The moral debate around climate change should center around what you just said. Either we are all compartmentalizing it, or we all honestly convinced of "no harmful effects worth worrying over." Most people that care about climate change have a lot of cognitive dissonance, trying to hold our institutions to a high standard but unable to act in a meaningful way.
Personally I believe that the amount of human suffering that will be caused by climate change will be small, but I'm unable to really discern whether motivated reasoning lead me to this conclusion. The evidence presented by both sides about the amount of human suffering that will be caused is highly questionable.
every item should be tax on how much money it would take to revert it back to it’s raw material and remove whatever air pollutants it produced. this is going beyond the carbon tax. such tax revenue can only be used on recycling or funding research on renewable energy or other energy sources like fusion.
It's not that simple and my guess is that the AG wont win it (neither do they care to)
Unless it can be demonstrated scientifically that humans are the primary cause of climate change (despite what you hear that causality is not established) I don't think there is any case what so ever unless some weird inconsequential settlement.
Also
A life without fossil fuel is a life most of us don't want to live.
So sure there are drawbacks with using fossil fuels just as there were with using wood or just as there is with dong or other lesser versions of fuel.
But the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. We wouldn't have this conversation if it wasn't for fossil fuel.
Last but not least. This smells of politics, not of justice. NY is trying to push for a much more green profile. So it's likely to do with that probably as an attempt at getting de-blasio nominated (yes politics is that scruppules)
> life without fossil fuel is a life most of us don't want to live.
This is downright silly. Sure I have a cellphone, car but I don't live for those things. I live for the people around me, and they are not made of fossil fuel.
Liars who make money on their lies are fraudsters, and fraud needs to have criminal repercussions
Yes, LOTS of people lie to make money. Yes, all those people are doing something wrong. And yes, that wrong thing is bad enough for society that we should punish it.
"Everything" is not fraud. Telling lies to make money is the definition of fraud. If you think that describes "everything" that happens in the economy... Well, stop telling lies.
And yes, lots of fraud is impossible to prove because the actors know the law. Patent trolling comes to mind.
And yes, lots of powerful people commit fraud throughout their career in impunity. Fraud is normal.
However, the normalcy of fraud and of getting away with deviancy does not make fraud acceptable.
I'm routinely astounded by how surprised people are to learn that telling lies to make money is illegal.
Tech in particular needs to do something about the fact fraud has reached meme status in our industry ('fake it till you make it').
I don't think people are surprised that it is fraud, just that there isn't a better way to prosecute it. If ExxonMobil's board hired a hitman to kill a competitor's CEO, I think people would hope that the response is to prosecute the board for murder and not merely for fraudulently claiming their company is valuable when they were actually relying on destabilizing their competitor. No one's defending the fraud, it just doesn't seem like the most important problem here.
“What we are facing now is a person whose crime dwarfs all of the crimes ever committed in human history. We were unable to find a single law applicable to his crime. So we recommend that the crime of Extinction of Life on Earth be added to international law, and that Rey Diaz be tried under it.”
For some context, in the novel Rey Diaz tried to hold back a alien invasion by threatening to blow the whole solar system into the sun with nuclear weapons.
Assume for sake of argument that climate change is catastrophic and that ExxonMobil knew as much. We’re to believe that the real victims here are ExxonMobil’s investors?
An occasional plot point in fiction is to have some kind of investigator buy a single share in a company to uncover what they're really up to.
If they told investors that climate change was a major threat (as they may have been legally be obliged to?) then that information would have become available to the wider public.
Also, we allow public companies to exist knowing that they will be more open and transparent than private companies. If a private company does something evil, we can knock on the owner's door. You can't do that if it's public. It's a trade-off - we don't hold an owner responsible but there's a requirement for more disclosure. If they're breaking the rules that usually stop public companies turning evil, then it's very clearly a concern.
> Assume for sake of argument that climate change is catastrophic and that ExxonMobil knew as much. We’re to believe that the real victims here are ExxonMobil’s investors?
The law doesn't really subscribe to the theory of exclusive victimhood any more than it does to the theory (also popular in internet discussion groups) of exclusive responsibility; for any individual act the law has no problem with their being a number of different responsible parties (and even different classes of responsibile parties) and/or a number of different (classes of) victims.
They might not be the greatest victims but they certainly are some of the victims. They invested money in a company whose business model was unsustainable. The company knew that the business model was unsustainable but did not tell them.
In the US publicly traded companies have a duty to let their shareholders know all material risks to the company that the company is aware of.
The response to this is usually “but everyone knows about climate change”. But that is not the case. By now everyone has heard of climate change but many still don't believe it/dispute it. You can call these people stupid and uneducated but they are entitled to the same protections under the law which means that they have a right to be alerted to the potential danger to their investments posed by climate change. I am sure even the more ignorant would pay more attention if the climate change warnings came directly from an oil company they are thinking of investing in.
Furthermore, the NYAG says he has evidence that Exxon knew it was happening as long as 30 years ago. Back in the late 80s and early 90s climate change was far from settled thing.
> Back in the late 80s and early 90s climate change was far from settled thing.
I was under the assumption that the basic tennets of climate change were well understood by scientists more than 100 years ago. While the climate models have been developed only recently, enabling more accurate predictions, climate science is centuries old as it relates to understanding human impact on our climate.
Climate science was as "settled" in the 80s and 90s as it is today. Yes, the predictions are more accurate today, but the confidence that we are changing Earth's climate was just as strong then as now.
I remember in 1997-8 being taught in US public schools, in no uncertain terms, that we are changing the climate, warming the atmosphere into a runaway greenhouse effect. This was in the US South in a very red state that mostly denies climate science today. The only way to interpret the idea that climate science was "less settled" in the 80s 90s is political. It has been "settled" for 100+ years in rational scientific discourse.
And this kind of comment is where the disinformation starts. Looking at history not even at climate science journals settles the argument: Earth Summit was 1992, Kyoto Protocol was 1997. Climate change already was enough of a thing to have the international community come together for treaties saying we need to mitigate and work towards saving the planet.
> By now everyone has heard of climate change but many still don't believe it/dispute it.
Nobody disputes climate change since climate has been changing for billions of years, just the human contribution towards it. Also, many people consider the distinction important...
Since you can’t sue a company for propaganda, spreading lies, lobbying politicians, willfully destroying the earth and killing humans indirectly despite knowing what your product does, this is the best possible option.
It’s also peak capitalism, where only investors matter.
Seriously, I understand everyone currently would sell their mother to lure in investors, but aren't they the one who take primary responsibility even? Ethically I would say yes, but laws seem to fail here again.
A likely factor in this lawsuit is the excellent investigative series done by InsideClimate News. They were a finalist for a Pulitzer for this series.
Part [1] covers the beginnings of Exxon's own climate research in the late 70s, and the findings of their scientists, which was approximately accurate to modern climate behavior today, 40 years later. Back in 1979, Exxon outfitted some of their ships with equipment to detect CO2 absorption in the ocean along their routes; Exxon was, at the time, one of the leading climate research organizations in the world.
Part [2] covers some of Exxon's research and findings in more detail.
Part [3] describes the climate models that Exxon's researchers developed in the early 80s, and some of the early decisions that corporate leadership made to downplay the implications of these models and search for other poorly-founded ideas that might rebut them.
Part [4] is about Exxon's discovery of and response to a major CO2 source in the South China Sea.
Part [5] briefly talks about synthetic fuel technology under development in the 1980s and the impact that early climate science might have had on exploring that technology.
And [6] finally gets to the meaty part where, after well over a decade of their own research efforts were telling them otherwise, company executives began a misinformation campaign through the 90s and 2000s, downplaying the certainty of climate science and its potential effects.
You can also explore a pile of internal Exxon documents yourself [7].
The comparison between energy companies and tobacco companies is apt. There is no doubt that, even as Exxon duped an entire legion of people into believing that climate science was "uncertain", internally they had solid research demonstrating the effects their practices would have on the global climate.
It's fair to say that climate change skeptics have been arguing against Exxon's own research. They just didn't know they were arguing against Exxon's research, because Exxon lied, repeatedly, to the public.
Their executives did not want to accept the potential liability associated with the findings of their own internal research.
Does this stuff ever get us anywhere? I just looked at the AG's website and it looks like we're constantly suing every high powered entity in America: https://ag.ny.gov
I don't feel like it does. Everytime I see a NY or CA AG making these cases, I just mostly ignore them and assume they're using it as political grandstanding to run for governor or US Senate to then make the leap for a presidential bid.
At least IL AGs havent been dumb enough to do this. They know if they go national, the corruption will be exposed and they'll go to jail. Typically, if they keep the corruption in state, they can get away with it. We, the people of Illinois, have largely become desensitized to corruption and has become a running joke. I mean, something like 6 or 7 of our last 11 governors have served time for corruption, and that spans both parties.
Many of the undertakings that happen at the state level require a functioning federal government for them to go anywhere. We do not have a functioning federal government, so here we are.
