22 January 2024
The following is an editorial from the Mankato Free Press.
While progress on climate change legislation has come relatively slowly over the last decade, in a hopeful sign, state courts may be able to make it happen quicker.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently rejected a petition by oil companies to move a high-profile Minnesota case on the damage of climate change to federal courts. The Minnesota case alleges that oil companies and others defrauded consumers by not warning them of the well-known hazards to human health that burning fossil fuels causes.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and at least seven other states have filed suits that allege oil companies knew long ago of the damage to human health caused by the burning of fossil fuels and did nothing about it.
It’s a case similar to the one brought by 46 states against the tobacco companies in the 1990s that resulted in a settlement of $206 billion in 1998 that helped fund state government and tobacco cessation programs for decades. So current courts have a blueprint by which to judge the climate case.
We suspect oil companies want the cases in federal court to apparently get a more favorable ruling from lower courts and the U.S. Supreme Court that has been decidedly moving toward rejecting such lawsuits to move forward if they don’t have an “originalist” connection, meaning some kind of law dating back to the 1890s.
Minnesota’s case filed in June 2020 alleges Exxon Mobil, Koch Industries and the American Petroleum Institute engaged in false advertising, consumer fraud and deceptive trade practices.
It relies on internal documents showing the companies knew back in the 1970s how fossil fuels increased greenhouse gasses and led to climate change. The companies made efforts to publicize information and buy advertising that attempted to discredit the emerging evidence on fossil fuels and the greenhouse effect, according to a report by Minnesota Reformer.
Dozens of other suits have been filed now and in the past, some even from former shareholders of Exxon alleging that it hid the risks of its businesses’ damage to the environment, deceived them and ultimately devalued their shares.
Ellison’s suit alleges the oil companies had “superior” knowledge of climate change but chose to deceive consumers.
“Despite their superior understanding of climate change science … Defendants did not disseminate this information to the public or consumers. Instead, they engaged in a conspiracy to misrepresent the scientific understanding of climate change, the role of Defendants’ products in causing climate change, the potential harmful consequences of climate change, and the urgency of action required to mitigate climate change,” the suit says.
It is some consolation that at least some courts are seeing the consequences of climate change not only as a scourge on the earth, but a liability for those who would bring it about.