewable energy operations that the fossil fuel companies acquired.

Of the Big Oil companies headquartered in North America and Europe — including ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, and Chevron — renewable energy makes up less than half a percent of each company’s energy generation.

READ THE BLOG

On The Record

TAP INTO THE CLIMATE ACCOUNTABILITY CONVERSATION

Imagine how much more progress could have been made to secure cheaper and cleaner energy if these giant polluters had not fought so hard to keep us hooked on their dirty products. Now the local costs of fossil-fueled climate change are falling on our residents while the corporations that imposed them on us pay nothing."

Maryland Senator Pamela Beidle in the Baltimore Sun.

Legal Action Against Big Oil

French oil giant TotalEnergies is misleading consumers with claims about its "net-zero ambitions" and role in the energy transition, a Paris court ruled this month. The ruling is the first of its kind.

ExxonMobil sued the state of California last week over new laws that would require the oil giant to disclose its greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related financial risks. “They’re scared they won’t be able to greenwash anymore,” California Senator Scott Wiener said about the suit. California already has two ongoing lawsuits that seek to hold Exxon accountable for deceiving the public about climate change and plastic recycling.

More than 60 survivors of Super Typhoon Odette are suing Shell in UK court, demanding the fossil fuel major pay for the damages the climate-charged disaster caused in the Philippines. The lawsuit is the first civil claim to directly link polluters to deaths and personal injuries that have already happened in the global south.

ICYMI

(IN CASE YOU MISSED IT)

🥤 Big Soda wants to turn MAGA against MAHA — and Big Oil’s fingerprints are all over it.

🤨 A Los Angeles Times investigation into how Exxon went "from embracing the science of climate change to publicly questioning it" was published 10 years ago last week. Evidence unearthed in that piece has been cited in a growing number of lawsuits against the oil giant.

🔎 READ: Trump and Republicans Join Big Oil’s All-Out Push to Shut Down Climate Liability Efforts

Check out this post ⬇️

You may have heard that the pesticide industry is seeking a liability shield from Congress — but did you know that the fossil fuel industry is also seeking legal immunity from Congress? Big Oil is fighting tooth and nail to escape a growing number of lawsuits that could make them pay for lying about the climate and health harms of their polluting products.

CCI’s President Richard Wiles explains why every American should oppose efforts to put these powerful industries above the law.

WATCH HERE

Instagram

Who is cheerleading for Big Oil?

John Yoo thinks that communities shouldn’t have the right to sue Big Oil for lying about the safety of their products.

The law professor has also been accused of war crimes and been investigated for violations of domestic and international law. 🙄

WATCH HERE

Until next time 👋,

Isabella Garcia

Communications Strategist, Center for Climate Integrity

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CCI

Center for Climate Integrity on Big Oil’s Climate Deception | Center for Climate Integrity

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his week, we’re talking about how Big Oil is still deceiving the public about its role in the climate crisis while trying to stick communities with the ever-increasing bill.

In this issue:

A massive rate hike for California’s insurer of last resort ⬇️

Actually, Big Oil companies are not partners in the energy transition ⬇️

Maryland communities are fighting for their day in court ⬇️

Let's get into it.

Here's the Latest

Oil and gas majors contribute marginally to the creation of renewable energy, a new study found. Like, 1% or less in some cases — and they still have the audacity to claim to be partners in the energy transition.

California’s insurer of last resort is seeking a 36% average rate hike following a $4 billion loss from catastrophic and deadly wildfires. This is just the latest example of rising climate-driven insurance costs falling on everyday Americans instead of the Big Oil companies fueling the climate crisis.

Big Oil and its political allies are still trying to stop dozens of communities from putting the companies on trial for climate deception. While fossil fuel companies are urging the Supreme Court to intervene, industry backers are also lobbying Congress for a legal shield against accountability. "They have no shame," University of Vermont law professor Pat Parenteau told AFP about the move.

Minnesotans deserve their day in court against Big Oil, Minnesota Representative Larry Kraft said in a recent op-ed. Rep. Kraft applauded the state’s ongoing climate deception lawsuit and called on his state's congressional delegation to oppose a legal shield for Big Oil.

“No industry should be above the law, especially one that spent decades lying to the public. Say no to a legal shield for Big Oil.”

Minnesota Representative Larry Kraft

Evidence of Deception

Scientists and executives at fossil fuel companies knew more than 50 years ago that burning fossil fuels would raise global temperatures and could lead to "catastrophic" consequences — and we have the documents to prove it.

Explore the evidence of Big Oil’s deception, unearthed by journalists, researchers, and officials, on CCI’s website.

READ THE DOCS

Dig Deeper

Maryland Supreme Court weighs future of local climate deception lawsuits

Maryland communities are fighting to have their day in court with Big Oil companies. Last week, the Maryland Supreme Court heard arguments for why Baltimore, Annapolis, and Anne Arundel County should have the opportunity to move their climate deception cases forward in court.

“[The Big Oil companies] have an obligation to give warnings commensurate with the risk,” Vic Sher, a lawyer representing the communities, said. “None of them have ever given any warnings. In fact, the essence of the complaint is that they actively sought to undermine the science, the scientists, and the knowledge about this to minimize the effects or say that it isn’t real or doesn’t need addressing or there is no immediacy to it.”

Legal experts have urged the Maryland Supreme Court to reverse lower court decisions siding with the oil companies and allow the cases to move forward to trial where Maryland communities can present evidence of Big Oil’s lies to a jury.

READ THE BLOG

On The Record

TAP INTO THE CLIMATE ACCOUNTABILITY CONVERSATION

The fossil fuel companies want the courts to believe they are being sued for their greenhouse gas emissions. They are not. They are being sued for their deception, and for failing to warn consumers about the climate dangers associated with their products. Now, the Supreme Court of Maryland has an opportunity to weigh in and protect the rights of Marylanders to go to court and seek recovery for that conduct."

Former federal judge and Baltimore city solicitor Andre Davis in the Baltimore Sun.

Legal Action Against Big Oil

The Department of Justice wants to stop Michigan’s planned climate deception lawsuit against Big Oil before it’s even filed. Michigan filed a motion to dismiss the DOJ’s case on the basis that the state’s lawsuit doesn’t exist yet, and the Justice Department responded by asking the court to deny the state’s motion.

Big Oil and its allies are once again urging the U.S. Supreme Court to stop climate deception lawsuits against the companies before they reach trial. The Supreme Court has turned down requests to review cases against Big Oil five times since 2021, but now the companies are asking the justices to review a Colorado Supreme Court ruling that allowed Boulder’s lawsuit against ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy to proceed toward trial.

