File Photo: Chevron office in Caracas, Venezuela, April 18, 2018. (REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins)
Five of the world’s biggest oil and gas producers were sued by New Jersey for allegedly deceiving the public about the impact of petroleum on global warming, joining other states that are seeking to hold the industry legally accountable for climate change.
Exxon Mobil Corp., Shell Oil Co., Chevron Corp., BP Plc and ConocoPhillips are accused of "systematically concealing and denying their knowledge that fossil fuel consumption could have a catastrophic impact on the climate,” leading to sea rise, flooding and extreme weather that have battered the state, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin said on Tuesday in a statement.
Their "awareness of the negative impacts of fossil fuel consumption almost exactly tracks the onset of the Great Acceleration -- meaning that defendants have known for more than 50 years that greenhouse gas pollution from fossil fuel products would have significant adverse impacts on the Earth’s climate and sea levels,” Platkin said.
The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in state court in Trenton, also named as a defendant the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group.
"Legal proceedings like this waste millions of dollars of taxpayer money and do nothing to advance meaningful actions that reduce the risks of climate change,” Exxon Mobil spokesperson Casey Norton said in a statement. "Exxon Mobil will continue to invest in efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while meeting society’s growing demand for energy.”
Legal fights
The New Jersey case is similar to efforts by New York, which sued Exxon Mobil in October 2018, and Massachusetts, which filed its own complaint in the middle of a trial over New York’s suit in 2019.
New York lost its case when a state judge threw out claims by Attorney General Letitia James that Exxon Mobil lied to shareholders about the company’s use of a "proxy cost” for carbon in accounting for future regulation of climate change to appear more prudent than it was.
In the Massachusetts case, an appeals court ruled in May that Exxon must face the lawsuit.
Exxon Mobil in March lost an attempt to revive a 2016 lawsuit claiming the Democratic attorneys general of New York and Massachusetts were motivated by politics when they opened investigations into the energy giant’s statements to investors about climate change.
