
The country's largest fossil fuel company goes on trial today to face charges that it lied to investors about the safety of its assets in the face of the climate crisis and potential legislation to fight it, as the AP reported.
The lawsuit against ExxonMobil, the country's second largest emitter of greenhouse gasses after Chevron, accuses the oil behemoth of using fuzzy math to assess its readiness for government regulations to combat the climate crisis. It valued its readiness at two different prices: a high number to investors, but a lower number in internal documents, according to CBS News.
This practice, which Exxon Mobil insists is perfectly legitimate, created the appearance that its oil investments would be more profitable than the company actually thinks they will be. Additionally, the numbers made renewable energy appear like a less attractive investment, as CBS News explained.
New York calls that fraud.
"Exxon in effect erected a Potemkin village to create the illusion that it had fully considered the risks of future climate change regulation and had factored those risks into its business operations," the lawsuit claims, as CBS News reported. "As a result of Exxon's fraud, the company was exposed to far greater risk from climate change regulations than investors were led to believe."
The lawsuit contends that the revenue the company reported to investors should have been billions of dollars lower, alleging that the difference in numbers cost shareholders between $476 million and $1.6 billion, as CBS News reported.
"By representing that it was applying higher projected carbon costs than it was actually using, ExxonMobil made its assets appear significantly more secure than they really were, which had a material impact on its share price," the state wrote, as the BBC reported.
"It's a big no-no to tell your investors one thing and do another," said Pat Tomaino, director of socially responsible investing at Zevin Asset Management, to CBS News.
ExxonMobil says its numbers were truthful and the lawsuit is politically motivated, according to the AP.
"The New York Attorney General's allegations are false," Exxon said in a statement, as Reuters reported. "We tell investors through regular disclosures how the company accounts for risks associated with climate change. We are confident in the facts and look forward to seeing our company exonerated in court."
The trial kicks off in Manhattan today and is expected to last a couple of weeks. It is also expected to hear testimony from former CEO and former U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who the suit alleges knowingly ignored the alleged fraud. The trial is at the forefront of a number of cases brought against fossil fuel firms.
"It's a major milestone as a part of a growing wave of cases that Exxon and other major oil companies are facing, not only here in the United States, but in fact in jurisdictions around the world," said Carroll Muffett, president of the Center for International Environmental Law, to the BBC.
Two weeks ago, Massachusetts filed suit against ExxonMobil for violating the state's Consumer Protection Act — "by engaging in unfair or deceptive acts" regarding the sale and branding of fossil fuel products, according to the Los Angeles Times. Rhode Island has filed claims against Exxon and BP for damage to its coastline. Investigators in Canada and the Philippines are also exploring legal avenues for holding fossil fuel companies accountable for their role in the climate crisis, according to the BBC.
"Regardless of the outcome [of the New York case] the reality that is clear and not inescapable is that the future of Exxon and [other fossil fuel] companies is filled with litigation and it's only going to grow," said Muffet to the BBC.
ExxonMobil Accused of Pressuring Witnesses in Climate Fraud Case #BigOilKnew via @EcoWatch https://t.co/T7h3TKmhTc
— The YEARS Project (@YEARSofLIVING) August 10, 2019
By Jessica Corbett
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday was the lone progressive to vote against Tom Vilsack reprising his role as secretary of agriculture, citing concerns that progressive advocacy groups have been raising since even before President Joe Biden officially nominated the former Obama administration appointee.
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<div id="a420d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="5369c498a5855fe2143b86fa07e23dff"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1364300806988652548" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">🚨🚨🚨 Bernie Sanders voted against Tom Vilsack's nomination. It's great to see the Senator stick to his principles a… https://t.co/u4XNU4viNC</div> — RootsAction (@RootsAction)<a href="https://twitter.com/Roots_Action/statuses/1364300806988652548">1614109634.0</a></blockquote></div>EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
By Beverly Law and William Moomaw
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The U.S. has more than 800 million acres of natural and planted forests and woodlands, of which nearly 60% are privately owned. USDA / USFS
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By Matt Casale
There were many lessons to be learned from Texas' prolonged periods of lost power during its cold snap, which saw temperatures drop into the single digits. But one many people may not recognize is that electric vehicles, or EVs, can be part of a smart resiliency plan — not only in the case of outages triggered by the cold but in other scenarios caused by extreme weather events, from fire-related blackouts in California to hurricane-hit power losses in Puerto Rico.
A car driving in the snow in Dallas, Feb. 2021. Matthew Rader / CC BY-SA 4.0
<p>Experts recognize that electric vehicles are a central climate solution for their role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But EVs are also essentially batteries on wheels. You can store energy in those batteries, and if EVs are equipped with something called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid" target="_blank">vehicle-to-grid</a> or vehicle-to-building technology, they can also be used to keep the lights on in emergencies. The technology allows the energy being stored in an EV battery to be pushed back into the grid or into buildings to provide power.</p><p>There are hurdles: The technology is still <a href="https://www.greenbiz.com/article/vehicle-grid-technology-revving" target="_blank">developing</a>, the vast majority of EVs currently on the road do not have this capability, and utilities would need regulatory approval before bringing it to scale. But done right it could be a great opportunity.</p><p>Electric car batteries can hold approximately <a href="https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/11/how-california-can-use-electric-vehicles-keep-lights" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">60 kilowatt hours (kWh)</a> of energy, enough to provide back-up power to an average U.S. household for two days. Larger electric vehicles like buses and trucks have even bigger batteries and can provide more power. The American company Proterra produces electric buses that can store <a href="https://www.proterra.com/press-release/proterra-launches-zx5-electric-bus/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">up to 660 kWh of energy</a>. Electric <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/electric-trash-trucks-are-coming-quietly-to-your-town-11602098620#:~:text=Electric%20trash%20truck%20love%20is%20in%20the%20air.&text=A's%20program%20to%20reduce%20carbon,being%20primarily%20electric%20by%202023." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">garbage trucks</a> and even <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/business/electric-semi-trucks-big-rigs.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">big-rigs</a>, with bigger batteries, are becoming a reality too.</p>MTA New York City Transit / Marc A. Hermann / CC BY 2.0
<p>If equipped with vehicle-to-grid or vehicle-to-building technology, those cars, buses and trucks could prove invaluable during future blackouts. People could rely on their cars to power their houses. Municipalities, transit agencies and school districts could send out their fleets to the areas most in need. We could power homes, shelters and emergency response centers — and could keep people warm, healthy and comfortable until power could be restored.</p><p>But to add this great resiliency tool to our arsenal in times of extreme weather, we must significantly increase the number of EVs on the road. In 2019 electric cars accounted for only about <a href="https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1136-june-1-2020-plug-vehicle-sales-accounted-about-2-all-light-duty" target="_blank">2%</a> of all light-duty vehicle sales in the country. Electric buses and trucks are becoming more common in the United States, but still only represent a tiny fraction of the fleet. As it stands now, the EVs currently on the road, even if equipped with vehicle-to-grid technology, would do little to help a broad swath of the population in need of power.</p>A line of electric cars at charging stations. Andrew Bone / CC BY 2.0
With lockdowns in place and budgets slashed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many environmental protections vanished this past year, leaving some of the world's most vulnerable species and habitats at risk. But conservationists at the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation were faced with an entirely different threat.
Annapolis, Maryland, is suing 26 oil and gas companies for deceiving the public about their products' role in causing climate change. The city is among two dozen state and local governments to file such a lawsuit.
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