Earth Equity News

Big Oil Follows Big Tobacco as Legal Target. By Stephan Farris, Atlantic, June 2008 issue. "The Eskimo village of Kivalina sits on the tip of an eight-mile barrier reef on the west coast of Alaska. Fierce storms are ripping apart the shores... In 2006, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers concluded that Kivalina would be uninhabitable in as little as 10 years, and that relocating its approximately 400 residents would cost at least $95 million. Global climate change, the Corps report said, had shortened the season during which the sea was frozen, leaving the community more vulnerable to winter storms... In February [a group of lawyers, some veterans of the tobacco litigation battles] filed suit in federal court against 24 oil, coal, and electric companies, claiming that their emissions are partially responsible for the coastal destruction in Kivalina. More important, the suit also accuses eight of the firms (American Electric Power, BP America, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Duke Energy, ExxonMobil, Peabody Energy, and Southern Company) of conspiring to cover up the threat of man-made climate change, in much the same way the tobacco industry tried to conceal the risks of smoking -- by using a series of think tanks and other organizations to falsely sow public doubt in an emerging scientific consensus... The first tobacco suits were filed in the 1950s, but it wasn't until 1988 that lawyers were able to find chinks in the industry's armor. The first lawsuit to succeed was also the first to accuse the industry of conspiracy. It's anyone's guess whether climate-change litigation, when mapped to that time line, is closer to the 1950s or to 1988. Indeed, it's not clear whether warming-related monetary damages will ever be won from energy companies -- much less whether they should be. But if the charges do stick in the Kivalina case, the defendants can expect many more in short order, as island nations, ski resorts, drought-stricken communities, and hurricane victims line up for their share. Regulation and litigation are two sides of the same coin. By working aggressively to prevent one, the energy companies may have left themselves open to the other."