Lawsuit – Oil Companies Knowingly Destroying Climate

It turns out that there is a lawsuit in the United States of America growing in momentum against the American Petroleum Institute and six major oil companies – Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, Phillips 66, and ExxonMobil.  The lawsuit alleges that businesses such as these have known since the 1950s that their actions have been and continue to be highly damaging to the global environment and are significantly accelerating climate change in a very unnatural way.  These companies are allegedly at fault for causing increasingly frequent extreme weather events around the world that are damaging to the environment and to life.  The lawsuit also provides significant evidence to state that these companies also actively engaged in and continue to engage in the spread of misinformation about the effects of their actions on the environment.

Part of the lawsuit notes the similarity in this case to the tobacco industry and the lawsuit brought against it that led to a settlement of $206 Billion in 1998 by the tobacco industry.  This was for knowingly making a product and selling it to people that science has proven is highly damaging and frequently deadly to human beings.

The extreme changes to the climate and environment in general caused by the oil industry have led to many deaths of humans and of wildlife.

According to Gene DiGirolamo, a Bucks County (Pennsylvania) commissioner:  “These companies have known since at least the 1950s that their ways of doing business were having calamitous effects on our planet, and rather than change what they were doing or raise the alarm, they lied to all of us.  The taxpayers should not have to foot the bill for these companies and their greed.”

The lawsuit aims not only to make the public and world governments fully aware of the significant and intentional damage that the oil companies have done to the environment but also to make the oil companies pay for the damages that they have done in order to try to correct as much as possible for this extreme damage.  Of course, the many lives that have been lost due to the unethical actions of the oil companies can never be regained.

The oil companies are noted in the lawsuit as actively engaging in greenwashing of their actions, which is the active telling of lies to make it appear to the public that the companies are taking actions to minimize their negative impact on the environment when in fact they are intentionally damaging the environment without any regard for health and safety of the world’s population.  Basically, the oil industry is outright lying to the public and to the world’s governments that such actions as burning oil are safer for the environment than all alternatives.  The oil industry is contradicting all scientific facts and evidence against oil usage simply to make a massive profit with complete disregard to the profoundly negative effects on the planet.

This lawsuit needs to move forward and be successful for the good of the entire planet!