Fossil Fuels in Hot Water

Well, one can hope that at a minimum, when I say hot water, I’m talking about legal liabilities the fossil fuel industry may face for being, well, lying sons of bitches.

ExxonKnews is a terrific newsletter published through Medium, and the August 31 issue, “Oceans are heating up — just as Big Oil predicted,” written by Isabella Garcia, who is a staff writer for Center for Climate Integrity, is a terrific example of this platform. Oh, and these posts are public, so there is no reason not to add it to your subscription list on Medium.

Here’s one damning—of Big Oil, that is—quote from the post:

In 1968, a report prepared for the American Petroleum Institute (API)—the largest U.S. trade association for the oil and gas industry—predicted that, if fossil fuel use continued as planned, “a number of events might be expected to occur, including the melting of the Antarctic ice cap, a rise in sea levels, warming of the oceans” and more.

Yet another damning quote—several pages worth, actually—is pulled from a 1988 Shell internal report that documents a long list of climate change consequences. More replication of fossil fuel industry reports—this one from Exxon, in 1979—more than make the point that the major players in the fossil fuel industry knew (get it? ExxonKnews?) the consequences of the use of their products.

Graphic design by Tess Abbot, ExxonKnews

If this all makes you think of the suits against Big Tobacco or the rulings against Pharma giants such as Sackler over opioids misrepresentation and market pushing, you are on-target. There have been plenty of articles and books (e.g., The Triumph of Doubt: Dark Money and the Science of Deception, David Michaels) showing that these industries have used not only identical strategies to obscure the facts that they themselves first knew, but also at times the very same people and agencies to carry out the smoke-and-mirror routines undertaken to keep the public from conclusions not in the best interest of said industries.

The money amounts awarded in the various Tobacco and the opioid suits seems staggering, but few of these companies have been put out of business, and those such as Sackler, which declared bankruptcy, still manage to evade much of the penalties directly. Unfortunately, for all the good the awards may provide, for these giants the fines are just the cost of doing business.

We need to make suits against the members of Big Oil hurt the guilty parties, and more than hurt them, criminalize any and all individuals found guilty of knowing about the tie between fossil fuels and climate change. After all, it can be shown that these companies were aware of the consequences at a time when ameliorating action could have been effective in negating the worse climate crisis consequences. Now, however, the future is here and it is going to get even worse—a lot worse—before our still anemic efforts to address climate change make much of a noticeable difference.

The counter-argument to the position described above is that we—meaning the developed world—were all guilty, too, whether by driving our cars or throwing plastic waste to the wind or other name-your-sin, but this is a specious argument, of course. There has been a concerted effort on the part of Big Oil to manipulate both the marketplace and the political process by withholding vital information, and in some ways, this is still going on. Hell, fossil fuels are still getting huge subsidies!

Is someone who sees a bus bearing down on a pedestrian and who doesn’t shout out a warning not guilty in that pedestrian’s demise? It looks like sufficient culpability to me, and that is not even considering the person who should have shouted out a warning also owns the bus and has hired the driver.

So, I guess when I say “Fossil Fuels in Hot Water,” I mean there are those in the fossil fuel industry who are guilty of crimes against humanity. Oh, and that they should pay for their crimes.

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