News & Analysis
July 16, 2020
We’re only halfway through 2020 and already this has been a historic year for the movement to hold Big Oil accountable for causing and lying about climate change.
Public opinion overwhelmingly supports holding polluters accountable for climate damages. There are now 18 separate cities, counties, and states bringing consumer fraud and cost recovery lawsuits against Big Oil, with Minnesota becoming the third state after Massachusetts and Rhode Island to file suit.
Here is a quick rundown of some major developments:
Minnesota, D.C., and Honolulu filed new climate lawsuits against Exxon and other Big Oil groups, bringing the total number of communities suing to 18:
In June, the attorneys general of Minnesota and the District of Columbia filed back-to-back consumer fraud lawsuits against Exxon and others for lying to residents about climate change in violation of local consumer protection laws. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison sued Exxon and two other kingpins of climate denial — Koch Industries and the American Petroleum Institute — for what he called their “campaign of deception.” The very next day D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine filed his own consumer protection suit against Exxon, BP, Chevron, and Shell for knowingly concealing the role that burning fossil fuels plays in causing climate change.
In March, the city and county of Honolulu sued a group of major oil and gas companies — including ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, and Chevron — to recover billions of dollars in damages the industry knew its products would create and intensify, from rising seas and coastal erosion to flooding and supercharged storms.
Big Oil suffered a series of major court defeats, bringing climate cases closer to trial: Three separate federal appeals courts ruled — in cases brought by Baltimore and communities in California and Colorado — that climate damages lawsuits can proceed in state courts, where they were originally filed. These rulings, which were all unanimously decided, are a major blow to Big Oil’s legal strategy. The industry has time and again sought to move these cases to federal courts, where they think they have a better chance of escaping accountability. Now it’s more likely than ever that communities will get their day in court against the industry.
The presidential candidate currently leading in the polls has said he supports polluter accountability: Former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, said during a debate in February that the fossil fuel industry is one “we should be able to sue. We should go after, just like we did the drug companies, just like we did with the tobacco companies.” Just this month, the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force included “polluter accountability” in a list of climate policy recommendations, and Biden’s latest climate plan pledged to instruct the Department of Justice to support “plaintiff-driven climate litigation against polluters.”
There’s a growing drumbeat in Congress to protect access to the court for communities seeking justice against Big Oil: During COVID-19 relief negotiations in May, an impressive group of 60 U.S. House members, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, urged House leaders to “categorically oppose” giving the fossil fuel industry legal immunity or limited liability from lawsuits over climate change and other misdeeds. In a major report on climate recommendations released in June, the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis embraced this principle by stating that “Congress should not offer liability relief … in exchange for a carbon price.”
Polls show that voters of all stripes and political ideologies in states like North Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey, and Minnesota are demanding that we hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for climate change damages. A majority of Americans believe that fossil fuel companies bear responsibility for the damages caused by global warming and should be made to pay communities to address some, if not all of them.
All these developments are very bad news for the oil industry, which is clearly scared and getting desperate to blunt the momentum in any way possible. Exxon was recently rebuffed in an effort to counter-sue California communities seeking justice, and Shell’s CEO now denies that they’re even an oil company. Maybe, just maybe, these trends could be the reason why someone was recently revealed to have hired hackers to target many of the people and groups working to expose what #ExxonKnew and hold the industry accountable. Exxon has not (yet) been officially accused of any wrongdoing, but U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse's concerns about “red flags” that the ongoing federal investigation of the hack “will fall victim to political pressure from Washington” certainly raise suspicions.
There’s still a long road ahead on the path to holding Big Oil accountable, but one thing is certain: 2020 is already shaping up to be a pivotal year in the fight.