More than 100 House Republicans are supporting Big Oil’s call for the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in Boulder’s case. Their amicus brief falsely claims that Boulder’s case aims to control national energy policy — an argument one judge in the case previously dismissed as “arguing against a case the Local Governments did not plead."

ICYMI

(IN CASE YOU MISSED IT)

🎤 CCI Director of Special Investigations Kert Davies appeared on a recent episode of Drilled, discussing how the fossil fuel industry sabotages climate action.

🙄 Big Oil’s cheerleaders are amplifying calls for the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn lower court decisions in favor of communities. Among those cheerleaders is John Yoo, a former George W. Bush administration official whose Wikipedia page has an entire section dedicated to “war crimes accusations."

♲ “Almost any solution that is based on the idea that plastics can widely be recycled just isn’t really going to work,” CCI’s Davis Allen told CalMatters as “advanced recycling” continues to be pushed as a plastic waste solution.

Check out this post ⬇️

Explore the internal documents on our website that show how Exxon (and other fossil fuel companies) deliberately sowed doubt to undermine scientific evidence on our website.

VIEW THE DOCS

Subsidizing Big Oil

The U.S. government will now provide more than $34 billion a year to the fossil fuel industry in subsidies — but Chris Wright, the country’s top energy official, is claiming that those subsidies… don’t exist.

Emily San

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Read our_full blog post_on our website.

An attempt to defund the District of Columbia’s consumer protection lawsuit against Big Oil is part of a wider attack on climate accountability lawsuits

As Big Oil and its allies lobby to shield the fossil fuel industry from a growing number of climate deception lawsuits, Congress is now taking aim at a case filed by the nation’s capital.

Recently proposed legislation would prohibit the District of Columbia from using any funds to enforce its consumer protection laws “against oil and gas companies for environmental claims” — a clear attack on D.C.’s ongoing lawsuit against ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, and Shell.

“The fossil fuel industry and its allies are trying to kill any and all lawsuits that would hold Big Oil companies accountable for their climate lies and the damage they’ve caused — and this assault on D.C.’s ability to enforce its own consumer protection laws is part of their playbook,” said CCI President Richard Wiles.

Read our full blog post on our website

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Big Oil has known and lied about the dangers of fossil fuels for decades.

An excellent new video (

Is This The Biggest Corporate Crime Ever Committed? - YouTube

) from More Perfect Union explains how the companies’ efforts to deceive the public about climate change constitute “one of the biggest corporate crimes in history.”

Watch and share the episode below, featuring CCI President Richard Wiles, Harvard Professor Naomi Oreskes, and California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

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New evidence shows that the oil industry was warned about the climate dangers of fossil fuels in 1954 — but chose to prioritize “industry interests.”

November 13, 2024

Big Oil companies were warned about the climate dangers of fossil fuels as early as 1954, according to new evidence that could boost efforts to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable in court. The unearthed documents, first reported on by DeSmog, are one of the earliest examples of the oil and gas industry’s knowledge that the pollution from their products could result in a climate crisis.

Following public concern about smog blanketing Los Angeles in the 1940s and 50s, the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) — then known as the Western Oil and Gas Association — created and funded a research front group called the Air Pollution Foundation, which in turn funded a Caltech study about the sources of Los Angeles’s air pollution. The $1.3 million in funding — equivalent to about $14 million in 2024 dollars — came from WSPA’s members including Shell and gas companies later bought by or merged with ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Sunoco, and ConocoPhillips.

The 1954 Caltech study determined that “a changing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere with reference to climate” may “ultimately prove of considerable significance to civilization,” citing coal, oil, and gas as CO2 sources. WSPA and its members were formally alerted to the study findings in March 1955, archival documents show.

At first, the Air Pollution Foundation’s leadership seemed to heed the study’s warning, with the foundation’s president advocating for pollution controls on oil refineries and testifying in favor of state-funded pollution research in the California Senate. However, in meeting minutes from April 1955, WSPA members admonished the foundation’s president, telling him he was drawing too much “attention” to fossil fuel’s role in climate pollution, that the foundation’s research should be more “protective” of the oil industry, and that WSPA “did not want the Foundation concerning itself with refinery stack gases.”

Going forward, the Air Pollution Foundation and WSPA — along with its members — publicly downplayed the harms of fossil fuels as part of the industry’s decades-long climate disinformation campaign. In future reports, the foundation described CO2 emissions as “innocuous” and, in 1958, an executive from WSPA-member Shell described CO2 as “harmless” at a national air pollution conference.

While this new evidence establishes an earlier start date for Big Oil’s deception campaign, it uncovers behavior that we’ve seen time and time again. The fossil fuel industry has spent millions to learn about the role of their products in the climate crisis and spent millions more to hide that information and lie to the public to protect the industry and its enormous profits.

“The fossil fuel industry is often seen as having followed in the footsteps of the tobacco industry’s playbook for denying science and blocking regulation,” climate disinformation expert Geoffrey Supran told The Guardian. “But these documents suggest that big oil has been running public affairs campaigns to downplay the dangers of its products just as long as big tobacco, starting with air pollution in the early-to-mid-1950s.”

Communities throughout the U.S. are demanding accountability in the courts over Big Oil’s deception. Multnomah County, Oregon, has named WSPA as a defendant in its ongoing lawsuit against Big Oil companies for fueling the deadly 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome. This new evidence raises the possibility of whether WSPA could be named in additional lawsuits, such as those filed in California, where WSPA is headquartered.

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Judges continue to reject oil industry efforts to escape accountability in state court.

Vermont is another step closer to putting Big Oil companies on trial for their climate lies after a federal district court ruled last week the lawsuit can move forward in state court, where it was originally filed. The decision continues oil companies’ unbroken losing streak in their attempts to escape facing accountability for their climate lies in dozens of local and state government cases.

Vermont’s lawsuit, filed by the state Attorney General’s office in 2021, charges ExxonMobil, Shell, and other major polluters with knowingly lying to the public about the climate harms of their products and ultimately denying Vermont consumers the opportunity to make informed choices on their fossil fuel products. The lawsuit asserts that Big Oil’s deceptive marketing not only misled consumers, but also delayed action and created costly and hazardous conditions for Vermont residents, like recent deadly floods exacerbated by climate change. The case, which will now be litigated in state court, seeks to force the oil companies to stop deceiving the public and relinquish the profits they made while promoting their false advertising.

“Vermonters deserve to know the truth about fossil fuel products as they make consumer choices,” Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark said after the ruling. “This case seeks to hold accountable fossil fuel companies that misrepresented their products and hid information from the public.”

To date, eight federal appeals courts — including the Second Circuit, which has jurisdiction over the District of Vermont — and more than a dozen federal district courts have unanimously ruled against the fossil fuel industry’s arguments to prevent these lawsuits from moving forward in state courts. Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court declined Big Oil’s requests to review one of those lower court rulings for the third time.

