AUGUSTA MA – The State of Maine has joined eight other states in a lawsuit against five major oil companies, alleging the companies carried out a decades-long disinformation campaign about climate change and their role in it in order to increase profits, according to the HuffPost.
This lawsuit follows eight other suits filed by the District of Columbia and the states of New Jersey, California, Delaware, Minnesota, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, all alleging that major oil companies are complicit in climate change.
The lawsuit was filed this past week by Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey, according to the article, and calls out the companies Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, Sunoco, and the American Petroleum Institute for “withholding internal knowledge about fossil fuels’ catastrophic effects all while spinning public doubt.”
In a statement, Frey said the companies’ actions of choosing profits over following the science to prevent irreversible climate change have “burdened the State and our citizens with the consequences of their greed and deception.”
The lawsuit is seeking a jury trial and damages to cover the cost of climate harms, as stated in the HuffPost. The state has asked the companies to “cease their ongoing deception in Maine.”
In the lawsuit, the state of Maine claimed that the fossil fuel industry has known that its actions have contributed to climate change for decades.
The lawsuit claims, said HuffPost, that rather than warn the general public, the industry invested in protecting their own assets and infrastructure from the impacts of climate change.
Additionally, the suit, HuffPost writes, states the industry launched disinformation campaigns in order to “discredit the scientific consensus on climate change,” create “doubt in the minds of…the public about the climate change impacts of burning fossil fuels,” and “delay the energy economy’s transition to a lower-carbon future while maximizing profits.”
Citing examples from the 1950s, the lawsuit talks about how scientists warned the companies about carbon dioxide emissions harming the environment and sea levels, yet the companies issued public denials, the HuffPost reported.
In a 1966 publication mentioned in the article, Exxon Mobil painted the issue of global warming in a positive light, saying “warming would reduce mortality rates” and would encourage “more agricultural productivity.”
Referring to a 2017 study on Exxon Mobil’s climate communications between 1989 and 2004, the lawsuit noted that in 83 percent of peer-reviewed papers and 80 percent of internal documents, Exxon acknowledged climate change is real and caused by human actions.
HuffPost added, despite this, “81 percent of the company’s public advertising expressed doubt about man-made climate change.”
In a statement made to HuffPost, a representative of Shell said that action is required to “transition to a lower-carbon future,” but we need a “collaborative, society-wide approach” to do so.
The representative added the courtroom was an inappropriate place to address climate change, and people should instead rely instead on “smart policy from government and action from all sectors.”
The Senior Vice President and General Counsel for API, Ryan Meyers, also made a statement to HuffPost arguing the industry has “substantially” reduced emissions while keeping prices low for consumers.
According to Meyers in HuffPost, the “coordinated campaign to wage meritless, politicized lawsuits against a foundational American industry” is simply a “distraction from important national conversations and an enormous waste of taxpayer resources.”
Representatives from the other companies did not comment to HuffPost.
