Hello, and welcome back to Damages, the law focused podcast from Drilled. We have a new season coming June third, all about the Energy Transfer versus Greenpeace case and the countersuit in Europe where Greenpeace has invoked the EU's anti slap statute to suit energy Transfer for harassment. It is a complicated and fascinating story and I cannot wait for
you to hear it. In the meantime, I wanted to bring you an update on climate cases in the US, especially given some of the recent efforts by the Trump administration to quash some of them. To help me out with that, I've got Kathy Mulvey with the Union of
Concerned Scientists here today. Kathy is the accountability campaign director at UCS, which just released a report called Decades of Deception that pulls together in one place all the primary documents out there showing what the fossil fuel industry knew about climate change, when it knew it, and what they did with that information. You might think you already know this story. I thought I did, but I learned a
few things and I hope you will too. I've read the report super interesting, and I have a bunch of questions for you. But I want to start with the question I expect to get from people, which is, Okay, what's new, what's new that we didn't already know in this report? What do you want to appoint people to you on that front?
Yeah, So what's new is really that we've put these documents together in a coherent narrative, so you know, these are primary sources about what major fossil fuel corporations knew when, about the harms that their products would cause to climate and our society, and what they did in spite of
what they knew. So you know, it's the physical and natural science basis of how the companies were aware of and even conducting some of that internally, and also the basis of climate attribution science as that field has been developing. It's also the historical rack of disinformation over the decade, from the outright climate science denial to how that has become greenwashing, distraction, delay, and even efforts to intimidate climate advocate.
So you know, one part of the story that is still developing really to a hacking scheme that targeted some staff members at my organization, the Unit of Concerned Scientists, and several other public interest organizations working to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for their role in climate change.
Yeah, I'm going to ask you about more details about that whole unfolding story and which is fascinating the first I'm curious about. Well, to your point, just a minute ago, as I was reading this, I was like, actually, I think this is the first I've seen of a report that does combine all of these things in one place.
And then I'm wondering.
About the timings. What drove the desire to release this now?
Yeah, you know, I've been working with the Union of Concerned Scientists now for almost ten years, and one of the first projects that I undertook, actually, the first project I undertook was the twenty fifteen climate Discase Dossiers and collaboration with former colleague Seth Schulman, who had years before that authored the publication Smote, Mirrors and Hot Air that shows how the fossil fuel industry has employed many of the same strategies and tactics, even some of the same
front groups and scientists as the tobacco industry, and so there are few factors here. The advances in US climate accountability ligation against major fossil fuel corporations over climate deception and damages, and much of that really relies on evidence of disinformation and deception campaigns and many of the document
that are referenced here in the report. And now, of course, the threat that the Trump administration and a fossil fuel friendly Congress pose to efforts to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable and to the advances, the hard fought advances to bend the global warming emissions curve down and accelerate the clean energy transition, really mean that the timing is important.
We need this evidence to be easily accessible and this story to be told in a way that people, policy makers, litigators, shareholders, and investors can really access it.
Yeah, Okay, Now this is a big question, and we can probably spend an hour talking just about this, but I'm hoping you can give folks a little bit of a summary of where we're at right now with the threats from Trump. You know, which states have been sued to try to stop these cases or super polluter laws from going forward, and to the extent that we know so far, what has the result of that been, Have
there been cases thrown out? How is the litigation responding to this attempt to really quash these cases.
Yeah. So we note that during his campaign, Trump expressed opposition to efforts to hold the fossil fuel industry liable for climate change and also sought to raise a billion dollars from the fossil fuel industry. And we've seen the fossil fuel industry have access to the Trump administration and Congress, and there have been multiple moves, and one relates to the state level efforts to hold fossil fuel corporation accountable.
So President Trump issued an executive order that attacked states' rights to hold fossil fuel companies accountable through legislation and litigation, you know, among other efforts that states are pursuing for environmental justice. That was one part of that. And we have already seen the Department of Justice take action by suing preemptively actually Hawaii and Michigan before they filed climate accountability litigation. You know, Hawaii went ahead and filed its lawsuits,
so was not intimidated by that action. The administration also sued Vermont in New York State over in their climate super fun laws, that laws designed to make fossil fuel polluters pay for their role in climate harms. And so that's what way that we are already seeing this administration
take action. We know these cases are advancing in state courts around the country where they were filed, and as you've covered, you know, the fossil fuel industry it sought for up to eight years in some of the cases to use procedural maneuvers to.
Keep them from getting into the courtroom and being heard on their merits. And this kind of effort through a friendly administration to throw a wrench in the advance of those cases really indicates what a threat that litigation poses to the fossil fuel industry. So that's one big part of how we've seen the Trump administration taking the side of the fossil fuel industry. And I should say the backdrop to all of this is that all of us are experiencing climate impacts in.
