What kind of lawyer says that lawsuits aren't a way to seek justice?
One representing Big Oil, of course, with the dozens of lawsuits seeking to hold the industry accountable for its decades of deceptive business practices concealing what it knew to be the harmful effects of its products.
Specifically, Phil Goldberg, who is running Public Relations efforts for the industry through the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), and recently told former Mitch McConnell advisor and Trump's FERC chair Neil Chatterjee that courts and lawsuits just aren't the way to make climate policy.
Which is true, and also completely irrelevant to most of the actual lawsuits, which Goldberg does his job by misrepresenting throughout his 15-minute interview on Chatterjee's Washington Examiner podcast.
Having spent a few years now giving interviews and writing op-eds about the lawsuits, you would think Goldberg would understand that they're not about making new climate policy, or addressing how renewables need to replace fossil fuels in generating energy, which is the impression you'd get from listening to him.
You would think Goldberg would know that the lawsuits concern Big Oil's years of climate denial, hiding the damages of its products behind millions of dollars of disinformation produced by lawyers like Goldberg at front groups like NAM.
So what Goldberg describes as plaintiffs' aims to make energy more expensive should really be that they seek to recover costs of disposing of products that fossil fuel companies passed on to consumers by hiding how use of their product raises sea levels and worsens extreme weather.
In explaining the jurisdictional issues that have lawsuits bouncing back and forth through courts as the industry tries desperately to make it a federal issue about policy and not a local issue about recovering damages and violating state consumer protection laws about false advertising, Goldberg does just that, bringing his benefactors' legal strategy to the podcasting public.
You might think that, when confronted by two dozen lawsuits seeking to hold the industry accountable for its disinformation and climate damages, Big Oil might tone down the disinformation and try to do its part to reduce future climate damages.
But it can't help itself! Disinformation is such a core feature of the corporate public relations toolbox that these companies don't know how to be honest about the damage they cause.
Which leaves the big question: When will the disinformation Big Oil's front group workers like Phil Goldberg produce get used as evidence in one of these cases about Big Oil's front groups and disinformation?
Maybe it'll be in the investigation the House Oversight committee will soon release!
