A gas flare from the Shell Chemical LP petroleum refinery. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images.
A judge will soon decide whether Minnesotans will get our day in court to hold some of the most egregious perpetrators of climate disinformation accountable for lying about how their products have fueled the climate crisis and harmed our state’s residents, economy and environment.
Ever since Attorney General Keith Ellison sued ExxonMobil, Koch Industries and the American Petroleum Institute four and a half years ago to make them pay for their decades-long “campaign of deception” about climate change, these major players in the fossil fuel industry have made every effort to stop the lawsuit’s advancement. Now, a Ramsey County District Court judge will decide by the end of February whether to grant the companies’ motion to dismiss the case or allow it to be heard on the merits.
Minnesotans deserve to know the truth about what the industry knew and did to prevent broadscale public awareness about the connection between burning fossil fuels and climate change. This lawsuit is our best chance to get it. It’s also our best chance at ensuring Big Oil will pay a price for what it did. The judge should deny the defendants’ request to avoid public scrutiny of its actions.
New evidence about Koch’s climate deception underscores exactly why this is so important. Researchers at Brown University recently published a report detailing Koch’s efforts to obstruct climate action from the 1980s to the present day, including funding climate denial groups and publicly encouraging skepticism about the scientific certainty of climate change despite acknowledging the crisis internally years prior.
“Koch and its top personnel had access to high-quality scientific summaries of climate change science from the early 1970s through the 1990s and beyond,” reads their report. “These early warnings contrast deeply with the discredited statements made by Koch executives in the decades that followed, and with the Koch-funded research that appears to have been an attempt to keep discredited scientific ‘skepticism’ on life support.”
The evidence of Exxon and API’s deception also fills reams of paper, from internal Exxon researchers predicting and confirming fossil fuel’s role in the climate crisis decades ago, to API funding a study in the 1960s that determined “… the potential damage to our environment could be severe” if we didn’t shift away from oil and gas and toward cleaner energy. These companies didn’t just keep this information to themselves, either; they invested millions in intentionally misleading the public about it through disinformation, front groups and fake science.
That damning evidence is only what is publicly available about these industry giants. If Minnesota’s case is allowed to proceed, more evidence of what Koch, Exxon and API did will be uncovered through the court process. That’s why these companies are fighting so hard to prevent that. They know what’s at stake.
Unfortunately for them, our state has a strong legal basis to advance it: It’s illegal to lie to consumers about a product in Minnesota, plain and simple. And while Big Oil was lying to us and raking in billions, the climate crisis was accelerating, all the while racking up costs for Minnesota taxpayers, harming our economy and threatening our health. Research shows that our state — like the rest of the globe — is warming; we can feel and see it with more summer heat spikes, earlier spring thaws and increased extreme weather events and air quality alerts.
Ellison feels it too. He’s enforcing Minnesota’s laws on behalf of all of us who are now living with the consequences of the fossil fuel industry’s deception, which will only worsen with time.
If successful, Minnesota’s lawsuit could require these corporate polluters to release all of their research on climate change and invest the profits they made while lying to us into an education campaign that would finally accurately reflect fossil fuels’ true role in climate change. By holding Big Oil accountable, Minnesota has a chance to make history, just like we did with the tobacco, opioid and other deceptive industries that prioritized profits over people. But first we need our day in court. Let’s hope we get it.