Our federal government works shockingly well for its size and scope. Dealing with the State Dept to replace a passport at the last minute was one of the best customer service experiences I've had in years.
The parts that are not functioning are the legislature and executive branch.
AFAIK these cases often force companies to stop their misbehavior and offer concessions. For example, have you ever felt that it's not an accident that you don't get advertised speeds from your ISP? https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/18/18146210/charter-spectru...
Yes. During the Bush administration, for example, it was the NY attorney general Spitzer that held financial institutions accountable for their crimes as the president was determined to let them get away with everything.
I think that there are some alternatives, but they definitely aren't feasible in many parts of the world at this point.
That being said, I do think one could make a strong argument that Exxon lied to investors through omittance of a truth that they new. Not that they were harming the environment, but that they misrepresented risk to the business due to environmental harm.
Are there previous examples of a lawsuit over a company misleading shareholders about potential future liabilities, where the liabilities are still unknown? We still don't know how much business Exxon might lose, or how much its penalties might be, as a result of climate change. So how would you calculate which shareholders lost how much?
It is not the the future liabilities are unknown. It is that exon had information that it new that would effect those liabilities and didn’t inform the stockmarket. It isn’t up to the company to work out how much that they will loose but it is up to Exon to give the market the information they need in order to make an informed decision.
There's some chance that governments worldwide will decide the costs of transforming the energy base and applying conservation measures, outweigh the benefits of possibly avoiding the increase of 2°C and attendant problems. In that case, Exxon's internal proxy GHG cost projections don't look wrong. Whether it's a securities law violation, different matter.
Readit News
- knowing the science enough to know they're contributing to others suffering
- knowing what might happen with reasonable certainty
- but compartmentalizing that awareness internally to avoid acting
- hiding it externally
- and keeping doing what they were doing
describes the reactions of most individuals about climate change.
It's like we never learn and then those who are in charge made rules to make it even harder to learn as we went forward.
Also that humans are terrible at existential threats.
Personally I believe that the amount of human suffering that will be caused by climate change will be small, but I'm unable to really discern whether motivated reasoning lead me to this conclusion. The evidence presented by both sides about the amount of human suffering that will be caused is highly questionable.
Deleted Comment
Unless it can be demonstrated scientifically that humans are the primary cause of climate change (despite what you hear that causality is not established) I don't think there is any case what so ever unless some weird inconsequential settlement.
Also
A life without fossil fuel is a life most of us don't want to live.
So sure there are drawbacks with using fossil fuels just as there were with using wood or just as there is with dong or other lesser versions of fuel.
But the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. We wouldn't have this conversation if it wasn't for fossil fuel.
Last but not least. This smells of politics, not of justice. NY is trying to push for a much more green profile. So it's likely to do with that probably as an attempt at getting de-blasio nominated (yes politics is that scruppules)
This is downright silly. Sure I have a cellphone, car but I don't live for those things. I live for the people around me, and they are not made of fossil fuel.
Oh, look, Matt Levine actually references this case at the top of that article. Unexpected recursion detected.
[1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...
Yes, LOTS of people lie to make money. Yes, all those people are doing something wrong. And yes, that wrong thing is bad enough for society that we should punish it.
"Everything" is not fraud. Telling lies to make money is the definition of fraud. If you think that describes "everything" that happens in the economy... Well, stop telling lies.
And yes, lots of fraud is impossible to prove because the actors know the law. Patent trolling comes to mind.
And yes, lots of powerful people commit fraud throughout their career in impunity. Fraud is normal.
However, the normalcy of fraud and of getting away with deviancy does not make fraud acceptable.
I'm routinely astounded by how surprised people are to learn that telling lies to make money is illegal.
Tech in particular needs to do something about the fact fraud has reached meme status in our industry ('fake it till you make it').
— Cixin Liu, The Dark Forest
If they told investors that climate change was a major threat (as they may have been legally be obliged to?) then that information would have become available to the wider public.
Also, we allow public companies to exist knowing that they will be more open and transparent than private companies. If a private company does something evil, we can knock on the owner's door. You can't do that if it's public. It's a trade-off - we don't hold an owner responsible but there's a requirement for more disclosure. If they're breaking the rules that usually stop public companies turning evil, then it's very clearly a concern.
The law doesn't really subscribe to the theory of exclusive victimhood any more than it does to the theory (also popular in internet discussion groups) of exclusive responsibility; for any individual act the law has no problem with their being a number of different responsible parties (and even different classes of responsibile parties) and/or a number of different (classes of) victims.
In the US publicly traded companies have a duty to let their shareholders know all material risks to the company that the company is aware of.
The response to this is usually “but everyone knows about climate change”. But that is not the case. By now everyone has heard of climate change but many still don't believe it/dispute it. You can call these people stupid and uneducated but they are entitled to the same protections under the law which means that they have a right to be alerted to the potential danger to their investments posed by climate change. I am sure even the more ignorant would pay more attention if the climate change warnings came directly from an oil company they are thinking of investing in.
Furthermore, the NYAG says he has evidence that Exxon knew it was happening as long as 30 years ago. Back in the late 80s and early 90s climate change was far from settled thing.
I was under the assumption that the basic tennets of climate change were well understood by scientists more than 100 years ago. While the climate models have been developed only recently, enabling more accurate predictions, climate science is centuries old as it relates to understanding human impact on our climate.
Climate science was as "settled" in the 80s and 90s as it is today. Yes, the predictions are more accurate today, but the confidence that we are changing Earth's climate was just as strong then as now.
I remember in 1997-8 being taught in US public schools, in no uncertain terms, that we are changing the climate, warming the atmosphere into a runaway greenhouse effect. This was in the US South in a very red state that mostly denies climate science today. The only way to interpret the idea that climate science was "less settled" in the 80s 90s is political. It has been "settled" for 100+ years in rational scientific discourse.
Nobody disputes climate change since climate has been changing for billions of years, just the human contribution towards it. Also, many people consider the distinction important...
It’s also peak capitalism, where only investors matter.
Part [1] covers the beginnings of Exxon's own climate research in the late 70s, and the findings of their scientists, which was approximately accurate to modern climate behavior today, 40 years later. Back in 1979, Exxon outfitted some of their ships with equipment to detect CO2 absorption in the ocean along their routes; Exxon was, at the time, one of the leading climate research organizations in the world.
Part [2] covers some of Exxon's research and findings in more detail.
Part [3] describes the climate models that Exxon's researchers developed in the early 80s, and some of the early decisions that corporate leadership made to downplay the implications of these models and search for other poorly-founded ideas that might rebut them.
Part [4] is about Exxon's discovery of and response to a major CO2 source in the South China Sea.
Part [5] briefly talks about synthetic fuel technology under development in the 1980s and the impact that early climate science might have had on exploring that technology.
And [6] finally gets to the meaty part where, after well over a decade of their own research efforts were telling them otherwise, company executives began a misinformation campaign through the 90s and 2000s, downplaying the certainty of climate science and its potential effects.
You can also explore a pile of internal Exxon documents yourself [7].
The comparison between energy companies and tobacco companies is apt. There is no doubt that, even as Exxon duped an entire legion of people into believing that climate science was "uncertain", internally they had solid research demonstrating the effects their practices would have on the global climate.
It's fair to say that climate change skeptics have been arguing against Exxon's own research. They just didn't know they were arguing against Exxon's research, because Exxon lied, repeatedly, to the public.
Their executives did not want to accept the potential liability associated with the findings of their own internal research.
[1]: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092015/Exxons-own-resea...
[2]: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16092015/exxon-believed-d...
[3]: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18092015/exxon-confirmed-...
[4]: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08102015/Exxons-Business-...
[5]: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08102015/highlighting-all...
[6]: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22102015/Exxon-Sowed-Doub...
[7]: https://insideclimatenews.org/search_documents?topic=All&pro...
At least IL AGs havent been dumb enough to do this. They know if they go national, the corruption will be exposed and they'll go to jail. Typically, if they keep the corruption in state, they can get away with it. We, the people of Illinois, have largely become desensitized to corruption and has become a running joke. I mean, something like 6 or 7 of our last 11 governors have served time for corruption, and that spans both parties.
Or perhaps they are active against multinational corporations but arent physically close enough to the media for it to ever surface?
The parts that are not functioning are the legislature and executive branch.
Dead Comment
a. we need them as there are no alternatives currently
b. everybody with just a little gray matter under their skull knew that burning fossil fuels is not good for the environment, and our health.
That being said, I do think one could make a strong argument that Exxon lied to investors through omittance of a truth that they new. Not that they were harming the environment, but that they misrepresented risk to the business due to environmental harm.
Are there previous examples of a lawsuit over a company misleading shareholders about potential future liabilities, where the liabilities are still unknown? We still don't know how much business Exxon might lose, or how much its penalties might be, as a result of climate change. So how would you calculate which shareholders lost how much?
This article just discusses preparations for the opening arguments due to commence.
[1] - https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/ag-underwood-files-lawsuit-a...
[2] - https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/summons_and_complaint_...