Consider This from NPR - California's Big Oil Lawsuit Strategy Mirrors Fight Against Big Tobacco

Episode Date: September 19, 2023

The state of California has filed a massive lawsuit against oil companies. The charge is that oil companies knew they were causing climate change, and lied to cover it up. And now, California is suing for damages. The state is suing to force fossil fuel companies to help fund recovery efforts related to California's extreme weather related events — floods, fire, dangerous heat --which have been made more common and intense by climate change. Back in the 1990s, states across the country sued tobacco companies - demanding that they be compensated for healthcare costs associated with treating people for smoking-related illnesses. It was a long and complicated process, but states won more than $360 billion. The victory brought a big change to the tobacco industry, forcing companies to accurately label cigarettes as potentially lethal, and limiting where and how cigarettes could be marketed. Host Ailsa Chang speaks with Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity on the ramifications of the climate lawsuit.A previous version of this episode did not include a statement from the American Petroleum Institute responding to Richard Wiles' comments.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University performs breakthrough research every year, making discoveries that improve human health, combat climate change, and move society forward. More at iu.edu forward. The state of California has filed a massive lawsuit against oil companies. Their argument? That big oil knew they were causing climate change, and they lied to cover it up. Now California is suing for damages, and the suit demands that these fossil fuel companies help fund recovery efforts related to California's extreme weather events, which have been made more common, intense, and damaging by climate change. We start tonight tracking extreme heat. Take a look at this. Cosumnes fire battled.

California slammed with a tropical storm, the first move across the region since 1997. A wildfire causing evacuations in El Dorado County. This lawsuit could have huge implications for the oil industry and for communities trying to deal with the impacts of climate change. And it's not the first time we've seen an argument like this. In the 1990s, states across the country began to sue big tobacco companies, demanding that they be compensated for the health care costs brought on by smoking-related illnesses. A group of attorneys general negotiated a $368 billion agreement with the four largest tobacco companies that settled dozens of lawsuits. The settlement mandated accurate labeling of cigarettes as potentially lethal and limited where and how cigarettes could be marketed.

We are here today to announce what we think is, we know, we believe, is the most historic public health achievement in history. The purpose of us coming today is to tell you that we have reached agreement in principle with the tobacco industry. This strategy to link the deception of tobacco companies directly with the financial burden placed on state governments and individuals worked. And it's an argument that's very similar to the one that California is now leveling against fossil fuel companies. The public harms are massive. We're talking about infrastructure. We're talking about flooding. So in that context, I think the logic is even more compelling to say that

you don't get to put all of that, all those public goods and resources and infrastructure at risk just because you feel entitled to profit. That is Martin Olshinsky, an environmental lawyer at the University of Calgary. Olshinsky acknowledges that fossil fuels are a much more partisan issue today than cigarette usage was back in the 1990s. But he says this California lawsuit could lead to other states turning to litigation as well. And all of that could cause a major shift. If we did start to see other states

line up, if New York starts suddenly to line up or Vermont or maybe one of the other coastal states, you know, that pressure is going to start coming on the fossil fuel industry to kind of to negotiate a settlement. Consider this. Can states force the fossil fuel industry to pay for the effects of climate change through the courts. From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Tuesday, September 19th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. This message comes from Indiana University.

Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. It's Consider This from NPR. California is no stranger to extreme weather disasters. I mean, we see wildfires here, devastating floods, life-threatening heat. But California is taking steps to hold fossil fuel companies responsible for knowingly contributing to climate change, making these disasters more frequent and more intense.

In an interview with CNN, California Governor Gavin Newsom made the case against the industry. They knowingly misled people. They deceived people. As a consequence, we didn't take the kind of actions we would have taken to hold these big polluters accountable. And right now we're dealing with the consequences of it. Richard Wiles is the president of the Center for Climate Integrity. His organization is working closely with other states and municipalities who have filed suit against the fossil fuel industry, seeking damages for climate change. Yesterday, he spoke to NPR's Juana Summers about what this means for these big companies and for our climate. First, just to start, how big of a deal is this California lawsuit?

