September 2021

Vermont Attorney General T.J. Donovan announced a consumer protection lawsuit against Exxon, Shell, and other major oil and gas companies for “numerous deceptive acts and unfair practices in connection with their marketing, distribution, and sale of gasoline and other fossil fuel products to consumers within the State.”

“Defendants engaged in calculated disinformation campaigns to convince consumers in Vermont...that ‘the jury was still out’” on the climate science that Defendants had long known was irrefutable,” the complaint reads. This deception, Vermont argues, had “material effects'' on the choices that Vermont consumers were able to make about fossil fuel purchase and consumption. According to the complaint, those choices would have been different had these consumers been provided with “accurate and complete information rather than the lies and deception propagated for decades by Defendants.”