“The fossil fuel industry’s efforts to deceive the public about climate change have caused irreparable harm to communities,” CCI President Richard Wiles said. “The people of Vermont deserve their day in court to make these companies answer for their fraud.”

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New documents confirm the oil industry was not only warned of the dangers their products posed to the climate in 1954 — they paid for the proof.

The fossil fuel industry notoriously cast doubt on climate science for decades. Newly uncovered documents, however, confirm that the fossil fuel industry was not only informed that climate change was real and measurable in 1954 — they were the ones who funded the research to prove it.

In 1954, the automobile and petroleum industries paid climate scientist Charles Keeling via a private foundation to research carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, and that research continues to underpin our modern-day understanding of climate change. Documents, discovered by researcher Rebecca John and published in DeSmog, show that representatives from the American Petroleum Institute, Western States Petroleum Association, and BP all held influential roles at the private foundation funding Keeling’s work.

The uncovered documents show that the potential climate impacts of burning fossil fuels were communicated to the private foundation in November 1954. A research proposal sent to the fossil fuel-funded foundation warned that the “possible consequences of a changing concentration of the CO2 in the atmosphere with reference to climate … may ultimately prove of considerable significance to civilization.”

The oil industry has historically produced and advanced climate change research. Exxon’s scientific researchers predicted climate change with shocking accuracy in the 1970s, for example. However, the discovery of Keeling’s 1954 fossil fuel funders is the earliest example of the industry’s instrumental role in establishing evidence on the devastating impacts of oil and gas emissions on the climate — which they proceeded to publicly deny for decades.

“These findings are a startling confirmation that big oil has had its finger on the pulse of academic climate science for 70 years – for twice my lifetime – and a reminder that it continues to do so to this day,” climate accountability researcher and professor Geoffrey Supran told The Guardian. “They make a mockery of the oil industry’s denial of basic climate science decades later.”

This additional evidence of Big Oil’s climate deception further bolsters the evidence against fossil fuel companies in a growing number of climate accountability lawsuits that are steadily marching toward trial.

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mtg Study: PA Faces $15 Billion in Climate Change Costs by 2040

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https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2022/04/19/ninth-circuit-deals-latest-blow-big-oil-ruling-california-climate-lawsuits}:

for Immediate Release

Tuesday April 19, 2022, 

Center for Climate Integrity

Contact

Mike Meno, Center for Climate Integrity, mike@climateintegrity.org

PRESS RELEASE

Ninth Circuit Deals Latest Blow to Big Oil, Ruling that California Climate Lawsuits Belong in State Court

Three Federal Appeals Courts Have Now Handed Major Losses to Fossil Fuel Companies After the U.S. Supreme Court Ordered Expanded Review of Big Oil’s Arguments for Federal Jurisdiction

WASHINGTON -

Lawsuits from six California cities and counties seeking to hold major oil and gas companies — including ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, and Shell — accountable for the cost of climate damages they knowingly caused should proceed in state court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled today.

The unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel means that the counties of San Mateo, Marin, and Santa Cruz, and the cities of Imperial Beach, Richmond, and Santa Cruz are now one key step closer to putting oil majors on trial for deceiving the public about their role in climate change.

The Ninth Circuit decision marks the third time this year that a federal appeals court has rejected arguments from the oil industry to move climate liability lawsuits filed in state court to federal courtfollowing a 2021 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

At least ten federal district courts have similarly ruled that climate accountability lawsuits filed in state court belong in state court  — “a batting average of .000” for the fossil fuel industry, in the words of one judge.

In response, Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, released the following statement: 

“This is another big, but not surprising, loss for the oil and gas majors. Three federal appeals courts have now agreed that their arguments to escape accountability in state court do not pass muster. This ruling is a major victory for these California communities seeking their day in court against corporate polluters that spent decades lying about their products’ role in fueling the climate crisis.” 

Background:  

Earlier this year, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and the Fourth Circuit issued similar rulings in climate accountability lawsuits from communities in Colorado and Maryland, respectively.

Four other federal circuit courts across the country are considering similar arguments from Exxon and other oil and gas companies, which have repeatedly lost efforts to move climate accountability lawsuits out of state court.

Since 2017, the attorneys general of Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Vermont, and the District of Columbia, as well as 20 city and county governments in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, South Carolina, and Washington, have filed lawsuits to hold major oil and gas companies accountable for deceiving the public about their products’ role in climate change.

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In the span of two weeks, ExxonMobil made its largest oil acquisition in two decades, Chevron increased its oil production capacityby 10%, and Shell cut 200 clean energy jobs. It’s clearer than ever that Big Oil companies are doubling down on the fossil fuels driving the climate crisis, while they continue to mislead the public about the harm they are causing. Communities around the nation are seeing the industry’s ongoing deception for what it is and taking Big Oil companies to court to make them pay for their climate lies.

In a $60 billion deal, Exxon acquired Pioneer Natural Resources, an oil producer in the Permian Basin. The massive merger — which more than doubles the company’s Permian production to 1.3 million barrels of oil per day — comes after Exxon spent years claiming to support taking action to limit global warming per the Paris Agreement. The oil giant, however, just made a $60 billion bet that it will be able to continue business as usual despite the urgent calls for energy transition.

The greenwashing and deception isn’t surprising; Exxon and other major oil companies are being sued by communities across the country for knowingly lying to the public about their product’s role in advancing climate change and launching a climate science denial campaign to avoid public scrutiny.

Chevron is also doubling down on its oil production, acquiring competitor Hess for $53 billion — a consolidation that will increase Chevron’s existing daily oil production of three million barrels by 10%. Meanwhile, Shell — after one of its most profitable years on record — is reducing its low-carbon workforce by 200 positions just one month after Shell employees penned an open letter to CEO Wael Sawan expressing their concern with the company’s movement away from renewable energy investments.

There is overwhelming scientific consensus that the world needs to urgently pivot to renewable fuels in order to avoid worsening impacts of the climate crisis. In 2021, the International Energy Agency declared that all oil and gas infrastructure development must stop immediately in order for the world to meet its goal of net zero emissions by 2050. Earlier this year, the United Nations report on climate change concluded the planet will be pushed past the point of catastrophic warming in the next 10 years without an immediate transition away from fossil fuels.

Despite those warnings, oil giants continue to put profit over public safety and double down on fossil fuel investments — just like they have done for decades. It’s clearer than ever that Big Oil will only continue to act in its own self interest; it’s time to hold these companies accountable for their climate destruction.

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MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

There's a giant billboard in Times Square today. It reads, California is suing to make polluters pay. Big oil knew they were causing climate change. They lied to cover it up - this after the state filed suit against several of the world's biggest oil companies.

JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

The California suit comes on the heels of several other states and municipalities using the courts to hold the big oil companies accountable for climate change. Richard Wiles is the president of the Center for Climate Integrity, and his organization is working closely with many of the states and municipalities who have filed suits. He joins me now. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.

RICHARD WILES: Thanks for having me on.

SUMMERS: First, just to start, how big of a deal is this California lawsuit?

WILES: This is a huge deal. California is, I think, the fifth largest economy in the world. And they're a major oil-producing state. They're the first oil-producing state to file suit against the companies for knowing and then lying about how the fact that their products cause climate change. In addition, California is a leader in climate policy, and they just have a lot of sway among other states. So, you know, in clean air regs, a lot of states follow California. In litigation, I think they could have the same effect. The case by California could, in fact, trigger more attorneys general to file. So it's a really big deal. If you're a company that's been branded as just lying about the very essence of what your products do with total disregard for the damage that it will do to society, you know, that's basis for a lawsuit, and that's basis for just a lot of trouble for the oil companies.

SUMMERS: All right. I mean, there's a lot to unpack there. But in addition to damages, the state's calling for a fund that would be used to pay for recovery from extreme weather events. Just how much money are we talking about there?

WILES: The damages in the state of California from climate change would easily go into the hundreds of billions of dollars. I mean, you could imagine a trillion dollars-worth of damages in the state of California alone over time. You know, the state is proposing what they call an abatement fund, which is basically - was established in the lead paint cases - right? - and upheld by the court. And it just says, you know, the damage that your product caused that you knew it would cause and then lied about - you know, you've got to pay to help the citizens of the state of California deal with that damage. And with climate change, as we know, it's pretty much every facet of modern life, right? You need more air conditioning. You need to deal with wildfires and floods and droughts. I mean, the list of adaptations to deal with this damage is enormous. And, you know, industries should pay their fair share, which will be billions and billions of dollars.

SUMMERS: I mean, look. There have been legislative efforts to curb climate change. There have been diplomatic efforts, so many attempts at addressing this problem. So what do you think that suing these companies directly accomplishes that these other efforts have not been able to so far?

WILES: Well, litigation is a fundamentally different strategy. It's not about climate policy. It's about holding them accountable for the damage that they knowingly caused, that they lied about, OK? So that could do a lot of things. I mean, but the main thing it will do is bring some measure of justice to the public, you know, for being lied to for all these decades and for having to deal with these damages and pay for it. I mean, that's really what it's about. If you step back a little bit and if you look at any major social transformation like climate change - and this is - you know, this is a magnitude of the social change that we're envisioning here - is - you know, it's probably unprecedented in human history.

But if you look at other major transformational social change movements like civil rights or marriage equality, they all had a litigation component to them, right? It wasn't just working for policy change to the Congress. So what this does, what these cases do is open up that flank. We don't think you can have the climate policy you need for the transition without accountability. Accountability is the first step towards solving climate change. And if we can't get accountability, it just doesn't seem like we can really solve this problem.

SUMMERS: You know, I would imagine that if we were to bring one of the representatives from one of these companies on the line, they may make the argument that lawsuits like these - they're politicized, that they're without merit. What do you say to that?

WILES: When the industry says that, that just makes me realize how on point these cases are, right? They have not yet had a single substantive critique of the core theory of these cases, which is simply that you knew that your products would cause climate change 40 years ago. We have the documents. You ran a major disinformation campaign. We have the master plan. And you need to be held accountable for that. The industry's critique of the cases never addresses the core facts of the cases. They always try to come up with some other sort of deflection message about how this is a waste of time or waste of money or whatever. Of course they think it's a waste of money to hold them accountable for the hundreds of billions of dollars of damages they are causing. What else would they say, you know? But they're wrong.

And they also know that the evidence in these cases is overwhelming, right? It's just clear as a bell that at the core complaint here being made by the states and the municipalities, that they knew and they lied and they ran a massive disinformation campaign to delay action is just supported by the documents to such a degree that they - you know, they have to sort of deflect because they the evidence is just damning.

SUMMERS: What are your hopes for this California lawsuit? What does victory look like? And is there an example out there that is similar to what you'd hope to see?

WILES: Well, we would hope that this case would trigger more cases. And we hope that ultimately, of course, that the plaintiffs, the state of California, will win, as will the other states. We hope they all win and that the companies are forced to pay their fair share of the hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars, of damages that they should pay because they knew when they lied that their products would cause all these damages. And, you know, we also hope that the narrative of climate change changes after people understand what these cases are about. You know, climate change is basically a crime against humanity. It's not a tragedy. And, you know, the industry wants us to think that it's everybody's fault and that it's some sort of tragic outcome of the use of fossil fuels that we're all going to work together to solve. But really, what it is - it's basically a crime against humanity perpetrated by the oil industry on all of us. And these cases will make that clear.

SUMMERS: Richard Wiles is the president of the Center for Climate Integrity. Thank you so much for being here today.

WILES: Thanks for having me - really appreciate it.

SUMMERS: We asked the American Petroleum Institute, an industry trade group and one of the defendants in the California suit, to respond to Richard Wiles' comments. And they shared a statement with us which said in part, this ongoing coordinated campaign to wage meritless, politicized lawsuits against a foundational American industry and its workers is nothing more than a distraction from important national conversations and an enormous waste of California taxpayer resources. Climate policy is for Congress to debate and decide, not the court system.

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ref 2  BS

https://eidclimate.org/something-tells-us-this-attempt-by-activists-to-make-apiknew-a-thing-is-going-to-fail-again/

anti-energy activists on Twitter are circulating a letter-to-the-editor published in the journal Nature which claims to show that the American Petroleum Institute (API), an industry trade group, was informed of the existence of climate change in 1965. 350.org’s Jamie Henn described the news as “criminal” and “immoral,” while Politico suggested the revelation may spawn a new front in the #ExxonKnew campaign: #APIKnew.

But in rushing to share this letter, activists and reporters forgot that they’ve tried this before – and failed spectacularly.

Déjà vu, all over again

In April 2016 the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) published a directory of industry documents as part of its support for the #ExxonKnew Campaign. According to CIEL, “In 1968, a report commissioned by the oil industry detailed rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and warned of potentially catastrophic climate risks.” CIEL would issue new press releases in May and July of that same year, though they were ultimatelyunable to attract much attention.[ICN LAT]

Now activists hope to make a bigger splash with a document from 1965, three years prior to their previously touted report. But the document they cite, API president Frank Ikard’s speech at the group’s 1965 annual meeting, is not a characterization of the energy industry’s internal understanding of climate change. No: Ikard was instead relaying the findings of President Lyndon Johnson’s Science Advisory Committee’s report, which had been published three days prior. Ikard, it would seem, was telling his members about something many of them had already likely seen reported on in the news. Imagine that!