This is a huge deal. California is, I think, the fifth largest economy in the world, and they're a major oil-producing state. They're the first oil-producing state to file suit against the companies for knowing and then lying about how the fact that their products cause climate change. In addition, California is a leader in climate policy, and they just have a lot of sway among other states. So in clean air regs, a lot of states follow California. In litigation, I think they could have the same effect. The case by California could in fact trigger more attorneys general to file. So it's a really big deal. If you're a

company that's been branded as just lying about the very essence of what your products do, with total disregard for the damage that it will do to society, that's basis for a lawsuit, and that's basis for just a lot of trouble for the oil companies. All right. I mean, there's a lot to unpack there. But in addition to damages, the state's calling for a fund that would be used to pay for recovery from extreme weather events. Just how much money are we talking about there? The damages in the state of California from climate change would easily go into the hundreds of billions of dollars. I mean, you could imagine a trillion dollars worth of damages in the state of California alone

over time. You know, the state is proposing what they call an abatement fund, which is basically was established in the lead paint cases, right, and upheld by the courts. It just says, you know, the damage that your product caused, that you knew it would cause and then lie about, you know, you've got to pay to help the citizens of the state of California deal with that damage. And with climate change, as we know, it's pretty much every facet of modern life, right? You need more air conditioning, you need to deal with wildfires and floods and droughts. I mean, the list of adaptations to deal with this damage is enormous. And, you know, industry should pay their fair share, which will be billions and billions of dollars.

I mean, look, there have been legislative efforts to curb climate change. There have been diplomatic efforts, so many attempts at addressing this problem. So what do you think that suing these companies directly accomplishes that these other efforts have not been able to so far? Well, litigation is a fundamentally different strategy. It's not about climate policy. It's about holding them accountable for the damage that they knowingly caused that they lied about. Okay, so that could do a lot of things. I mean, but the main thing we'll do is bring some measure of justice to the public, you know, for being lied to for all these decades, and for having to deal with these damages and pay for it. I mean, that's really what it's about.

If you step back a little bit, and if you look at any major social transformation like climate change, and this is the magnitude of the social change that we're envisioning here, it's probably unprecedented in human history. But if you look at other major transformational social change movements like civil rights or marriage equality, they all had a litigation component to them. It wasn't just working for policy change to the Congress. So what this does, what these cases do, is open up that flank. We don't think you can have the climate policy you need for the transition without accountability. Accountability is the first step towards solving climate change. And if we can't get accountability, it just doesn't

seem like we can really solve this problem. You know, I would imagine that if we were to bring one of the representatives from one of these companies on the line, they may make the argument that lawsuits like these, they're politicized, that they're without merit. What do you say to that? When the industry says that, that just makes me realize how on point these cases are, right? They have not yet had a single substantive critique of the core theory of these cases, which is simply that you knew that your products would cause climate change 40 years ago. We have the documents. You ran a major disinformation campaign. We have the master plan. And you need to be held accountable for that. The industry's critique of the cases never addresses the core facts of the cases. They always try to come up with some other sort of deflection message

about how this is a waste of time or a waste of money or whatever. Of course, they think it's a waste of money to hold them accountable for the hundreds of billions of dollars of damages they are causing. What else would they say? But they're wrong. And they also know that the evidence in these cases is overwhelming, right? It's just clear as a bell that the core complaint here being made by the states and the municipalities that they knew and they lied and they ran a massive disinformation campaign to delay action is just supported by the documents to such a degree that they, you know, they have to sort of deflect because the evidence is just damaged. What are your hopes for this California lawsuit? What does victory look like? And is there an example out there that is similar to what you'd hope to see? Well, we would hope that this case would trigger more cases. And we hope that ultimately, of course, that the plaintiffs, the state of California, will win, as will the other states.

We hope they all win and that the companies are forced to pay their fair share of the hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars of damages that they should pay because they knew when they lied, the products would cause all these damages. You know, we also hope that the narrative of climate change changes after people understand what these cases are about. You know, climate change is basically a crime against humanity. It's not a tragedy. And, you know, the industry wants us to think that it's everybody's fault and that it's some sort of tragic outcome of the use of fossil fuels that we're all going to work together to solve. But really what it is, it's basically a crime against humanity perpetrated by the oil

industry on all of us. And these cases will make that clear. Richard Wiles is the president of the Center for Climate Integrity. Thank you so much for being here today. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. We asked the American Petroleum Institute, an industry trade group, and one of the defendants in the California suit to respond to Richard Wiles' comments. And they shared a statement with us, which said, in part, this ongoing coordinated campaign to wage meritless politicized lawsuits against a foundational American industry and its workers is nothing more than a distraction from important national conversations and an enormous waste of California taxpayer resources. Climate policy is for Congress to debate and decide, not the court system.

It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang.