**Submission Statement**
The State of California has launched a lawsuit in Superior Court in San Francisco against ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, and the American Petroleum Institute (API), accusing them of causing billions of dollars in damages and intentionally misleading the public by disseminating disinformation. The defendants are predictably insisting they are blameless and the lawsuit is 'politicized'. "Climate policy should be a matter for Congress to decide, not the courts" said a spokesperson for the API. Except these oil companies carry Congressmen and women around in their pockets like so many nickels and dimes, precluding any effective action by Congress. They can probably get the courts, which they also own, to quash the lawsuit too.
Guarantee it's just a ploy same as when the state of Florida sued the tobacco industry to recoup $$$$ over health care costs. I smoked then and 30 days after that settlement the cost of cigarettes started *skyrocketing!* Like $8-12 to $18-20 in 1-2 months. The smokers paid for it all. You say: "Well, what's wrong with that?" Remember that when gas and electricity go way up, because you and I are going to pay for it.
After Florida got done, every other state in the nation sued the tobacco industry and settled. How ever it plays out, you and I will be paying for it.
Would you rather see anthropogenic climate change proceed with zero mitigation or pay more for everything and as a result be less wealthy as measured by current standards?
If that is the choice laid out before us, which would you prefer we choose?
If that were the choice I could make a decision, but I've been in this world and this country long enough to know that it doesn't work that way. So what I can say to you is: Wake up. Nobody cares what "Would you rather see". What you *want* doesn't matter that much is clear. So I have no need to play those fantasy games.
I only ask to illuminate the reality that most people do not give a shit about the long term consequences. At least not as much as their own comfort. This is a problem of individual psychology as much as it is the problem of corrupt, selfish, systemic power structures.
Resistance to the power structure cannot build up momentum because of consent, manufactured or otherwise.
This isn't just political this is criminal. There is no reason we shouldn't be suing for the damages done through their years of lies and manipulation. Billions if not trillions in damages and millions if not billions of lives have or will be lost, meanwhile they get trillions in subsidies and we do whatever they want out of fear.
Your link is coming up with a 404 error right now. Is this it?
https://www.opb.org/article/2023/09/17/california-sues-oil-giants-saying-they-downplayed-climate-change-here-s-what-to-know/
No, [this is the article I posted](https://english.almayadeen.net/news/environment/california-sues-five-major-oil-giants-over-corruption-allega). For some reason they edited the link address to something else and that's where it is now. The article you posted is just as good.
"The core objective of the lawsuit is to establish an abatement fund that would cover future damages caused by climate-related disasters in California. The state, which is experiencing the devastating effects of climate change, including wildfires and flooding, aims to hold these companies accountable for their role in exacerbating these crises."
2022 Net Income:
Exxon: $55 billion
Shell: $42 billion
BP: $27 billion
Conoco Phillips: $18 billion
Chevron: $35 billion
Global fossil fuel subsidies 2022:
$7 trillion
They intentionally created a misinformation campaign to slow progress on the climate crisis, benefited from trillions in subsidies and to this day funnel money to groups that block any progress on weaning off fossil fuels.
And who pays the cost of all this? We do. Damn right we should sue their billion dollar asses for damages.
Exxon did a study in the 70s where their climate scientists found out that climate change is occuring due to increasing levels of CO2 which are due to human-made emissions. They then buried it for decades rather than do the right thing and announce it to the world. It was only released by accident decades later by someone who didn't know about that study.
That is grounds for the lawsuit. I think that countries like The Netherlands, Bangladesh, The Maldives, etc. should join in on it.
Extinction Rebellion has been protesting for over a week in a row now agains fossil fuel subsidies. They come back every day to block a road between the House of Representatives and the ministry of economics, yet our politicians haven't addressed the issue at hand and are waiting for new elections to make decisions they need to make NOW. They've already said that the subsidies need to stop in 2020,now they've pushed that forward to 2023 with no effort of reducing the subsidies, in fact, every year more money goes to big polluting companies.
But the government is trying to get farmers to stop farming animals and reducing the amount of livestock present in our country while they promised them they could keep on farming for decades. When they protested against that in different locations in our country it took 2 days for our government to start talking to the agricultural lobby. Yet now that climate activists are protesting they don't talk to the environmental lobby with organisations like greenpeace or WNF.
That shows the climate policy is based on economics. There is a big change needed. Until we see our environment as more important than our human economics and if our our everlasting growth economy doesn't change to a sustainability economy money will always be more important than stopping climate change and creating a stable environment for future generations.
The problem isn't fossil fuel. If everybody just recycles their household waste properly and eats less meat why everything will be ticky-boo. Oh, and electric cars will also save the world.
Nevermind that we're expecting to run out of crude oil within 25 to 35 years. Natural gas will soon follow and coal supplies are expected to run out before century's end.
They're doing everything they can to ride the gravy train until it comes to a screeching halt.
It's currently estimated that crude oil supplies will be exhausted by 2052. That means no new plastics or synthetics.
Possibly something like this : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjBAGZZxbs8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjBAGZZxbs8)
More likely what we have will be more valuable and cared and looked after.
You won't be able to replace damaged objects, you will either have to repair or live with the damage.
People talk about recycling - the problem is many plastics and synthetics can't be recycled. Those that can, as a result of the recycling, will degrade into lower quality plastics, within a few cycles no longer usable.
The world will be a very different place in 2 to 3 generations.
Yes, but then what? They, the ones who profit from the gravy train, and those who don't all depend on what happens before and after. We should take action now, all of us. For those without wealth it's life or death. For those with wealth, there's a lot of money to be made. We all benefit if it doesn't come to a screeching halt but progresses into something better.
I keep looking for their protests and can never find them until the day of it is almost like the media is intentionally hiding them, meanwhile the news covered other smaller protests.
Are you from the Netherlands? www.extinctionrebellion.nl is the place to go to
I joined their "A12 stop sub" and "A12 support demonstratie" telegram. You can subscribe to a newsletter on the website. There's loads of events listed on their website (both on the Dutch website and on their international/other national websites).
I suggest you join in on one of the events that sparks your interest and talk to some people on how to get involved. XR is a decentralised organisation, so there's loads of different -local- focus groups. The different groups are most easily found by looking for the location of their events/action trainings. Go to an event, see if you can find some people you can connect with. More often than not the location itself hosts other events that are not XR events, but fall into the same category, ranging from protesting to serious involvement in politics and from
Not to shift any blame away from corporate O&G and the misinformation that they peddled, but that 7 trillion in subsidies is equally as disingenuous.
Nate Hagens does a great breakdown of that 7 trillion and I absolutely agree with the logic.
To be taken seriously, one can't accuse somebody of misrepresenting the truth while also misrepresenting the truth.
Ok.
Where it breaks down direct and indirect subsidies.
A great analogy a lot for the indirect subsidies would be as if you took all of the health related costs of obesity, heart disease, missed time at work due to illness, etc, and tied all of that to societies poor diets, and then called that a subsidy to industrial agriculture. It's a reach at best and using reductionist logic like that would have great implications throughout the rest of society. It's disingenuous.
Included in the direct subsidies are things like nations making fuel or electricity extremely cheap so their impoverished citizens can have access to basic amenities and actually participate in an economy which would be quite egregious for a westerner to say they shouldn't have. 85% of the global oil reserves are state owned and run so the "subsidies" aren't going to private companies to profit from, it's for nations to operate a competitive economy and not be left to ruin. It's disingenuous to count those as subsidies in the way that westerners think of subsidies in that we're giving public money to private corporations.
And in that vein, a lot of the direct subsidies are tax breaks that are available for all industries to apply for because that's how our "free market" operates. That's a whole other debate on the merits of our system, but it's a slippery slope to say that agriculture, and tech, and manufacturing and everybody else can get tax breaks for this and that but not the oil industry because they're evil? Apparently? Point being, there isn't some evil secret agenda that's pouring billions of dollars to private entities just because. It's disingenuous.
I hear ya. In my understanding, free market still has a framework that all players should adhere tomorrow. However in it's current manifestation that framework seems to be manipulated by some of the participants as evidenced by the revolving door of CEOs and federal regulators.
Not the guy that commented, but the oil industry is definitely evil. They deliberately mislead the public and influenced governments to believe that climate change wasn’t settled science.
Big oil did exactly what big tobacco did by spreading disinformation and putting short term profits over the well being of the people; only what big oil has done is more destructive by several orders of magnitude.