#EveryoneKnew

As InsideClimate News wrote in 2016: “By the 1960s, the CO2 problem was gaining wider scientific recognition, especially as President Lyndon B. Johnson’s science advisers and leading experts brought it to the attention of the White House in 1965.” VICE News, in its reporting on CIEL’s 2016 announcement, wrote:

“Well before the [1968 report commissioned by API], popular media discussed the likely effects of carbon emissions in terms that will be familiar to today’s audience. In 1956, Time magazine noted that ‘in 50 years or so,’ a CO2 buildup ‘may have a violent effect on the earth’s climate.’ A 1958 science film produced by Bell Labs and Hollywood legend Frank Capra talked about possible melting of the polar ice caps if global temperatures rise ‘even a few degrees.’”

Author Has Ties to #ExxonKnew Campaign

The author of the letter in Nature, Benjamin Franta, has strong ties to the anti-fossil fuel activist campaign. The research supporting his letter was funded by the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), which is a project of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD). CCI was launched in 2017 by activist Richard Wiles to support “meritorious climate cases aimed at holding fossil fuel companies and other climate polluters liable for the damages they have caused.” Richard Wiles is also the publisher of Climate Liability News, a dark-money “news” site launched in 2017 to promote those climate lawsuits.

In addition to funding Franta’s research, IGSD also recently published a podcast called Drilled, which invites listeners to join them as they “uncover” how the energy industry allegedly “created climate denial and made it viral.” CCI is also funding an activist campaign, Pay Up Climate Polluters,which is pressuring cities like Miami Beach and Houston to file climate liability lawsuits against the energy industry.

Benjamin Franta is no objective researcher, either. Earlier this year he flew to the United Kingdom to give a presentation as part of a panel on “Mobilization for and against fossil fuel development.” You’ll never guess which side of the debate he’s on:

“My name is Ben Franta and I’m from Stanford and I’m a PhD student in the history department there and I’m also a JD student at the law school there. I’m going to talk to you today about both of those things. So, I called it ‘Taking on Big Oil,’ but I really want to call it ‘Kicking Big Oil’s Ass’ – that’s what this talk is about and using history and law and lawsuits. Let’s get started.” (emphasis added)

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EID BS attack:

https://eidclimate.org/bombshell-rockefeller-family-fund-behind-the-pay-up-climate-polluters-campaign/

BOMBSHELL: ROCKEFELLER FAMILY FUND BEHIND THE “PAY UP CLIMATE POLLUTERS” CAMPAIGN

JANUARY 15, 2020 | SPENCER WALRATH

In 2017, the Rockefeller Family Fund (RFF) gave the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD) over $1 million to launch an aggressive climate litigation campaign against America’s top energy producers, according to a new Energy In Depth analysis of New York state tax disclosures. IGSD’sCenter for Climate Integrity (CCI)is the nexus for lobbying efforts, studies, amicus briefs, events, and social media campaigns aimed at pressuring states and municipalities tosueenergy companies for the costs of climate change.

Over the years, RFF has made numerous attempts to conceal their grantees; they have no public grantee database and have failed to post a complete federal tax return, including all donations, since 2013. However, our analysis of New York state tax disclosures reveals RFF’s highly coordinated effort to fund an aggressive climate litigation campaign against energy producers.

The Center for Climate Integrity’s Million Dollar Launch

Before launching CCI in August of 2017, IGSD was receiving just under $4 million in grants annually. RFF’s $1,020,000 grant marked a huge influx of funding to the organization – all earmarked for CCI or the Climate Education & Litigation Project (CCI’s original name). This grant was also RFF’s largest donation to a single organization, excluding other charitable funds, that year.

Since the launch of CCI, IGSD’s grant revenue has more than doubled to nearly $10 million. The organization does not disclose its full list of funders, but a recent investigation by RealClear Investigations revealed that CCI received a $7 million grant from a foreign billionaire in 2018. CCI has dodged questions about its institutional funders when pressed by reporters.

While obscuring its funding, CCI has become the public face of the campaign to sue American energy producers for the costs of climate change. CCI’s aggressive public relations efforts have included billboards, a podcast, social media, events in cities like Boulder and Honolulu to promote climate litigation, and a “study” encouraging public officials to seek damages from energy companies. In addition, the organization hired a lobbyist to arrange meetings between city officials and plaintiffs’ attorneys on climate litigation and submitted an amicus brief in support of an ongoing climate case.

RFF is Directly Funding Litigation, Astroturfing, and Journalism Too

RFF’s grant to IGSD isn’t their only recent contribution to climate litigation. Since 2016, the organization has provided at least $525,0000 to three nonprofit organizations pursuing climate litigation against energy companies – the Conservation Law Foundation, EarthRights International, and the Niskanen Center. Since 2014, RFF has given at least $140,000 to Resource Media, an organization hired by plaintiffs’ firm Sher Edling to provide public affairs and media consulting services for their climate lawsuits against energy producers.

Other notable grants include:

RFF’s Obsession with Attacking American Energy Companies

RFF’s recent contributions to climate litigation provide additional evidence that the Rockefeller family manufactured and continues to wage asmear campaignagainst America’s energy producers. RFF and its sister organization, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, have been backing organizations pursuing climate litigation against energy companies for years. In 2016, the pair even hosted a strategy session at their joint New York headquarters in 2016 to “delegitimize” ExxonMobil and develop a coordinated social media and messaging campaign to damage the company’s reputation. Later that year, David Kaiser and Lee Wasserman, president and director of the Rockefeller Family Fund, released a series of articles to falsely malign the company.

Despite the Rockefellers’ best efforts, ExxonMobil and other energy companies continue to prevail in the courtroom.

In December, New York Supreme Court Justice Barry Ostrager highlighted ExxonMobil’s exemplary conduct in his verdict, ruling in favor of the company in their legal battle with the New York attorney general:

“The Office of the Attorney General offered no testimony from any investor who claims to have been misled… What the evidence at trial revealed is that ExxonMobil executives and employees were uniformly committed to rigorously discharging their duties [to max profit?] in the most comprehensive and meticulous manner possible.”

In dismissing climate lawsuits brought by San Francisco and Oakland, Judge William Alsup explained that litigation is inappropriate for addressing climate change.

“The dangers raised in the complaints are very real. But those dangers are worldwide. Their causes are worldwide. The benefits of fossil fuels are worldwide. 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.”

For all their talk about solving climate change, perhaps the Rockefellers should invest their millions into climate solutions, rather than politically-motivated campaigns that do nothing to further climate progress.

