How Exxon Uses The Courts To Silence Opponents

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This is a simple story. Imperial Beach, California, is a small, working class community near San Diego that is experiencing more frequent flooding as sea levels rise and more powerful storms push ocean water inland. According to The Guardian, without extensive mitigation measures that will cost tens of millions of dollars, rising sea levels will eventually swamp some of the city’s neighborhoods, routinely flood its two schools, and overwhelm its drainage system.

An analysis of the city’s vulnerability to rising sea levels has determined that nearly 700 homes and businesses valued at more than $100 million in Imperial City are threatened. It said that flooding will hit about 40% of the city’s roads, including some that will be under water for long periods. Two elementary schools will have to be moved. The city’s beach, regarded as one of the best sites for surfing on the California coast, is being eroded by about a foot a year.

The mayor of Imperial City is Serge Dedina, a laid back surfer dude who looks like he could have played a part in the movie The Big Lebowski. But he is no pushover. In July, 2017, Imperial City sued Exxon and 30 other oil companies seeking compensation that would help it pay to protect itself from rising sea levels. The city’s suit alleges the oil giants committed fraud by covering up research showing that burning fossil fuels destroys the environment. The industry then lied about the evidence for climate change for decades, deliberately delaying efforts to curb carbon emissions.

Imperial City’s annual budget is $20 million. It doesn’t have the money to prepare for the ravages of a warming planet. “We don’t have a pot to piss in in this city. So why not go after the oil companies?” Dedina says. “The lawsuit is a pragmatic approach to making the people that caused sea level rise pay for the impacts it has on our city.”

The Empire Strikes Back

Exxon has responded to the suit by unleashing an infestation of Gucci shod lawyers upon the city. It claims Imperial Beach and several other communities are engaging in a giant conspiracy to extort money from it and its fossil fuel buddies. The root of the conspiracy is a meeting that took place 9 years ago at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla that was organised by the Climate Accountability Institute and the Union of Concerned Scientists. That meeting produced a report outlining how legal strategies used by US states against the tobacco industry thirty years earlier could be used to bring lawsuits against fossil fuel companies.

“A collection of special interests and opportunistic politicians are abusing law enforcement authority and legal process to impose their viewpoint on climate change. ExxonMobil finds itself directly in that conspiracy’s cross hairs,” Exxon says.

Exxon is attempting to use a Texas law that allows corporations to go on a phishing expedition for incriminating evidence before any legal action is filed against them. The company is trying to force Dedina, two other members of Imperial Beach’s government, and officials from other jurisdictions to submit to questioning on the grounds they had joined in a conspiracy against the oil industry.

Chutzpah

Chutzpah is a Hebrew word that is used to describe someone who has overstepped the boundaries of accepted behavior. According to Wikipedia, “in traditional usage, the word expresses a strong sense of disapproval, condemnation and outrage.” In legal circles, they like to describe chutzpah as a person who murders both parents and then begs the court for mercy because he is an orphan. No matter how you define it, Exxon and its fellow climate killing comrades have it in abundance.

The conspiracy, if there is one, is the agreement made between the oil companies 40 or more years ago when their own scientists warned them that rising carbon emissions would lead to a warming planet. The industry took those warnings and shoved them under the rug, telling the public there was nothing to worry about while keeping the truth a secret. They have engaged in a massive conspiracy to convince the public they are responsible for global heating, not the oil industry.

Pipeline Protests

Exxon’s tactics are a mirror of those used by Energy Transfer Partners to harass protesters involved in the Standing Rock movement. ETF filed a lawsuit alleging Greenpeace and its partners are engaged in a criminal network of fraud and misinformation. The complaint includes references to “wolfpacks of corrupt” environmental nongovernmental organizations.

Here’s where it gets really weird. The suit is based on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations act of 1070 that targeted organized crime. It also relies on defamation law to wage a scorched earth campaign against nonprofits that dared spoke out against the pipeline’s construction near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota according to the ACLU.

More recently, hundreds of people were arrested in Minnesota for daring to protest the Line 3 pipeline being built by Enbridge. A report by The Guardian reveals that Enbridge paid police $2.4 million to arrest and conduct surveillance on hundreds of those demonstrators. If there are conspiracies afoot, it is fossil fuel companies who are engaging in them.

How is this any different that Andrew Carnegie sending the Pinkertons to beat and murder workers who dared try to organize a union at his Homestead Mill in 1892? The people who should be arrested are not the protesters who are trying to stop the destruction of the environment but the corporate leaders who are engaging in a concerted, coordinated campaign to commit crimes against humanity for personal gain.

Keep On Keepin’ On

Serge Dedina is not intimidated by the legal guns trained upon him by Big Oil. “The only conspiracy is [that] a bunch of suits and fossil fuel companies decided to pollute the earth and make climate change worse, and then lie about it,” he says. “People ask, how did you go against the world’s largest fossil fuel companies? Isn’t that scary? No. What’s scary is coastal flooding and the idea that whole cities would be under water. Honestly, bring it on. I can’t wait to make our case. I can’t wait to take the fight to them because we have nothing to lose.”

In the words of Haile Sellasie, “Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.”

We as a society owe a debt of gratitude to people like Serge Dedina, and the protesters at Standing Rock and in Minnesota who refuse to be intimated by the oil barons and their highly paid legal prostitutes. We should all have such courage.


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Steve Hanley

Steve writes about the interface between technology and sustainability from his home in Florida or anywhere else The Force may lead him. He is proud to be "woke" and doesn't really give a damn why the glass broke. He believes passionately in what Socrates said 3000 years ago: "The secret to change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old but on building the new." You can follow him on Substack and LinkedIn but not on Fakebook or any social media platforms controlled by narcissistic yahoos.

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