The energy industry is pressing for laws that would ban climate liability lawsuits.
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Michigan accuses oil companies of antitrust violations in climate change lawsuit
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Michigan antitrust lawsuit says oil companies hobbled EVs and renewables?
No kidding.
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Considering nearly three more years of the "drill, baby, drill" administration, I don't think Big Oil will lose.
Fucking monsters. Pulling up the ladder behind them...aka "I got my bag".
Fucking monsters. Pulling up the ladder behind them...aka "I got my bag".
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When your line of business is backed so far into a corner that you need the worst government money can buy to shield you from any and all liability, it's time to GTFO of that business. Big oil may win this one but the writing is on the wall. The smart money is already moving on.
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In addition to the 1979 Exxon internal study referenced in this article, it is worth reading the Exxon 1982 Glaser Memo on the CO2 Greenhouse effect. But perhaps the best explanation of the industry's coordinated public relations effort to discredit climate science was the 2022 three-part episode of PBS Frontline titled "The Power of Big Oil".
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I find it unlikely they will find any collusion. Not that there wasn't any.
Also, what companies did individually - stop research in green tech and used patents to block competitors - is what companies do, to the extent they can get away with it, and sometimes beyond. Scummy and bad for everyone except the top few... but business as usual.
Also, what companies did individually - stop research in green tech and used patents to block competitors - is what companies do, to the extent they can get away with it, and sometimes beyond. Scummy and bad for everyone except the top few... but business as usual.
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The oil industry is working both out in the open and in the shadows to extend their business model as far as they can. They absolutely know their days are numbered in their current capacity.
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Their response just reeks of an inability to defend the cases on their merits, suggesting they're almost certainly accurate.
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RickRoyLeonPrisZhoraRacha
Ars Scholae Palatinae
I would also see a collusion with Utilities because "unless the US Government subsidizes the energy plant construction, line upgrades, locked in prices on aluminum and copper materials, transformers, along with hobbling a PUC regulation" is warranted. When a home owner is now considered an "energy producer", I suspect many were lobbied to prevent VAWTs and solar plants, and increased fines, permits, fees, along with costs, like tariffs on solar panels, batteries, switchgear, inverters, ...
Its no wonder that gas stations never moved to hybrid with chargers AND fuel pumps to adapt. Or that its a slow roll out with chargers, incompatible connectors (See Musk got his way), and more. But I see Tire companies aren't complaining (big cost for Low-resistance EV tires at around $2000).
Its no wonder that gas stations never moved to hybrid with chargers AND fuel pumps to adapt. Or that its a slow roll out with chargers, incompatible connectors (See Musk got his way), and more. But I see Tire companies aren't complaining (big cost for Low-resistance EV tires at around $2000).
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Why move on? They have invested heavily over the past 50+years in buying the government. Surely they can get a couple more decades of quality returns on that investment. Then when they are finally ready to concede and pivot to a new business model, the government they own will give them a sweet tax-payer funded bailout to fund the pivot.
wooweee just imagine, a complete change of business plan with zero loss of profits for the shareholders, all on the tax-payers dime. A true capitalist dream. :/
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“…because we’ve already paid for Congress and we don’t want to have to buy 50 state legislatures. “
That’s the part left unsaid by the oil industry.
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While I am not opposed to the suit, we can not ignore the fact that if we want most people to be buying EVs, the solution is to ban the sale of new ICEs at the dealer lot, as China, the EU and CARB states have done. Michigan could do that.
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This one misses the mark. Gas stations with chargers exist, once in a blue moon I use one.
But they suck. Why would I want to bum around a gas station for half an hour? If there’s food there, maybe it’s ok, but a food place without gasoline is even better.
Edit: my point I guess is that the oil majors are right — the transition off carbon fuels is an existential threat to them, and they have little to no competitive advantage in the new economy. As a society that’s great, we get to redirect our energies elsewhere. As individual companies it’s a death sentence. Managing incentives in a transition is hard.
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Next 3 years at least, sure. After that, legal changes are feasible. I agree Michigan should've bided its time for more favorable conditions to sue though.
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I mean, this has been publicly available knowledge for some time now. I’m actually surprised that Michigan is first to sue over it.
I’m glad it’s Dana Nessel leading this charge. I voted for her when I lived in Michigan and she’s done an excellent job as AG.
I’m glad it’s Dana Nessel leading this charge. I voted for her when I lived in Michigan and she’s done an excellent job as AG.
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You only have to look as far as San Ramon, California to see how they work. Across the highway are some of the nicest homes in the bay area, and until recently very few of them were purchased with tech money.
Nestled in a corner across from Silicon Valley, it’s where Chevron was once headquartered in California. Every Chevron station is $.20 more than anyone else, and at those stations and elsewhere around California Chevron’s relentless public relations push is evident.
“ California gas prices are too high because taxes”
“ It’s California’s fault your gas is expensive.”
like any big and adaptable organism, they’ve gotten multiple ways of adapting very firmly entrenched now.
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This isn’t surprising to me, primarily because we no longer have a functional environmental protection agency.
The federal system that used to manage concerns shared by all of the states is no longer functional.
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What difference would it make to the shareholders or the taxpayers if we manage to make our world uninhabitable?
