Pirate's Cove

I mentioned the lawsuit from the NY State Attorney General’s office against Exxon the other day. Now we have US News and World Report inadvertently letting the cat out of the bag on what part of this is about

Exxon Lawsuit Marks New Strategy in Climate Change Fight
The filing alleging the company defrauded investors is all about climate change – even when it’s not.

A LAWSUIT accusing Exxon Mobil of defrauding investors about the costs of environmental regulation marks a shift in tactics for legal efforts seeking accountability for climate change, employing a strategy that not only promises to be easier to prove but which threatens to brand Exxon as a fraudster and seeks to compel the oil giant to change its ways.

New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood on Wednesday accused the company of essentially maintaining two sets of books: one that included much higher estimated costs of expected environmental regulations, which the company shared with investors, and another, secret set of much lower calculations that were used to guide the company’s investment decisions, unbeknownst to shareholders. (snip)

The filing is significant because until now fossil fuel companies have largely been able to sidestep lawsuits looking to pin responsibility on them for their role in global warming. And while Exxon shareholders seem an unlikely group to defend in advancing the interests of corporate responsibility with regard to climate change, establishing on their behalf that Exxon committed fraud could go a long way toward that end.

“It closes the loop with respect to corporate management decisions,” says David Hawkins, climate policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “If Exxon Mobil knows it’s going to have to be more candid and more accurate about the impacts of climate policy on their business, and they know that investors are going to be better informed as a result of these kinds of inquiries, then they will change their assessment of what are financeable investments and they’ll change their business plans over time.”

So there’s one reason: forcing companies to change how they operate to be compliant with the Beliefs of the Cult of Climastrology. If you don’t do what they say, they’ll sue you from a governmental perch.

Just as importantly, the complaint brought by New York may end up sending a signal to other oil and gas firms: Even if courts are unwilling to weigh in on a company’s role in fueling climate change – and, therefore, the financial debt it owes to those damaged by sea-level rise, drought and other impacts – states could pursue more traditional avenues.

“This is potentially very significant in influencing corporate management, not only at Exxon Mobil, but all fossil fuel producing companies, to think about this more analytically – that they’re not going to be able to make broad, hand-waving claims about how their business is going to do just fine if the world takes climate change seriously,” Hawkins says. “There’s going to be someone looking at our statements, and that means we’re going to have a harder and harder time telling investors that everything is fine when the best analysis says everything is not fine.”

It’s a shakedown. Government extortion. And it should worry everyone who cares about our civil liberties when government comes after people for what those in charge believe is Wrongthink. Those who support these types of actions by government should remember that they could easily end up on the wrong end of these types of suits if they continue unabated.