Our day to day lives, right and we're increasingly aware of the preventable harms that have been worsened by this industry's deception campaign.
So, you know, another thing to talk specifically about in terms of the interventions on the side of the fossil fuel industry is the Securities and Exchange Commission last year issued a final rule on corporate climate disclosure. And this was after many years, and it was significantly watered down from what it could have been. But it would compel publicly traded companies to assess and report on how climate change will affect their bottom lines and by extension, investors
and the public. And part of the story that we're telling in decades deceit is how industry groups that are heavily influenced by the fossil fuel industry, like the US Chamber of Commerce, have sought to water down that rule and then sued to block its implementation, and those securities and changed commission under Trump pens indicate it that it defend those rules so that vital information for shareholders and investors can have now not on getting access to that
information through the sec is not on the timeline that it could have been.
I'll ask you too about how this all kind of fits into the global context, because you know these are global companies. This evidence is potentially useful outside of the country as well. Do you have any thoughts on whether these companies that are getting a huge helping hand by the US government could end up being held accountable somewhere else.
Yeah, that's a really good point. The companies that were looking at in this report so exon mobil shell in particular, but they, the members of the American Petroleum Institute, are global in scope, and so the evidence of the deliberate campaign of disinformation dating back as far as fifty years and in terms of the renowned scientists doctor Edward Teyler briefing executives at an American Petroleum Institute event in nineteen fifty nine, you know, and then looking forward to the
early nineteen eighties, I mean, this is a really critical point where major fossil fuel companies had really amassed a remarkably detailed understanding of the potentially catastrophic effects of their products for people the planet. And it's worth noting that according to the data set of the carbon majors that's hosted by Influence Map one hundred and twenty two, oil, gas, coal, and cement companies are responsible for seventy five percent of
all industrial carbon dioxide emissions since nineteen eighty one. So, you know, in terms of the consequences of the deception and disinformation and delayed action in the US and globally, those kinds of numbers are enormously significant.
Okay, I want to how do you watch us through this hacking story. I've been a couple of bits of reporting on this that have come out as we learn more, but if you could just sort of summarize it for people, what happened here and what do we.
Know so far?
Are Yeah, so this information has been coming into the public into the public domain for a few years now. Right, So we know that between twenty fifteen and twenty eighteen, hackers attempted to infiltrate the email accounts of key staff members the Union of Concerned Scientists and several other nonprofits. And through a report published by the Citizen Lab in twenty twenty, we learned about that spearfishing campaign, and actually
one person has pleaded guilty in connection with that campaign. Right.
A Israeli private investigator named abiram Azzari and the US government sentencing memo for him in twenty twenty three said that published articles about documents that were stolen and leak through that hack really appeared to be designed to undermine the integrity of work by state attorneys general to hold Exonomobile accountable and also to attack the credibility of some of the individual targets of the hacking scheme, So that information has been out there for a little bit of time.
Just this year, new evidence has come to light through US government filings and through further investigative journalism and those court documents related to an attempt to extradite on It
four Lett is another accused middleman in this operation. This suggests that the US government has evidence that the criminal scheme was indirectly paid for by Exon Mobile, and that one of Exon Mobiles then lobbying firms, the Washington, d C. Based DCI Group, provided a list of targets to a middleman link to the hackers and allegedly sent the fruits of the hacking to the oil and gas company. So you know, this is this is unprecedented, I think in
terms of fossil fuel accountability. I know from a work on the tobacco industry decades ago that the tobacco companies conducted surveillance and sought to infiltrate not only public health and public interests organizations, but the World Health Organization's itself. So the latest development was at the end of April, the UK court did order the extradition or agreed with the order to the abstradite at FORLA to the US.
He does have the possibility of appeal, and we expect that he may he may seek to appeal that decision. But these revelations and the latest step in the process have really been an important step toward accountability and toward getting to the bottom of this hacking scheme. You know who hired and paid for these hackers, LifeLock.
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I worked on the story recently where we were looking at how chemical companies do this too. I feel like it's become really common, this whole corporate surveillance thing. Right for me, I've looked at it so often that on this most recent story, it was the other reporter that I was working with and I were kind of like, ah, but is this even new, because this they all do this and like whatever, and then we caught ourselves and we're like, no, no, it's still actually really genuinely messed
up that companies do this. I think that really most people don't realize that they do it. In this particular case, we found a database that this company was keeping on people they considered to be their enemies, which included get on the researchers, journalists, activists, a whole bunch of different people, and they had really scary details like details of someone's divorce and details of an illness and someone's family and
things like that that are really really genuinely creepy. And you know, if if companies have the budget to be hiring Israeli surveillance.
Organization, that's fine.
Being the sort of information they can get to and the way that that can be weaponized is really really scary.
