Where are the lawyers when we need them? I have never been a fan of class action suits but now I think we need liability lawyers to step up and go after the fossil fuel companies. After watching a PBS Frontline episode last week about how the fossil fuel industry obstructed legislation to slow climate change in the 1990s, I was truly shocked. They did this by hiring PR firms and buying questionable scientists to sow doubt about whether climate change was a problem and then, in later years, whether the problem was urgent. Frontline explains that Exxon, at that time the largest company in the world, knew that climate change was going to threaten the planet because they had scientists studying it. Their scientists reported to the leaders of Exxon that the earth was headed for a “catastrophe.”
In the ’90s, the Clinton administration tried to pass a carbon tax. After being wined, dined and exposed to propaganda by the fossil fuel industry, the Senate voted 95 to 0 for the Byrd-Hagel Resolution that stopped us from joining the Kyoto climate plan. Frontline shows a much older ex-Sen. Hagel saying that the “oil companies lied” to them and expressed regret that they did not act. He seems to understand that the predictions of the environmentalists are coming true with billions of dollars of damage from extreme weather and rising oceans.
It would be best if our politicians would pass a strong carbon fee and dividend now, but they continue to fiddle while the world burns. This is when the American judiciary needs to act. We have seen it happen with Big Tobacco after years of their claiming smoking was not a health issue. More recently we have seen the courts take to task the manufacturers of Oxycontin whose disinformation campaign was a major driver of the opioid crisis. Now it is time to go after the fossil fuel industry which refuses to take responsibility. Googling fossil fuel class action suits I find there are a few happening, but we need more and we need them quickly.
Nancy Hasenfus,
Brunswick
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