Big Oil Gets Slapped With Its First Wrongful Death Lawsuit
Third, there are piles of internal strategy memos and external materials outlining the massive disinformation campaign these companies executed to prevent regulators, investors, consumers, and ordinary citizens like Julie from understanding the risks their products were creating. Documented tactics include publishing deceptive advertisements; directing bought-and-paid-for scientists to fraudulently undermine the clear scientific consensus on climate; harassing and attempting to discredit scientists and activists engaged in researching and communicating the actual climate science; deceptively attacking renewable energy efforts and policies; and “greenwashing” to falsely promote Big Oil products and brands as climate solutions.
There is also substantial evidence of the impact this conspiracy has had in delaying climate mitigation and adaptation measures that could have prevented Julie’s death. For example, a recent Pew Research survey found that only 27 percent of Americans believed that almost all scientists agreed that climate change is caused by human activity. Compare this to the most recent analysis of the peer-reviewed scientific literature on climate change, which found that there is a greater than 99 percent consensus among scientists on this point—out of the 88,125 papers surveyed, just 28 were skeptical, mostly authored by the same few, discredited, industry-funded individuals.
In the words of former Senator Chuck Hagel, who co-sponsored the resolution that prohibited the U.S. from ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, “I was misled. Others were misled. When [fossil fuel companies] had evidence in their own institutions that countered what they were saying publicly—I mean, they lied.… It would have changed everything [had they told the truth]. I think it would have changed the average citizen’s appreciation of climate change.… And mine, of course. It would have put the United States and the world on a whole different track, and today we would have been so much further ahead than we are. It’s cost this country, and it cost the world.”