According to reports, the state of New Jersey filed a major climate-related fraud lawsuit against five major oil companies. Let’s review excerpts from three recent articles on the lawsuit.
Steven Rodas reports this from N.J. lawsuit takes aim at 5 oil, gas companies for denying climate change exists, for NJ.com:
Inside the more than 130-year-old Central Railroad of New Jersey Terminal — which was battered by Hurricane Sandy ten years ago — state officials announced a lawsuit against five major oil and gas companies on Tuesday afternoon.
The 200-page civil suit says the companies, as well as a petroleum trade association, have knowingly lied to New Jerseyans about the existence and impact of climate change and the length at which the fossil fuels they have helped to burn worsen the planet.
Note the disingenuousness of the phrase “helped to burn.” No one was ever forced to buy oil company products. The products were sold to consumers in voluntary exchange. It is the consumers that actually burn the fossil fuels—to heat their homes, drive their cars, cook their food, and by buying all of the products that depend on fossil fuels to produce—in other words, to live. If they didn’t buy and use the product as intended, there would be no oil and gas companies, and thus no alleged “existence and impact of climate change.” The companies are attacked. But the consumers that actually are responsible for burning fossil fuels—in other words, the actual villains by the anti-fossilists own logic—are let off the hook. Of course, it is the consumers who will ultimately pay, in higher prices and shortages, for this “fossil-free” movement. Neither crafters of this lawsuit travesty or the lapdog media will own up to this economic fact. But that’s just one indication of who the real fraudsters are.
And on what standard do fossil fuels “worsen the planet?” Not on the standard of human life, which is better than ever for more people than ever. What we’re getting is anti-man Environmentalist trope being channeled by the lawsuit hucksters to attack an industry that actually improves the planet. To the climate catastrophist, “worsen the planet” means a more livable planet for humans. This is a classic bait-and-switch, a favorite tool of fraudsters.
Note also the bait-and-switch in the first paragraph, naming Hurricane Sandy (which was actually not a hurricane at landfall). The implication is that Sandy was caused in whole or in part by the oil companies. There is no evidence of this absurdity, nor can there ever be. Weather is not climate. Sandy was caused by a confluence of naturally occurring atmospheric conditions that have long been known and ultimately expected. In other words, Sandy was no surprise to weather experts, including me. Nor was it a surprise to the authors of Great Storms of the Jersey Shore, who in their first edition included a chapter called The Storm that Ate the Jersey Shore, a fictional story about a storm that Sandy replicated almost to a “T”. * Yet Sandy appears in an article featuring climate change, as if it was some entirely new and unexpected phenomenon. This is just one way the architects of this lawsuit and their media lapdogs are themselves committing fraud.
In Lawsuit filed against oil companies, claiming systemic fraud, published in NJ Spotlight News, David Cruz reports:
New Jersey is taking on the fossil-fuel industry, suing five oil and gas companies along with their trade group alleging they knowingly deceived the public about the role of fossil fuels in climate change. The announcement Tuesday from the state attorney general and Department of Environmental Protection accuses the companies of being aware for decades that the use of fossil fuels is a major cause of climate change. It is now causing New Jersey to experience rising sea levels, hotter temperatures and increasingly intense storms.
But according to the lawsuit, the industry instead launched a public relations campaign to sow doubt and confuse the public about the causes and existence of climate change —in order to increase profits. New Jersey is now part of nearly two dozen similar climate lawsuits by other cities, states and counties. And it comes as New Jersey is still rebuilding vulnerable communities from major storms.
In any debate, someone will be wrong some of the time. If being wrong is grounds to be legally assaulted by politicians at taxpayer expense, you do not have free speech. You do not have public dissent and debate. You have a dictatorship.
In this case, the targeted companies have for decades been meeting the demands of consumers, including governments, with the energy they need to operate, live, and prosper. It has powered the Great Enrichment that has given us longer, healthier, safer lives than at any time in history, by far. Their continued growth powers the continuing betterment for more people the world over, right up to this day.
In NJ Spotlight News article NJ suit wants fossil-fuel industry to pay for damages done by climate change, Jon Hurdle reports:
The suit, filed in Superior Court Tuesday, is seeking civil monetary penalties for the impacts of climate change. These include flooding of coastal wetlands that are being lost to the rising seas caused by global warming.
Of course, sea levels have been rising since the end of the last glacial advance. Further, part of the “rise” is really due to a sinking coastline. How much of sea level rise is natural, how much is geological, and how much is manmade vs. natural climatic variability? Of course, the lawsuit hucksters, hungry for the big bucks, don’t care about sorting out the facts.
Attorney General Matthew Platkin announced the suit against five major oil companies and their trade association, the American Petroleum Institute, saying the industry failed to warn the public that its products were dangerous. Instead, it sought to sow public doubts that fossil-fuel emissions were linked to climate change.
Well, if the public ever didn’t know in some distant past “that its products were dangerous,” it certainly knows now. Sundry Environmentalist alarmists and anti-fossil fuel zealots have been telling us for decades of the alleged coming disasters. Certainly, given the steady growth of the hydrocarbon industry over the past half century of alarmism and zealotry, the public “knew” yet continued to shower these companies with purchases, profits, and steady growth. Where, exactly, is the alleged harm of the companies’ “failure to warn the public'' or efforts to allegedly “sow public doubts that fossil-fuel emissions were linked to climate change” long known by the public?
“They went to great lengths to hide the truth and mislead the people of New Jersey and the world,” Platkin said, in launching the suit against Exxon, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP, and the API. “These companies put their profits ahead of our safety.”
These profits, of course, were earned by providing their customers with vital safety-enhancing energy products. That the energy nihilists could wholesale condemn the fossil fuel companies for the comparatively minor and manageable negative side effects of the use of their products while ignoring the incomparably monumental benefits their products have and continue to provide to human well-being is truly one of the great injustices.
Even if the state is 100% right on every charge on “rising sea levels, hotter temperatures and increasingly intense storms”—which, of course, it is not—this lawsuit is a fraud and injustice of almost unimaginable proportions because it totally and one-sidedly ignores the positives of fossil fuels. Given the most vital value of hydrocarbon energy to every other industry and every aspect of their customers lives—which is basically everyone—this continuing War on Fossil Fuels is monumentally destructive and ultimately massively genocidal. The NJ government officials who are party to this travesty are criminals, should be impeached, and ultimately prosecuted for libelous demonizing of honorable private companies, abuse of their political authority, and misuse of taxpayer monies.
Finally, this discussion can’t end without pointing out the monumental HYPOCRISY—all upper case—of this and similar lawsuits. In an op-ed for NJ Spotlight News, Michael Busler points out the straight forward absurdity of this and similar lawsuits. Busler opines:
On the other hand, the state of New Jersey, along with some individual coastal communities across the U.S., including Hoboken, has taken the antagonistic and ineffective approach of filing climate lawsuits. In 2020, Hoboken followed cities such as San Francisco by filing a lawsuit against a handful of energy companies, in this case alleging that energy companies violated the state’s Consumer Fraud Act and should pay for climate-related damages. This claim falls apart when one considers that Hoboken officials have relied on energy products for decades, using them for their transportation, electricity, and heating and cooling needs.
On Oct. 18 of this year, New Jersey again threw itself into the fray when Attorney General Matthew Platkin filed a case in Superior Court arguing that energy companies like Exxon Mobil, Shell and others violated New Jersey’s consumer fraud laws.
It makes little sense for Hoboken and others to allege “deception” by energy providers for selling products we need to keep our economy moving. Chevron recently pointed this reality out in an answer to Honolulu’s lawsuit, a copycat of the cases brought by the New Jersey attorney general and Hoboken. The brief reminded the court that federal officials have recognized that petroleum and natural gas are vital to modern life and, dating back to the 1950s, have weighed this against any potential climate-change risks by using ample data to make informed policy decisions.
My emphasis.
This lawsuit and these articles are loaded with misinformation, lies, disingenuousness, obfuscation, omission, hypocrisy, and fraudulent claims. Let’s hope justice prevails in the courts. Our future well-being depends on it.
* [A link to the article can be found toward the back of the second edition.]
Related Reading:
5 trends shaping the future of energy by Alex Epstein
The Convoluted Logic of the “Climate Lobby”
If We’re Going to Place Blame, then Fossil Fuel Consumers are the Real Climate Culprits
The “Divest-Invest Philanthropy” Movement and its Statist Roots
“Was industrialisation worth it?” – California Climate Lawsuit by Eric Worrall for Watts Up With That?
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