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No, there is no direct way to sue the company, because Exxon has been selling a legal product the whole time. We all have benefited from cheap fossil fuels and

No, there is no direct way to sue the company, because Exxon has been selling a legal product the whole time. We all have benefited from cheap fossil fuels and continue to do so. "More Americans believe in global warming — but they won't pay much to fix it: Most Americans are unwilling to pay $10 a month to fight climate change, a survey found." https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/more-americans-believe-global-warming-they-won-t-pay-much-n962001 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/more-americans-believe-... The MA and NY lawsuits are grandstanding and scapegoating.

smt1 7y ago
Even with "fully legal products", courts have taken a more expansive view of public nuisance laws recently. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2019/09/03/the-energy-202-here-s-why-lawyers-suing-oil-companies-are-following-the-opioid-cases/5d6d4c86602ff171a5d7338f/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-ene... Also the SCOTUS effectively sent a number of these cases back to state courts this week, solving any jurisdictional issues for now. Of course, the newest wave of these cases are still very new (and more are likely coming soon) and have yet to be litigated outside of jurisdictional issues.
ClumsyPilot 7y ago
May I point out that "fully legal products" at one point included all kinds of drugs, asbestos, and even people.
- konschubert 7y ago
  Yea, and the rule of law means that if you do something that’s legal, you shouldn’t be punished for it. Even if society later discovers that it made a mistake when making it legal.
  - stevesimmons 7y ago
    Notions of legality are rarely that black and white. It often depends on timing, context and intent. For instance, it is legal to sell a drug that is FDA-approved. But suppose: - It transpires years later that the FDA approval was based in part on the pharma company suppressing unfavourable clinical trial results. - The pharma company claims the FDA was aware (in some sense) of those suppressed studies, and still approved the drug. - A patient dies from adverse reactions observed in one of the suppressed studies. The patient's family is advised to litigate. Who is liable for what here?
    - konschubert 7y ago
      You are right, it's always more complex than it seems on first glance.
  - 23throwaway23 7y ago
    But not when you know your product causes harm and spend BILLIONS to suppress and sow confusion around the science. We have an excellent precedence in terms of big tobacco and the lies and disinformation they fed the public about the link between lung cancer and smoking.
tonyedgecombe 7y ago
Most Americans are unwilling to pay $10 a month to fight climate change, a survey found. That's quite funny when you think about the costs we will incur if we don't get a handle on this. Most people really do think in the short term.
- dx87 7y ago
  It could be that they're unwilling to pay $10 a month because they think the ultra-wealthy and companies bringing in billions of dollars a year should pay for it.
- radicalbyte 7y ago
  Most Americans don't have a lot of disposable income thanks to the systemic changes over the last 40 years greatly concentrating wealth. So it's understandable that they'll choose to spend that on food now instead of against fighting a risk which whose worst effects will be felt a long time in the future.
- yostrovs 7y ago
  Why would they spend even $10 when there's thousands of people every day, that are not them, that fly to distant destinations to have a good time?
makomk 7y ago
Grandstanding in the extreme. For example, one problem is that the internal documents people have pointed to as proof that Exxon knew their products were causing global warming displayed considerable doubt as to whether they were in fact doing so. So the prosecutors basically have to spin the documents as saying the exact opposite of what they actually say. Or here's a good one. They claim that Exxon has been misleading people by claiming to be clean whilst massively expanding their fossil fuel production. There's a nice relevant quote in the 1982 internal report: "Mitigation of the "greenhouse effect" would require major reductions in fossil fuel combustion. Shifting between fossil fuels is not a feasible alternative" Sounds pretty damning, right? Not quite. It continues: "Shifting between fossil fuels is not a feasible alternative because of limited long-term supply availability for certain fuels although oil does produee about 18% less carbon dioxide per Btu of heat released than coal, and gas about 32% less than oil". Which implies increasing available gas reserves via fracking would be highly useful, and sure enough Exxon have invested lots of money in this and touted the environmental benefits of doing so.
readhn 7y ago
"Most Americans are unwilling to pay $10 a month to fight climate change, a survey found." They are not asking me about all those 9/11 fees when i air travel. Why are they worried to take that climate change fee? I dont get it.
- javagram 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_movement#Fuel_prices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_movement#Fuel_pri... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Chilean_protests#Transport_fares https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Chilean_protests#Transpor... Because when you raise prices on people’s method of transportation significantly, they protest, a lot. Politicians don’t want to be voted out. Airplane flights are often paid for by companies and aren’t a typical part of most people’s day-to-day life.
catalogia 7y ago
> "The nationwide poll was conducted November 14-16, 2018 using the AmeriSpeak® Panel, the probability-based panel of NORC at the University of Chicago. Online and telephone interviews using landlines and cell phones were conducted with 1,202 adults. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points." If somebody cold-called me and asked me if I would be willing to give them $10 to stop climate change, I'd tell them to go fuck themselves... but that would have nothing to do with my opinions on climate change. Rather it would be my aversion telephone scams, as well as skepticism that whatever organization I was talking to was actually able to efficiently use my $10 for what they claimed. If I gave $10 to every organization that claimed they could solve a serious problem, I'd be broke and I wager not one of those problems would be solved.
m0zg 7y ago
I'll tell you more. The vast majority of the users of this site, even though they're abundantly informed of climate change and like to grandstand about it themselves will not even spend _negative_ amounts of money to reduce their environmental impact by canceling their travel and yearly vacations thousands of miles away, to which they go by burning kerosene. I'd be also willing to bet most of us here drive gasoline cars, leave our computers on 24x7, eat meat, and don't look twice at where our food comes from. So it's going to be _hard_ to argue that more informed customers or shareholders would have made different choices, particularly in the absence of severe negative consequences so far.

smt1 7y ago

Even with "fully legal products", courts have taken a more expansive view of public nuisance laws recently. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2019/09/03/the-energy-202-here-s-why-lawyers-suing-oil-companies-are-following-the-opioid-cases/5d6d4c86602ff171a5d7338f/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-ene... Also the SCOTUS effectively sent a number of these cases back to state courts this week, solving any jurisdictional issues for now. Of course, the newest wave of these cases are still very new (and more are likely coming soon) and have yet to be litigated outside of jurisdictional issues.

