A federal court in California is considering whether San Francisco and Oakland can maintain their case in court against oil and gas producers like ExxonMobil for knowingly selling a product that has already caused costly damages to their communities.
The case and the others like it filed by nine more communities across the United States have drawn comparisons to those brought against the tobacco industry in the ’90s. Like big tobacco before it, big oil is reeling from an explosive set of internal documents detailing what and when the industry knew about the dangers of its product.
Some have questioned whether those documents amount to “smoking guns” similar to big tobacco’s infamous, “Doubt is our product” internal memo. As a former lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice who led the prosecution of the tobacco industry for misleading the public about the deadly nature of its product, I believe they do. First, consider the timeline which is an important element in any evidentiary hearing.
1960s In 1968, the American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry’s largest lobbying organization, received a report it commissioned from the Stanford Research Institute that stated in no uncertain terms that burning fossil fuels was increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This now 50-year-old industry report showed that higher CO2 would result in rising temperatures that could melt the polar ice caps and lead to sea level rise.
When Dr. James Hansen testified before Congress in 1988, about science and the future of climate change, however, the industry’s tone and stance on man-made climate change quickly shifted from one of certainty in private to “uncertainty” in public.
One would be hard-pressed to interpret that as anything but a tacit admission of guilt, or in this case, liability -- which brings us to today. Oil and gas - like cigarettes or asbestos or lead - are products. And like any other products, the companies that produce, market, and sell them are liable for the damages they cause, especially if they mislead the public about their products’ dangers. We now have the evidence to show that oil companies like Exxon and Shell did exactly that. It’s time we hold them accountable and make them pay for the damages.