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"Which is why we firmly support the president unilaterally overturning the EPA's carbon endangerment finding."
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It strikes me as... odd... that a closely-related industry, based in out of Michigan, that is also not exactly enabling the transition to EVs... is left out in a lawsuit by the state.
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That's a problem for some distant future generation. And like everything else wrong with America, if it ain't 'my problem,' they don't care. And there's no way to get them to care, either. It's beyond their ability to understand consequences that don't directly impact them. It's the same mentality destroying countless businesses, so 'investors' can get rich today at the expense of the business's future. That's someone else's problem, because the metaphorical bill will come due on someone else's dime.
America is quite possibly the single largest collection of sociopaths in the world. And once you understand that, everything else about it becomes crystal clear.
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Whose lawyers and for what benefit? I'm kinda confused by this take. This feels like it's way off the cynicism charts.
It's also not even really a political play by Dana Nessel; her term is up this year, she has reached her term limit, and she has not announced candidacy for the governorship or any other state legislative seat.
So who's grandstanding here and to what purpose?
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In the mid 80s, in Cambridge Massachusetts, the Alewife Station went up, a hub for busses, the subway station, and parking garages. And, it was part of my daily commute into Boston. They built car recharging stations that looked like oversized gas station pumps. Of course they got the latest advice from MIT and local tech boffins that the technology for electric vehicles was right around the corner. But sadly neglected, they were soon mothballed, covered in undignified bags. We had the technology back then, over 30 years ago. It's fairly obvious who stifled the development of EVs back then.
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There is ample reason to believe the oil industry is stifling competition. If the case is not dismissed out of hand in a blatant travesty of justice, it goes into discovery. Sweet, sweet discovery. It not only will expose the details of industry collusion, it will keep the issue in the news for months.
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i don't have the mind to be a law student. if individuals, local governments, and now state governments have no legal avenues for recourse that flies against what the constitution asserts. if you are injured you should have an avenue for recourse in the courts, thats what keeps us from shooting each other every 10-20 years like every other third world country. you have to have society's buy in, you can't use military coercion on a country with this many people
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I see signs like that at gas stations and it boils my blood every time. CA is trying to pass a vehicle miles traveled tax to offset some of the lost tax from gas, and while the implementation needs to be done well, its not a bad idea. Ny coworkers who were all complaining the most have 20-40 mile commutes from the next county over. When you're driving 15+k miles a year just commuting then its easy to make the oil companies seem like the good guys.
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Because, as the article points out, proving a conspiracy is a long shot. Oil companies simply stopping their own EV and PV research isn't a "conspiracy," even if they all do it. You have to show communication between them coordinating the shutdowns, and I guarantee that any such conversations were held in a bar at some energy conference instead of over company emails subject to discovery. Same with patent-hoarding and lawsuits against competitors. Disgusting behavior, yes. But it's not a conspiracy unless they, severally, actively agreed together to do it.
The goal here is noble. I don't think this is going to pan out, because it assumes the heads of these companies and their staff are stupid. If they were stupid, they wouldn't have been effective at what they've done and gotten away with.
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And companies banding together to fund lobbying organizations to coordinate action is, somehow, not conspiracy under US law.
I get that in a decentralized system (trying to avoid the problems of central planning) we should want to have some way to get information from company experts over to the government. That's way in the rear mirror with the API and such groups. The US has pretty much completely reverted to the era of trusts and robber barons.
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First, what would lead you to believe this is not a time to be cynical?
Second, though, lawsuits should serve a purpose. When they are going after something that is a total nonstarter due to the prejudices of the existing judiciary, I don't see a whole lot of purpose. It's not going to change things objectively because the frocked mendacious shits that we're stuck with for at least the next 20 years will stop it. It also won't get anyone any more pissed than they already are with the state of affairs.
What it will do is feed the lawyers. And that's what I wrote.
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If you think that getting things into the news isn't a purpose, you haven't ever done any PR work.
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We're still very much living in the country of Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, which was allowed to destroy public transportation infrastructure across the U.S. in the early 20th. Of course the predator parasite class cripple technology that threatens their economic dominance. So long as money is the meaning of life, the bull elephants will fight to have the most toys, crushing the common good without looking down.
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It's kind of a lame excuse to keep relying on Firestone. Most of the country got built afterwards.
Half of Europe got bombed flat in the mid 20th, started rebuilding on car-dependent life, and yet moved to building rail and public transit anyway.
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Instructables can be Confusable
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
And I cannot fathom is why, when presented with new opportunities for revenue, they remain recalcitrant and combative against any and all new sources of energy production.
Sure, solar panels mean that they can't make sunlight a subscription service. But building a solar farm and selling the electricity is still a revenue stream - or a wind farm, or solar-thermal, etc.
The mere prospect of them not making infinite money means that no one else can have nice things either.
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The way capitalism generally works is that you don't go do entirely new stuff that's well outside your expertise, that's silly. You give the money back to investors and let them fund new companies. Which is exactly what the fossil fuel industry has been doing via dividends and buy-backs.
Then that leaves the companies with the incentive to keep doing their thing as long as possible, actively preventing newer ideas.
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I haven't ever done any PR work and I think you're absolutely right.
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