Adding to ExxonMobil’s legal woes of investigations by attorneys general and the SEC is a new, first-of-its-kind lawsuit by the Conservation Law Foundation. Filing in Massachusetts, the suit alleges the company is failing to account for the effects of climate change in a facility in the Boston area.
Specifically, it refers to the fact that the oil storage facility is ill-prepared to prevent leaks when drainage systems are swamped by extreme precipitation made more intense and frequent by climate change. Situated next to the Mystic River, any flooding or even a mild hurricane would release carcinogenic pollutants into the water system. And even without such an event, the facility is already leaking more pollutants than permits allow under the Clean Water Act, the suit alleges.
Both Mashable and Think Progress go into considerable detail on the story, while the Washington Examiner’s John Siciliano does only the bare minimum to spin CLF’s press release and blog post into a story for his conservative outlet. Even worse is the Daily Caller’s Chris White, whose piece looks like a subpar rewrite of Siciliano’s story. With missing and incorrect words, grammatical oddities and the use of “extinction” instead of “extension,” it seems no one bothered to edit this aggregation of Siciliano’s work. (Here the two stories are with the similar sections color-coded.)
In White’s defense, he did at least link to Siciliano.
As for ExxonMobil’s defense, we assume Rep. Lamar Smith will soon attack CLF. Because as Senator Whitehouse points out, whenever ExxonMobil gets in trouble Rep. Lamar Smith runs to the rescue. So we can probably expect another one of his witch hunts into the Conservation Law Foundation, like those against the NGOs, AGs and now the SEC.
Speaking of which, there’s one more detail to note about the SEC counter-investigation. Seems White let slip the real reason for Smith’s interest: It’s not about defending climate science, as Smith ironically claims to justify his witch hunts, but “to assess how badly the attorney general’s crusade will affect oil development.”
Because if oil companies aren’t making money, how will they donate to Smith?
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