The state of Maine has filed a lawsuit against five major oil companies and their top lobbying group, accusing them of carrying out a decades-long disinformation campaign about climate change and their contribution to it in order to maximize profits.
Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey, in his lawsuit filed Tuesday in state court, accuses Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, BP, Sunoco and the American Petroleum Institute of withholding internal knowledge about fossil fuels’ catastrophic effects all while spinning public doubt.
“For over half a century, these companies chose to fuel profits instead of following their science to prevent what are now likely irreversible, catastrophic climate effects,” said Frey in a statement. “In so doing, they burdened the State and our citizens with the consequences of their greed and deception.”
A car in a flooded parking lot by the Kennebec River in Waterville, Maine, on Dec. 19, 2023, amid unseasonably warm weather and storms.
Maine’s lawsuit seeks a jury trial and damages that would cover the costs of “past and future climate harms.” The state also wants the companies to “cease their ongoing deception in Maine.”
A spokesperson for Shell, in a statement Wednesday to HuffPost, said it agrees that “action is needed” on climate change, particularly in a “transition to a lower-carbon future,” but they argued that the issue should be handled in “a collaborative, society-wide approach.”
“We do not believe the courtroom is the right venue to address climate change, but that smart policy from government and action from all sectors is the appropriate way to reach solutions and drive progress,” the statement said.
API’s Senior Vice President and General Counsel Ryan Meyers also argued in a statement to HuffPost that the industry has “substantially” reduced emissions “and our environmental footprint” while also keeping energy prices down for U.S. consumers.
A government graph included in the lawsuit shows a rise in global average temperature over the past several decades. This rise is called “one of the most obvious signs of climate change” by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“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 taxpayer resources,” Meyers said. “Climate policy is for Congress to debate and decide, not a patchwork of courts.”
A Sunoco representative declined to comment, citing the pending litigation, and a BP representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Maine’s lawsuit claims that the fossil fuel industry has known for decades, based in part on its own international research, that its practices have contributed to the climate crisis through the production of greenhouse gases.
Instead of warning the public, the industry, including these six defendants, invested “heavily to protect its own assets and infrastructure from rising seas, stronger storms, and other climate change impacts,” the lawsuit states.
Exxon Mobil is called out in the lawsuit for having once publicly painted global warming as a good thing.
James Leynse via Getty Images
The defendants and industry, the suit states, also launched public disinformation campaigns “to discredit the scientific consensus on climate change; create doubt in the minds of consumers, the media, business leaders, and the public about the climate change impacts of burning fossil fuels; and delay the energy economy’s transition to a lower-carbon future while maximizing profits.”
The lawsuit cites instances going back to the 1950s when scientists and other experts internally warned the defendants about carbon dioxide emissions, produced by human activities, harming the Earth’s environment and sea levels.
Despite this information, the suit states, the defendants issued opposing public denials. In one 1996 public report, Exxon Mobil actually painted global warming as a positive, arguing that “warming would reduce mortality rates in the US” and “an enhanced greenhouse world would be one with more agricultural productivity.”
The lawsuit also points to one peer-reviewed analysis of Exxon’s climate communications from 1989 to 2004, which found that the company acknowledged that climate change is real and human-caused in 83% of its peer-reviewed papers and 80% of its internal documents. Despite these admissions, 81% of the company’s public advertising expressed doubt about man-made climate change, the 2017 study found.
The lawsuit follows similar suits by eight other states and the District of Columbia against major oil companies, all alleging complicity in climate change. Those states are New Jersey, California, Delaware, Minnesota, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