>To be taken seriously, one can't accuse somebody of misrepresenting the truth while also misrepresenting the truth.
It would appear that you are equating the intentional lies of the fossil fuel companies with an analysis by the IMF.
You are welcome to disagree with any calculation of subsidies.
But even if you don't agree with the IMF's calculation of subsidies, it's obviously not in any way comparable to the intentional manipulation of fact by the fossil fuel corporations.
$7 trillion in subsidies in one year my god! Imagine if we taxed them for all the damage they caused and put that and all those subsidies towards solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear instead. We might actually have a fighting chance at survival.
Not just us, but all life on earth will be irreversibly changed if we continue like this. We have the chance to save many forms of flora and fauna from extinction and preserve the earth's climate. Adding to that we are placing the cost of survival onto next generations. Dealing with climate change without losing much of our habitable earth costs a lot of money. The longer we go on like this, the more expensive it becomes to adjust to the new climate we are creating and the more lives this change is gonna cost, a lot of human and animal lives will be lost.
The fact that the debts of our leaders fall all the way to the lowest class should be enough to infuriate and spark a revolution. Again and again until we the people can be united.
Exactly. Thinking of that climate crisis awareness drone presentation in New York recently just pisses me off. It's absurd to put this on us, but oh, they will. They'll spin that dialog just like they do with everything else. The scientists have been making us aware and then silenced for giving warning since my grandparents era. The world has been warming for some time, but they pressed on with their own echo chamber of greed and irresistibility. The leaders, lobbyist, and corps , have played their games with all beings of existence and displayed over and over again that profit and power comes foremost.These dangerous behaviors and actions call for what you described. We should be doing everything we can to save our lives or at least fight for them. We are being distracted and kept in a whirlwind by media, marketing, propaganda, division, and financial insecurity. They're basically "fucking with us" to keep us in place. To keep feeding the machine, while we scramble for our crumbs. They do everything they can to protect their special interest and profits. They put laws in place for them to be less responsible or accountable for their actions. There is a reason there is a shift towards nationalism. They know what they have done and what they need to do to have further control over the masses, for their 'mad' wants and desires in life . They have already put laws in place against protesting in certain areas and forces have joined hands. Isn't it time we do the same? If we wait for those in power to come to their senses and do the right thing, we might as well say goodbye to our very existence.
Proposition 1A, which provided funding for high-speed rail, was passed in 2008. The first track won't open until 2030.
At this point it's just corruption or incompetence throughout the state.
It’s mostly just lack of funding. The HSR authority has had its struggles (mostly with shitty contractors and consultants) but they’ve made a lot of positive changes in the last year or two. If they actually had money to work with, the project would be a lot further along by now.
I've been angry since I learned that there used to be a [trolley](https://www.orangecountyoutdoors.com/get-out-there/historical-places/pacific-electric-railway) connecting LA county and OC. The amount of freeways and parking lots in this state is an embarrassment.
At this stage I wouldn't be remotely surprised if they were able to have people whacked, though a simple bribe would probably suffice in the case of pesky judges
It's probably related to the EV thing Cali wants to do, call it PR plus funding.
That said our grid will shit faster than Texas in winter if we try to do with EV's what we say we're going to do.
It buys political capital from the percentage of the population that still believes we can manufacture our way out if this; it quells neoliberal discontent and allows for them to have hope for the future.
Agreed everything is going to get worse.
But the fact that the damages are going to increase is the point.
Why should tax payers pay for all of the increasing cost of these climate disasters that municipalities incur, when the ones who profited just get to call it an "externality" and continue pushing for business as usual. (From their yachts)
They knew what they were doing and we're the ones who have to pay. An abatement fund is a bare minimum compensation.
I'll just repost the reply I gave /r/climate when they posted this story
Prolly just shaking them down for some cash.
When you're a corporate crim', fines and the like are just the cost of doing business. And as it's impossible to meaningfully punish a megacorp, crime will continue as usual,with a tiny fraction of the profits diverted to some "climate fund" that ends up lining the pockets of kleptocrats while the people who desperately need it go without... as usual
Next up, agriculture. They’re coming for your V8 and beef, boys. Cow farts are silent AND deadly to the environment.
Here’s an idea, how about giving options that rival the power of oil and gas? If people can spend less and enjoy the same or better quality of life, they will move away from oil and gas. Until then, don’t expect the people to subsidize the transition.