Yeah, it really is, right, And so for you know, for staff at nonprofit organizations, so we're doing the work to carry out their public interest missions. For an organization like us, who we're working with scientists who are doing the the natural and social science work to compare the science and the scientific understanding inside the corporations with what was what's happening with your governmental panel on climate change
at the same time. For example, for people well doing this work for the benefit of society to be attacked, to have their motivations misrepresented, to be falsely accused of conspiring, could have a chilling effect on work that really urgently needs to be done in a world where we're dealing with the impacts of a climate crisis every day. So
it is incredibly significant. And yeah, although pictures of this puzzle have been out there for some time, I mean Exon Mobile once had a website that was called Understanding the Exon New Controversy that featured some of the stolen materials. To for the first time have public court evidence that link Sexon Mobile and one of it then lobbying firms
to the the hacking conspiracy is significant. I should say that both Exxon Mobile and DCI Group deny any involvement in the hacking scheme and have maintained that they had nothing to do with it.
That's very interesting, yess or a universe in which in one of these cases, either in the US or maybe outside the US, that that could be compelled.
I think it's definitely worth calling for it. I think especially because we've understood again from the filings and the related investigative journalism, is that the DC based lobbying group and I quote acted on behalf of one of the world's largest oil and gas corporations centered in Irving, Texas in relation to ongoing climate change litigation being brought against it. So at the time that this hacking operation began, Exon
Mobil was headquartered in Irving, Texas. They since their headquarters
to Houston. And this is just this is so significant because this is ten years ago before there was as investigations by state attorneys general were just getting started, right, And so if that is indeed motivation behind the hacking scheme, then what we see our climate accountability litigation claims that are now advancing that really focus on the deception and disinformation as the center of consumer protection and alleged fraud complaints.
And then you know Exon Mobile actually using yeah, information that was obtained through a hacking operation and in the public through a hacking operation to perpetuate and expand that disinformation right by misrepresenting what the accountability work is about. So it is connected to very much the efforts to hold the fossil fuel corporations accountable through litigation and the election.
It's such a weird and creepy story and look like irrespective of your thoughts on climate and oil companies, the idea that it's just been normalized for corporations to do intensive surveillance on citizens is pretty scary and gross, and I don't think most people think it's good.
I don't think so either. That's another thing that's interesting about this, right, is that I mean this hacking operation, what was massive? Right. There were one hundred and twenty eight targets provided that were related to the work to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for climate change, but there were a whole range of other targets. And it's really a criminal hacking operation without any any political or
scientific dimensions to it. So that's where it was it was especially interesting.
One might say it's cynical that the defense mad level by Corlet's attorneys, where they were attempting to prevent the extradition, claimed that he was actually being persecuted for his political views.
On climate change. For how political views that were similar to at some mobile.
So interesting, you're part of their legal argument too, right, is that like?
Right? Exactly exactly, he's like.
That political belief in there for a First Amendment issue.
Yeah. Wow. You know here's a guy who really, if the allegations are true, he was in it for the money. He's a hacker for hire or a middle man.
Right, It's not like he had some long history as a political pundit.
The DC based lobbying group according to the filings paid for what's firm, he's a total of sixteen million dollars between twenty thirteen and twenty eighteen.
Wow, So that's.
Said, that's a lucrative operation.
In the past decade or so, litigation has been this point of optimism for people that there's this tool that we can use as dubbernment's continue to fail to be aggressive or not for these policies to reduce emissions. Do you still feel like that's the key? But do you think that despite all these efforts to try to a stop these particular cases in the US, that litigation still provides hope will path forward?
Yeah? Absolutely. The US cases are proceeding towards consideration on.
Their merit, and that should be an opportunity for the state claims that are around consumer protection and public nuisance for example, you know, have the opportunity to.
Be heard in court. So that the evidence that we've compiled here in this report, documentation and primary sources that have been made public through arrange of investigations by Congress by investigative journalism, this evidence could be really important in informing cases that are happening in other jurisdictions and on other types of claims to hold the fossil fuel corporations
accountable for their role in climate change. So absolutely that there are numerous pass for fossil fuel accountability that are proceeding around the world, and there really should be an opportunity for communities to cause access to justice for the harm that we're all facing.
That is it for this week. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss our new season. You can access a transcript of this episode and read all sorts of stories on our website at Drill dot Media. You can also sign up for our Patreon there. Free members will get our weekly newsletter and if you want to support our work by becoming a paid subscriber, you'll get access to bonuses like sneak peaks of upcoming episodes, additional interviews
and more. Damages is an original Critical Frequency production. This episode was produced by Peter duff Our. Fact checker is Shilpa Gindia. Artwork by Matt Fleming. James Wheaton of The First Amendment Project is our First Amendment lawyer. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.