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Center for Climate Integrity directs Pay Up Climate Polluters. CCI and its partners in law, science and advocacy work to make Big Oil and Gas pay their fair share of the damages their products helped cause.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Learn more about the Chamber's deception >>

New research found that the Chamber of Commerce knew about the dangers posed by the burning of fossil fuels for decades, but deliberately skewed their external messaging to sow doubt and uncertainty about climate science whenever key climate policy proposals were on the table.

Citing data from U.K.-based think tank InfluenceMap, a recent report from the Senate Committee on the Climate Crisis called the Chamber of Commerce one of “the two most influential opponents of climate action,” along with its founding organization, the National Association of Manufacturers.

Explore the #SlipperySix

The American people deserve answers, and as the Chamber’s President and CEO, Clark must testify. Here is just some of the evidence that members of the House Oversight Committee should ask her to explain:

The Chamber of Commerce Knew About the Dangers of Climate Change Early On

The Chamber Worked Diligently on Behalf of Big Oil Member Corporations to Promote Climate Denial, Downplay Climate Risks and Obstruct Action

The Chamber is the Most Powerful Lobbying Force on Capitol Hill -- and Uses That Power to Oppose Climate Action.

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September 13, 2021

Rob Schilling

Executive Director

Energy Policy Advocates

By e-mail to: Schilling@allhookedup.com

Re: Vermont Public Records Act Request

Dear Mr. Schilling:

I write in response to your Vermont Access to Public Records Act

request dated September 7, 2021, which this office received on September 8,

  1. In that request, on behalf of Energy Policy Advocates, you sought:

I. all electronic correspondence . . . and any accompanying

information . . . including also any attachments, a) sent to or from or

which copies (whether as cc: or bcc:) i) Charity Clark, ii) Robert

McDougall and/or ii) Nick Persampieri, that b) was also sent to or from

or which copies (whether as cc: or bcc:), or which includes anywhere

in the correspondence, i) enckj@aol.com, ii) any email address ending

in @climateintegrity.org, iii) any email address ending in @vtcha.org,

and/or iv) pparenteau@vermontlaw.edu, which c) is dated from October

1, 2020 through today, inclusive; and

II. any i) “COMMON INTEREST AGREEMENT REGARDING THE

SHARING OF INFORMATION RELATED TOSTATE LAWSUITS

AGAINST FOSSIL FUEL COMPANIES FOR DECEPTIVE ACTSAND

PRACTICES AND OTHER STATE LAW CLAIMS” signed by OAG

since October 1, 2020, and of ii) any fee, representation, consulting, pro

bono, non-disclosure, confidentiality and/or common interest agreement

signed between your office and Pat Parenteau and/or Vermont Law

School that is presently in effect.

Please be advised that we have no records that are responsive to your

request.

If you feel any information or records have been withheld in error, you

may appeal to Deputy Attorney General Joshua Diamond at the following

email address: Joshua.Diamond@vermont.gov.

Sincerely,

/s/Nicholas F. Persampieri

Nicholas F. Persampieri

Assistant Attorney General

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https://exxonknews.substack.com/  on substack/twt

substack no lnx

Exxon’s new emissions targets are more smoke and mirrors

Earthworks campaigner Josh Eisenfeld discusses the company’s latest pledge.

EXXONKNEWS

Dec 8, 2021

Emily Sanders is editorial lead for the Center for Climate Integrity. You can catch up with her on Twitter here.

Last week, oil giant ExxonMobil announced a new emissions reduction pledge — its latest attempt to placate growing calls to hold the company accountable for its immense contributions to the climate crisis.

The new targets are technically Exxon’s most ambitious to date — a comically low bar, if you take a closer look at the details.

Exxon is now aiming to reduce its 2016-level greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2030 — a goal that relies on “measuring the intensity of its emissions,” which could leave room for an overall increase in pollution if the company’s oil production increases. 

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The pledge also takes into account pollution from only its operations, otherwise known as Scope 1 and 2 emissions, which comprise an estimated 17% of Exxon’s total 2020 emissions. The other 83% — the Scope 3 emissions released when consumers use the industry’s fossil fuel products — are completely unaccounted for in Exxon’s announcement.

Jamie Henn

@jamieclimate

This is like PhilipMorris pledging that the production of their cigarettes won’t cause cancer.

Offsetting a drilling operation does absolutely nothing for the climate when you’re still selling the gas.

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

bloom.bg

December 7th 2021

13 Retweets34 Likes

Once again, Exxon is shifting responsibility for addressing climate change to consumers — even as the company continues to lobby against alternatives to fossil fuels, greenwash their dangerous products, and refuse to significantly change their business model to respond to the crisis.

Twitter avatar for @jeffbradynews

Jeff Brady

@jeffbradynews

This announcement does not include emissions from the oil and gas the company produces. ExxonMobil leaves responsibility for limiting those climate-warming gases to its customers.

ExxonMobil @exxonmobil

Today we announced one of the most ambitious emission-reduction plans in the Permian Basin: net-zero Scope 1 & 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. It’s a big step, as the Permian is home to over 40% of our net U.S. oil and gas production. Learn more. https://t.co/T7WKspJGbG https://t.co/nA4JA4jK5m

December 6th 2021

I spoke with Josh Eisenfeld, Corporate Accountability Communications Campaigner at the nonprofit Earthworks, for his take on Exxon’s latest greenwashing. Our interview, edited for length and clarity, is below.

EK: Exxon’s latest targets rely on emissions intensity metrics. Can you explain what that means?

JE: Reducing carbon emissions intensity doesn't mean reducing total carbon emissions. It means reducing the emissions associated with getting a barrel of oil to market. So things like leaking less of their product out or switching from diesel engines to pump oil out of the ground to solar powered engines. If they reduce that intensity metric while increasing their total production of oil and natural gas — which Exxon has indicated they plan to do — they will still increase their overall carbon footprint. We have seen other companies, like Chevron, do exactly that. Between 2016 and 2020 they reduced all of their intensity metrics and still drastically increased their overall carbon emissions because they increased their drilling and production.

Exxon is also promoting a heavy reliance on unproven technology like carbon capture and storage. This allows them to continue to produce fossil fuels under the guise of “we’ll be able to take the carbon out of the atmosphere, so you don’t have to worry.” It’s 100% designed to make the company look good while continuing their bad behavior.

Exxon has known about climate change for half a century. I think this is just more of the same. They denied climate change. Now they’re delaying climate action, and this is just another example of that.

How has Exxon performed on previous pledges?

The data that we’re going off of is the data they’re providing us. There’s no watchdog checking to make sure that their numbers are correct. There is no standardized reporting in the United States. Until we open up the data to be more transparent, there’s no way for any person to know for sure whether they’re hitting these goals.