> Here’s an idea, how about giving options that rival the power of oil and gas?
Like transitioning as many jobs as possible to work-from-home and cutting down on meaningless commutes? Yeah, corporatists are fighting that hard despite it being very popular.
The State of California is committing suicide as lead by Gavin Newsom based on a few fluids; Effectively kill the oil companies, effectively kill the water retention projects, and effectively kill the educational prospects students of a particular blood type in education based on their skin color. All of these result in the destruction of the California Economy. But the effects of this insanity won't be felt until all the Californians supporting it are enfeeble or dead of old age; but they - and especially Gavin - don't care.
California is effectively doing a repeat of Venezuela.
Unless.... the migrants in the state realize it's better back home - because it is - which is an effect greatly accelerating these days.
thats what i always say to stave off doomerism - if its all fucked anyways, why dont we hold the bastards responsible accountable at least? we could do it in just a few weeks of general striking. just have to organize our communities to be able to sustain such a thing, much easier said than done of course
They will lose because scotus is actually pure evil,this is not hyperbole. Both parties get bribes from these same corporations so I don't know what their aim is here. If they had done this in the 90's maybe I could see a future but this is like putting a band aid on after you have already been stabbed.
>Oil giants prolong the case until judge is killed by climate change, then move for a mistrial.
Very fortunately, SCOTUS declined to take up many similar cases, so this probably won't rise above the level of CA supreme court.
Quoting from the [NYTimes article on this suit:](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/business/california-oil-lawsuit-newsom.html)
\>The fossil fuel companies tried to get many of the cases moved from state court to federal court, where they believed they would face better chances of winning. But earlier this year, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal on the matter, meaning the cases will stay in state court, where experts believe municipalities have a better chance of winning damages.
It is \*possible\* that SCOTUS could put this on their docket after refusing to take up multiple appeals in very similar cases, but it seems unlikely.
How does the law work in America for an issue like this? If there are 10,000 oil companies can you just single out like six of them and sue them without using the others?
Genuine question. If California basically makes the sale of fossil fuels semi-illegal via this action then how will they function? Like what will they do without fossil fuels? If to continue selling in the state will result in fines and lawsuits why would they continue to operate there? Won't they just leave?
LOL. Another dog and pony show foor the public to make it look like someone actually cares, that change is actually possible, and that it would matter if we did change.
The truth is that it is already past time. The global collapse of civilization and the nuclear war that comes with it can not be stopped. The oil execs know that. The government of California knows that. Everyone with wealth and power knows that.
But they gotta keep you and I out there working and producing until the last minute, because that is how they ensure their own survival plans. And this is just another bit of that wool they are pulling over our eyes.
So watch. Enjoy whatever court spectacle comes of it. If we have enough time left for it to get to court...
Yep and and cigarettes are still sold at every gas station and corner store and now many tobacco companies own sizable shares of vape brands. Similar to how oil companies have tar sand and fracking contracts.
Now if only they'd care about their homeless.
Cali is very good on big things. I mean taking a smog pit worse than Shanghai in July and transforming it through forcing vehicle manufacturer compliance is kind of a big deal.
I just wish they were good on day to day things as well.
This is utterly counterproductive. So what if you win the lawsuit? If you do, these companies will have to pay damages .. and where do they get that money? Yes, sell more fossil fuel.
I challenge CA, if you really want to reduce emissions, to ban the sales and usage of fossil fuel in CA right now. But you won't do that, will you?
The following submission statement was provided by /u/n0ahbody:
---
**Submission Statement**
The State of California has launched a lawsuit in Superior Court in San Francisco against ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, and the American Petroleum Institute (API), accusing them of causing billions of dollars in damages and intentionally misleading the public by disseminating disinformation. The defendants are predictably insisting they are blameless and the lawsuit is 'politicized'. "Climate policy should be a matter for Congress to decide, not the courts" said a spokesperson for the API. That wouldn't be political at all, of course... By the way, these oil companies carry Congressmen and women around in their pockets like so many nickels and dimes, precluding any effective action by Congress. They can probably get the courts, which they also own, to quash the lawsuit too.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/16l3oe9/california_sues_oil_giants_for_exacerbating/k0ztj79/
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