News & Analysis
July 30, 2025
Honolulu’s case against Big Oil is based on readily available evidence showing the industry’s historic and ongoing climate deception, experts declared in recent case filings. The filings were submitted in response to the oil companies’ claim that the statute of limitations has passed for Honolulu’s case — a claim the city and county vehemently dispute.
Honolulu sued ExxonMobil, Sunoco, Shell, and other oil companies in 2020 to make them pay for the climate damages the companies knowingly fueled for decades. While fossil fuel defendants have fought repeatedly to block the case’s progress, every state and federal court to consider the case has moved Honolulu closer to having its day in court.
This week, a judge heard arguments on the defendants’ motion for summary judgment, which dealt in part with the question of whether defendants’ deception is fully in the past or has continued to today. Ahead of the hearing, experts in climate disinformation filed several declarations that highlight the fossil fuel giant's’ historic and ongoing climate deception and the impact it’s had on public opinion.
In one filing, Naomi Oreskes — a Harvard Professor of the History of Science whose research includes the history of climate change disinformation — highlights the “vast discrepancies” in the oil and gas companies’ internal and external communication, including deceptive efforts that are “ongoing today.”
“Today, the fossil fuel industry, including Defendants, do not appropriately publicize that climate change is caused from the burning of fossil fuels; instead, they frame themselves as acting responsibly in response to climate risks, all while their business model remains based on continued development, sale, and use of fossil fuels,” Oreskes wrote. “The purpose of this behavior has been to protect fossil fuel business interests.”
Oreskes’s testimony details how Big Oil companies such as Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and BP continued to promote the uncertainty of climate change after scientists, including their own researchers, learned that burning fossil fuels harms the environment.
By 1995, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had concluded fossil fuels were driving climate change and the public was already experiencing impacts of the growing crisis. At that time, Oreskes said, those conclusions were drawn even with the most conservative figures and estimates. Oil companies were made aware of these conclusions, which only affirmed the findings of research fossil fuel companies had conducted years earlier on the harm their products cause. However, from the 1990s to the 2000s, Exxon bought advertorials — ads made to look like editorials — in the New York Times, claiming that the link between climate change and fossil fuels was “uncertain” and there was no consensus from scientists. Public polling during this time found that the number of people who believed climate change was real declined from 68% to 57% from 1992 to 1994 and the percentage of people who believed immediate action should be taken to reduce emissions dropped from 30% to 10% from the late 1980s to 1995. Oreskes argues that Big Oil’s public campaign pushing climate disinformation played a key role in this shifting public opinion.
“The fossil fuel industry went to extensive lengths to deny the reality of climate change or publicly emphasize the “uncertainties” about climate change, as opposed to what the industry knew to be true,” Oreskes wrote.
While fossil fuel giants eventually stopped blatantly lying about the existence of climate change, they have continued to deceive the public about their role in fueling and addressing it. A 2017 study conducted by Oreskes and climate deception researcher Geoffrey Supran found that, while 83% of ExxonMobil’s peer-reviewed papers and 80% of internal documents acknowledged that climate change was real and human-caused, only 12% of its advertisements do.
Melissa Aronczyk, a Rutgers University professor and expert in greenwashing, also filed a declaration supporting Honolulu’s claim that oil companies are actively greenwashing their activities to the public.
“Working in tandem with trade associations, public relations firms and advertising agencies, fossil fuel companies developed image and influence campaigns to convince consumers, investors and regulators that their products and processes were environmentally sustainable,” Aronczyk wrote. “At the same time, these companies’ continued lobbying for decreased environmental and climate regulations, along with continued expansion of oil and gas production, proved that fossil fuel companies’ ostensible “green” commitments had to do with protecting their image, not with environmental sustainability.”
Raymond Bradley, a climatologist and former Distinguished Professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst, also filed a declaration on behalf of Honolulu detailing how Big Oil companies have falsely claimed their actions are in line with the Paris Agreement and misled the public about their “net zero” emissions goals.
Last year, a joint report from the Senate and House echoed Oreskes, Aronczyk, and Bradley’s findings, stating that the fossil fuel industry has evolved from “explicit denial of the basic science underlying climate change to deception, disinformation, and doublespeak.” CCI has compiled examples of this modern-day deception in its report “Big Oil is Still Lying.”
Honolulu is now awaiting a Hawai’i judge’s decision on whether the case can continue advancing toward trial.