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The numbers they do account for, like methane numbers, are extremely underreported. What they say is coming out of their oil and gas wells is far, far lower than what is actually coming out based on satellite imagery and scientific studies. When you factor that in too, it’s really hard to know whether any company has hit their mark. 

What’s the difference between a pledge and a commitment?

All of these terms mean whatever the industry says they want it to mean.There’s nothing that binds them by law to define or deliver on their promises. It’s one reason a lot of NGOs and activists are pushing on the FTC to create reporting protocols. History shows us that when there is obscurity in rules, companies take advantage of that. That's what’s happening right now.

These pledges come about a month after ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods faced questions before Congress about the company’s efforts to spread climate disinformation. Exxon also faces lawsuits from communities across the country seeking to hold it accountable for those lies.

What do you say to the idea that this pledge demonstrates that the company is at least taking steps in the right direction?

History tells us that the words that come out of the mouth of the CEO of ExxonMobil are not gonna be the truth.They come with an asterisk: these words are designed to increase Exxon’s profits, and that’s it. What they do is all that should matter. It is good that communities are stepping in and fighting back, but ultimately I don't think it’s reasonable to expect a company like ExxonMobil to just fold over and succumb to that pressure. It’s going to take a reigning in of the industry as a whole by government, geopolitical forces, and investors pulling their money out.

These pledges are doing a lot of things for the industry, and that’s why they continue to put them out. They’re fighting a battle for their social license to operate, and they’ve been losing ground. These pledges are a way to remedy that — for their consumers, for politicians who have to answer to their constituencies when they hand out more tax breaks to fossil fuel companies, and for investors who have to justify their complicity in this. It gives them the disguise of change without any pressure to actually act on that change. As we’ve seen, even the investor pressure applied from Engine No. 1 hasn’t really amounted to any real change in Exxon.

This is the first pledge that’s come out since activist hedge fund Engine No. 1 members, who intended to push Exxon to significantly reduce its emissions, were elected. Why hasn’t there been more change?

Two reasons: they only got three board members, and that’s not a majority. These three are gonna come in with an image that others are probably not going to be too warm to in the boardroom. They’re going to have a tough time explaining why doing the right thing is doing the right thing financially. The idea of being able to change a company from within has good intentions, but I don’t see it playing out in a way under the given rules that actually makes change happen fast enough.

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2021 in review: Climate accountability in the courts

EXXONKNEWS looks at how efforts to hold Big Oil accountable progressed through the courts in 2021 — and what’s on deck for next year.

EXXONKNEWS

Dec 2, 2021

1

Emily Sanders is the Center for Climate Integrity’s editorial lead. Catch up with her on Twitter here.

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...Just days after the Big Oil hearing, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, an international nonprofit that “seeks to disrupt the architecture of online hate and misinformation,” released a report finding that posts linking to content fromjust ten publishers account for 69 percent of Facebook users’ interactions with climate denial content.

Dubbed the “Toxic Ten,” those publishers are:

Examples of viral climate denial content included a Washington Times article claiming there is a “cult of ‘climate change’” whose “worship” is based on unproven science, a Breitbart piece promoting conspiracy theories that climate legislation involves “lockdown decrees,” and a Newsmax article telling readers not to “worry too much about CO2 baking the planet.”

This type of content didn’t emerge on its own. CCDH’s CEO, Imran Ahmed, said the fossil fuel industry has “shown its willingness to embrace new technologies and every tool available to it to create harm — and climate denial is harm.” Social media, he says, is the last frontier for Big Oil to cultivate opposition against climate action that might threaten their bottom line.

“If they can’t win the battle on legislation, they’re going to seek to undermine the consensus, the self-preservatory consensus that underpins the push for legislation. They know that you can’t possibly get political agreement if we can’t even agree on the basic facts,” Ahmed said. “And all they have to do is simulate the appearance of dissent, of debate.”

According to the report, Facebook and Google, which have portrayed themselves as “green” and allies in the fight for climate action, are doing business with denial. CCDH’s research found that Facebook failed to label 92 percent of the Toxic Ten’s climate disinformation, despite the company’s pledge to start placing information labels on posts about climate change. It found that eight of the Toxic Ten have received a combined $5.3 million in revenue from Google ads in the last six months alone. Google promised to stop attaching ads to climate denial content in October, setting its own deadline of November 9 — but it hasn’t acted on that promise yet.

[twt]

...CCDH isn’t alone in calling this out: online climate disinformation has been identified as an urgent and emerging issue in pieces published in The New York Times, The Conversation, and The Nation within the past week.

CCDH’s research was released during COP26, this year’s United Nations climate summit, where at least 503 fossil fuel lobbyists — more than any country’s delegation — were present, according to an analysis by Corporate Accountability and other advocacy groups.

Go figure: the industry’s attempts to halt climate action through third parties have been simultaneously occurring online, where, thanks to internet trolls, right-wing publications, and the cooperation of social media platforms, they can now reach exponentially more members of the public. At least two of the Toxic Ten have historic ties to funding from ExxonMobil:

Digital platforms make that particularly easy through frequency bias — a fundamental psychological characteristic that causes humans to believe that something must be true or at least popular if we see it frequently enough. And disinformation, whether about vaccinations or climate change or electoral processes, is “sticky,” or “chewy,” in Ahmed’s words — it gets people talking.

Ben Decker, CEO of Memetica, a firm that works to investigate disinformation across digital media platforms, called climate disinformation “the legacy disinformation narrative plaguing America,” and fossil fuel companies the “historical purveyors” of that disinformation.

“The content itself becomes a space where fossil fuel companies can advertise themselves,” said Decker, who says policies to address climate change, not necessarily the science itself, are now the greatest target for these kinds of attacks.

Both Decker and Ahmed referred to the “asymmetry” of these so-called debates, which are manufactured with the help of the fossil fuel industry’s immense resources, and enabled by social media platforms that profit from publishers who advertise climate denial content on their sites.

So how do we tackle the climate disinformation crisis?

CCDH’s report calls on social media companies to stop monetizing and profiting from climate denial, and to comprehensively label climate disinformation on their websites. “It is amazing that the regulatory framework for a bodega in Manhattan is more onerous than that for a company like Facebook, which has literally caused at least one genocide,” Ahmed said, in reference to the violence in Myanmar.

In Decker’s view, it’s important for social media companies to codify exactly what images and words constitute climate disinformation if they’re going to prevent its spread. “They’re coy and smart around the words that they use,” he said of publishers and bad actors that facilitate harm over these platforms.

