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California sues oil companies for exacerbating climate change [1]
['William Brangham', 'Dorothy Hastings']
Date: 2023-09-20 18:35:53-04:00
William Brangham:
California claims the five biggest oil and gas companies, ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and BP, as well as the American Petroleum Institute, knew that using their products led to climate change, but then spent decades misleading the public.
The lawsuit says extreme weather fueled by climate change has caused billions of dollars in damages in the state, and these companies should pay for some of that damage.
Joining us now is California Attorney General Rob Bonta.
Attorney General, thank you so much for being here.
You're arguing that these companies knew all along that burning coal and oil and gas would exacerbate climate change, and there's, as you cite in your suit, plenty of documentary evidence that they knew that. And you're arguing that they weren't forthcoming about that knowledge.
What are you alleging that their silence actually meant?
Rob Bonta (D), California Attorney General: They were actually very active in pushing forward and advancing the deception.
They knew 50, 60, 70 years ago that their fossil fuels that they were selling created climate change. They predicted with terrifying certainty where we would be today, with extreme weather events, with dries getting drier and hots getting hotter and wets getting wetter,.
Their internal memos, their industry-commissioned studies, their speeches internally to one another all said this. And they were very active in their deception. What do I mean? They worked with front groups. They supported and funded front groups with great climate-supportive names like Global Climate Coalition to undermine the climate science that they knew was inaccurate, that they knew the actual truth.
Internally, they acknowledged that they talked about it, and they pushed out into the public science that would dilute that truth, that would undermine it, that would cast doubt, so they could profit to the tune of billions and billions of dollars over many, many years, just profiting $200 billion last year.
So they also knew about clean energy pathways forward. They knew about carbon sequestration. They knew about things that could have put our planet on a better pathway. But they chose to ignore those, to push those down and push and lift up fossil fuels, all for profit. So they lied to the people of California.
So we're asking them to put billions of dollars into an abatement fund to mitigate future environmental damage and to provide for resiliency and adaptation going forward.
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[1] Url:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/california-sues-oil-companies-for-exacerbating-climate-change#:~:text=California%20is%20suing%20big%20oil,of%20the%20U.N.%20General%20Assembly
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