ClumsyPilot 7y ago

May I point out that "fully legal products" at one point included all kinds of drugs, asbestos, and even people.

konschubert 7y ago
Yea, and the rule of law means that if you do something that’s legal, you shouldn’t be punished for it. Even if society later discovers that it made a mistake when making it legal.
- stevesimmons 7y ago
  Notions of legality are rarely that black and white. It often depends on timing, context and intent. For instance, it is legal to sell a drug that is FDA-approved. But suppose: - It transpires years later that the FDA approval was based in part on the pharma company suppressing unfavourable clinical trial results. - The pharma company claims the FDA was aware (in some sense) of those suppressed studies, and still approved the drug. - A patient dies from adverse reactions observed in one of the suppressed studies. The patient's family is advised to litigate. Who is liable for what here?
  - konschubert 7y ago
    You are right, it's always more complex than it seems on first glance.
- 23throwaway23 7y ago
  But not when you know your product causes harm and spend BILLIONS to suppress and sow confusion around the science. We have an excellent precedence in terms of big tobacco and the lies and disinformation they fed the public about the link between lung cancer and smoking.

tonyedgecombe 7y ago

Most Americans are unwilling to pay $10 a month to fight climate change, a survey found. That's quite funny when you think about the costs we will incur if we don't get a handle on this. Most people really do think in the short term.

dx87 7y ago
It could be that they're unwilling to pay $10 a month because they think the ultra-wealthy and companies bringing in billions of dollars a year should pay for it.
radicalbyte 7y ago
Most Americans don't have a lot of disposable income thanks to the systemic changes over the last 40 years greatly concentrating wealth. So it's understandable that they'll choose to spend that on food now instead of against fighting a risk which whose worst effects will be felt a long time in the future.
yostrovs 7y ago
Why would they spend even $10 when there's thousands of people every day, that are not them, that fly to distant destinations to have a good time?

makomk 7y ago

Grandstanding in the extreme. For example, one problem is that the internal documents people have pointed to as proof that Exxon knew their products were causing global warming displayed considerable doubt as to whether they were in fact doing so. So the prosecutors basically have to spin the documents as saying the exact opposite of what they actually say. Or here's a good one. They claim that Exxon has been misleading people by claiming to be clean whilst massively expanding their fossil fuel production. There's a nice relevant quote in the 1982 internal report: "Mitigation of the "greenhouse effect" would require major reductions in fossil fuel combustion. Shifting between fossil fuels is not a feasible alternative" Sounds pretty damning, right? Not quite. It continues: "Shifting between fossil fuels is not a feasible alternative because of limited long-term supply availability for certain fuels although oil does produee about 18% less carbon dioxide per Btu of heat released than coal, and gas about 32% less than oil". Which implies increasing available gas reserves via fracking would be highly useful, and sure enough Exxon have invested lots of money in this and touted the environmental benefits of doing so.

readhn 7y ago

"Most Americans are unwilling to pay $10 a month to fight climate change, a survey found." They are not asking me about all those 9/11 fees when i air travel. Why are they worried to take that climate change fee? I dont get it.

javagram 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_movement#Fuel_prices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_movement#Fuel_pri... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Chilean_protests#Transport_fares https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Chilean_protests#Transpor... Because when you raise prices on people’s method of transportation significantly, they protest, a lot. Politicians don’t want to be voted out. Airplane flights are often paid for by companies and aren’t a typical part of most people’s day-to-day life.

catalogia 7y ago

> "The nationwide poll was conducted November 14-16, 2018 using the AmeriSpeak® Panel, the probability-based panel of NORC at the University of Chicago. Online and telephone interviews using landlines and cell phones were conducted with 1,202 adults. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points." If somebody cold-called me and asked me if I would be willing to give them $10 to stop climate change, I'd tell them to go fuck themselves... but that would have nothing to do with my opinions on climate change. Rather it would be my aversion telephone scams, as well as skepticism that whatever organization I was talking to was actually able to efficiently use my $10 for what they claimed. If I gave $10 to every organization that claimed they could solve a serious problem, I'd be broke and I wager not one of those problems would be solved.

m0zg 7y ago

I'll tell you more. The vast majority of the users of this site, even though they're abundantly informed of climate change and like to grandstand about it themselves will not even spend _negative_ amounts of money to reduce their environmental impact by canceling their travel and yearly vacations thousands of miles away, to which they go by burning kerosene. I'd be also willing to bet most of us here drive gasoline cars, leave our computers on 24x7, eat meat, and don't look twice at where our food comes from. So it's going to be _hard_ to argue that more informed customers or shareholders would have made different choices, particularly in the absence of severe negative consequences so far.