Growing wells of academic and journalistic research on evolving climate disinformation, and now the ongoing House Oversight investigation, could help define and identify harmful content. But if you ask Ahmed, the problem goes deeper than a lack of consensus or standards.

“We get too tied up in the technology of algorithms, automated moderation, AI and machine learning,” Ahmed said. “It’s a moral choice to gaslight the earth, and that’s what social media companies are doing. They’re making a moral choice to do business with climate denial. These are rapacious companies willing to sell out their communities, nations, and the planet, for their own wealth.”

ICYMI News Roundup

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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/12/opinion/climate-change-facebook-glasgow.html

GREG BENSINGER

Social Media Is Polluted With Climate Denialism

Nov. 12, 2021

Greg Bensinger

Mr. Bensinger is a member of the editorial board.

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This fall, Exxon Mobil started targeting New Yorkers with Facebook advertisements that warned about a proposed law that would require electric-only appliances in some buildings. “If your household was required to go full electric, it could cost you more than $25,600 to replace major appliances,” one ad reads.

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But the ad doesn’t tell the whole story: The law would apply only to new buildings, making Exxon’s cost claims specious at best. Other advertisements, among roughly 1,200 placed by the fossil fuel giant found by the artificial intelligence outfit Eco-Bot.Netthis year, claimed oil pipelines are necessary to keep “energy affordable and accessible” and that natural gas helps customers “meet their environmental goals.”

These are examples of so-called greenwashing, or corporate attempts to underplay companies’ true impact on the environment. Along with other climate misinformation on social media, such ads have become a potent threat to efforts to combat global warming.Researchers for the environmental group Stop Funding Heat found that climate misinformation is viewed as often as 1.36 million times daily on Facebook.

Social media companies simply aren’t rising to the challenge of rising sea levels. Climate change is an urgent threat, but the companies are treating misinformation around it with far less urgency than other issues like political conspiracy theories, hate speech and lies about Covid vaccines. Climate content can be considered opinion and is therefore exempt from standard fact-checking procedures, which climate change deniers have seized on to push misleading information onto the sites.

The largest social media firms demonstrated in last year’s presidential election that they can effectively combat some misinformation by appending warning labels, using algorithmic suppression and adding links to more reliable news sources. But such work requires sustained effort, and Facebook, for one, dismantled its well-intentioned civic integrity group overseeing election misinformation shortly after the 2020 presidential vote.

“The results from the American presidential election show that the social media companies have the capacity to address misinformation on a broad scale,” said John Cook, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Climate Change Communication Research Hub at Monash University who is advising Facebook on its climate misinformation efforts. “But they’ve not put the resources or effort behind this that are necessary.”

Even with the rapid shift in public opinion and the outward signs of global warming in recent years, social media companies have been slow to adapt, allowing sometimes blatant disinformation to flourish unchecked on their sites. Under Facebook company guidelines, climate content may be categorized as opinion and subject to no more scrutiny than peer-reviewed scientific research.

Social media companies have a standard playbook for addressing many online falsehoods: add warning labels, push them lower in an algorithmically driven news feed, remove them or penalize their creators by suspending or barring them from using the site. But often misleading posts, such as one that claims combating climate change “involves Americans giving up their freedom and way of life,” carry an incongruous and wishy-washy Facebook label about local average temperatures. Compare that to the labels appended to former President Donald Trump’s voting misinformation posts, which Facebook called “disputed” or “misleading.”

Posts featuring conspiracy theories around Texas’ February power grid failure that left many residents freezing in the dark racked up millions of views on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, particularly ones falsely suggesting that frozen wind turbines or President Biden’s energy policies were to blame. The companies did little to intervene. Representative Lauren Boebert, Republican of Colorado, falsely alleged in a tweet that Mr. Biden’s energy policies were “leaving millions of Texans freezing to death.” Twitter never appended a clarifying label.

Employees at Facebook have wrestled internally with how to approach climate change misinformation since at least 2019, according to documents released by the former Facebook employee Frances Haugen. According to one exchange, an employee seemed flummoxed by the company’s refusal to remove posts featuring climate change denial, because global warming is not a matter of opinion. Another employee said Facebook removes posts when “content may lead to imminent harm against people offline.”

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Facebook said its policy of not fact-checking or labeling posts from politicians was justified because the company doesn’t “want to limit political speech on the platform” — despite evidence it has that politicians are more likely to be believed than regular users and their posts are more widely shared.

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Facebook, which has called climate change the “greatest threat we all face,” has established only a sparsely visited section on its main site, known as the Climate Science Center, with occasional articles addressing rising global temperatures.

Climate skeptics are simply altering tactics from outright climate change denial to discrediting evidence and shifting blame from corporations to individuals, said Michael Mann, the author of “The New Climate War.”

On YouTube, the nonprofit Heartland Institute, known for attacking climate science, has backed the German influencer Naomi Seibt, who has posted videos denying climate change “hysteria” and encouraging viewers to live carefree lives. But YouTube rarely appends warning labels directing users to more reliable information, even as her videos garner thousands of views.

YouTube says it uses software to make debunked climate content less likely to show up in people’s recommendation feeds, but the climate activism nonprofit Avaaz found last year that the algorithm still prompted millions of views of questionable videos. The group also found that YouTube was selling ads to run alongside them.

As a result, Google, YouTube’s parent company, recently took a baby step, announcing it will no longer allow websites and YouTube creators to make money off advertising that denies humans’ contributions to climate change or denies global warming. Similarly, Facebook said climate change and global warming were on a list of topics that could no longer be used by marketers to target advertising, starting next year.

But spreading false information on the sites remains as easy as making a few keystrokes.

With the public shifting toward acceptance of climate change, corporate strategies are also evolving, including companies’ use of paid influencers on Instagram and TikTok who embark on idyllic road trips to Joshua Tree National Park using Shell gasoline or who snack on chips from Phillips 66 stations.In an effort to combat legislation to ban natural gas hookups, the fossil fuel industry also is paying Instagram stars to post videos of anodyne tasks like cooking tacos over gas stoves. The aim is to conjure good feelings about the brands, known to be significant contributors to carbon emissions, and perhaps even to convince consumers that they are stylish.

Elsewhere on the web, pages have sprung up with names like Climate Change Is Crap and Climate Change Is Natural to spew denialism on social media — no targeted ads needed. One headline from Climate Realism: “Evidence Indicates Climate Change Doesn’t Threaten Human Health.”

Social media could be a forum f or healthy debate about climate action, but the companies’ flimsy policies around policing climate change misinformation stand in the way. Automated software systems are simply not enough to combat misinformation about an unalterably changing Earth.

Facebook, YouTube and other companies have shown they have the power to amplify facts and suppress lies — will they use that to help protect Earth from its most dire threat?

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