Seven States, Twelve Cities, Eight Counties Filed Suits Against Big Oil.
The lawsuits against Big Oil continue to grow. Most of them are based on the fact that oil companies polluted the environment. The suits are also based on the fact that these companies knew the effects of fossil fuels on the environment several decades ago.
Climate News –More Places People Can’t Live
In one case, Exxon is accused of researching fossil fuels and global warming for more than 30 years. A study in the journal Science titled “Assessing ExxonMobil’s global warming projections” stated, “Exxon Mobil had their own internal models that projected warming trajectories consistent with those forecast by the independent academic and government models. What they understood about climate models thus contradicted what they led the public to believe.”
The Pittsburgh Post, which provide the count of states and cities, puts the starting point at which oil companies knew about the dangers as 1981. “Exxon Mobil and Peabody Energy have both contributed to the misleadingly named Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, which in fact denies established climate science.”
Big Tobacco
The challenge, legal experts say, is how to prove specific damages. In the case of suits against Big Tobacco, which yielded tens of billions of dollars in damages, victims were clearly harmed by tobacco use, such as lung cancer and heart disease. And there was very clear evidence that many scientists at tobacco companies knew about these cause-and-effect relationships.
Big Oil can be sued, but is there enough proof that their behavior caused personal damage? That is the hurdle they have to clear.
