Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating Exxon Mobil's deception on climate change.
Justin Gillis and Clifford Krauss from
The New York Times report:
According to people with knowledge of the investigation, Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman issued a subpoena Wednesday evening to Exxon Mobil, demanding extensive financial records, emails and other documents.
The focus includes the company’s activities dating to the late 1970s, including a period of at least a decade when Exxon Mobil funded groups that sought to undermine climate science. A major focus of the investigation is whether the company adequately warned investors about potential financial risks stemming from society’s need to limit fossil-fuel use. [...]
“This could open up years of litigation and settlements in the same way that tobacco litigation did, also spearheaded by attorneys general,” said Brandon L. Garrett, a professor at the University of Virginia law school. “In some ways, the theory is similar — that the public was misled about something dangerous to health. Whether the same smoking guns will emerge, we don’t know yet.”
Under New York's Martin Act, the attorney general
has broad authority to investigate financial fraud. The investigation could extend beyond Exxon-Mobil to other oil companies:
Former Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, now the governor, investigated five coal-burning utility companies under the Martin Act, arguing that they failed to provide a complete picture of the risks related to climate change in their regulatory filings. They agreed to make more complete disclosures.
There's more.
It's no surprise to anyone who has even cursorily followed the propagandists that the fossil fuel industry has funded over the years to lie about climate change and smear climate scientists. But new attention has been focused on the subject with the revelation of details of Exxon Mobil's activities by InsideClimate News in a six-part series, and by the Los Angeles Times.
According to those reports, Exxon's own researchers alerted top executives at the company about climate change nearly four decades ago but engaged in a campaign to mislead the public about it to forestall any shift away from extracting and burning fossil fuels.
As a consequence of the articles, activists, several members of Congress, and all three Democratic presidential candidates still in the running have called for a federal investigation. Some activists and politicians, including Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, see potential for prosecution under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO.