One of Many Reasons It’s Not a Good Time To Be an Oil Company
What’s going to happen as the Earth warms, the sea-levels rise, and storms batter the East Coast of the U.S. with ever-increasing ferocity? Well, for one, damages, measured in the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars per storm, are going to mount up.
That much is inevitable. But what happens then? In particular, who’s going to pay for all this? That’s where it gets interesting, especially in what is arguably the most litigious country on the planet.
Regardless of what you think about law suits like this, get ready to see one heck of a lot of them, because they’re going to be commonplace over the coming decades: a massive attempt to shift off the financial burden associated with climate-related damage back onto the parties that caused it.
The article linked here outlines the suit filed by San Francisco and Oakland, CA against the major oil companies in an attempt to recover the costs they’re facing to protect themselves from and repair damage associated with sea-level rise.
I’m not an attorney, though I think I was a reasonable sense of justice. IMO, the blameworthiness of the oil companies doesn’t lie in the climate-related damage per se. In the late 1970s, when their own scientists made its presentation to ExxonMobil’s executive team about the ruinous effects of greenhouse gas emissions were causing, they could have made this public, and entered in to a discussion as follows: “Look, America can stop driving cars, close its factories, live in the dark, and be taken over by a country with the military might of Costa Rica or Botswana. If we’re OK with that, we can put a spear through the entire fossil industry right now. If, however, that doesn’t sound like a reasonable approach, we’re going to have to find a solution to this problem sometime in the next few decades.” The oil companies’ problem is that they did the exact opposite; they hid the truth and lied to the world about the phenomenon they knew for a fact would soon destroy it.
In any case, two things are certain: a) the seas aren’t going to recede in the next 100 years, and b) every attempt will be made to empty out the deep pockets of the fossil fuel industry, via a mounting barrage of legal attacks, pinning the blame precisely where it appears to belong.
Craig,
We all know how you hate oil companies, but hoping for their demise as a result of climate change law suits, is a fantasy.
No government would allow such suits to succeed. (Legislation trumps courts every time !).
In fact this whole “someone” must be held to blame for historic events has run it’s course.
The oceans may not recede over the next 100 years, but on the other hand there’s no evidence of an increase in the volume of the worlds oceans over the last 100 years either.
Coastline changes can be a deceptive measurement since couastline are in a continual state of flux.
But you’re on the right track when you say there’s little point in ranting about evil oil companies when every day you use hundreds of the nearly 360,000 products, (many essential0 produced by oil companies.
After all, it would be unreasonable for me to sue you for continuing to drive a diesel long after you were convinced of the damage to the environment, and EV technology had become available.
As long as there’s a market for those 350,000 products, oil companies will thrive.
Governments persisted, and still persist, in indemnifying, even compelling oil companies to sell the most harmful pollutants, long after their own scientists issued climate change warnings.
That alone is sufficient reason to nullify any law suits.
What I wrote here doesn’t express a hope; it expresses a fact: the oil companies are about to be hit with a barrage of litigation on this point. There is nothing you, I, or anyone else can do about that.
Craig,
Such lawsuits will prove vexatious and of only nuance value.
Just as the odious Eric Schneiderman’s efforts have proved futile, so will all attempts prove pointless.
We’ll see. This arena is just starting to heat up, if you’ll pardon the pun.