Exxon and others worked diligently to suppress from the public what they knew to be true about climate change.
Emily Atkin
reports:
A former U.S. Department of Justice attorney who prosecuted and won the massive racketeering case against Big Tobacco thinks the agency should consider investigating Big Oil for similar claims: engaging in a cover-up to mislead the public about the risks of its product.
Sharon Eubanks, who now works for the firm Bordas & Bordas, told ThinkProgress that ExxonMobil and other members of the fossil fuel industry could be held liable for violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) if it’s discovered that the companies worked together to suppress knowledge about the reality of human-caused climate change. She said that, considering recent revelations regarding ExxonMobil, the DOJ should consider launching an investigation into big fossil fuel companies.
“I think a RICO action is plausible and should be considered,” she said.
As reported by
Inside Climate News September 21 and
further looked into by the
Los Angeles Times in early October, Exxon learned in 1977 and 1978 from its own top guy in research and engineering that doubling carbon dioxide emissions would boost the worldwide climate by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (4 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit). But Exxon executives subsequently pulled out all the stops to block any action being taken, using paid shills who, as part of their bag of tricks, ridiculed and smeared scientists when they began warning of global warming.
One of Exxon and other fossil fuel companies' efforts included helping to establish the Global Climate Coalition in 1989 shortly after the first meeting of the U.N.-created Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Among GCC's efforts was a tendentious video it provided to journalists at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in which it claimed, among other things, that more CO2 in the atmosphere would boost crop yields. So, something to cheer rather than worry about.
Until 1997, according to SourceWatch, GCC operated out of the offices of the National Association of Manufacturers. Among its members besides Exxon: the American Forest & Paper Association, American Petroleum Institute, Chevron, Ford, General Motors, Shell Oil, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The organization was disbanded in 2002, although neither Exxon nor other former members gave up their propaganda war against climate science.
Eubanks' comments come on the heels of a call for Attorney General Loretta Lynch by two California Democrats—Reps. Ted Lieu and Mark DeSaulnier—to launch a probe into claims in the two news articles that Exxon hid the results of its scientific findings, and deceived Americans about what they knew were risks from burning fossil fuels. Democratic presidential candidates Martin O'Malley and Bernie Sanders both support a probe of Exxon and others in the matter, O'Malley via a tweet and Sanders in a letter to Lynch. You can do your part by signing this petition.
Eubanks warned that if the charges against Exxon were anything like the tobacco case, a bipartisan Congress (or one under Democratic control) and a Democratic president would be required for success. In the tobacco case, she said, budgeting was a problem under the Bill Clinton administration and the situation got worse under George W. Bush, when the Department of Justice tried "to choke the case off.” Failing that, the Bush administration pushed the prosecutors to seek only $10 billion instead of the $130 billion settlement they desired.
