Hello, and welcome to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt, and this was a hell of a week for climate lawsuits. On Wednesday, the state of Minnesota sued Exxon Coke Industries and the American Petroleum Institute in a groundbreaking case alleging consumer fraud pegged to thirty years of climate disinformation campaigns. It's a really bold suit, taking a new approach. It's centered on disinformation about climate change as a crime against the people
of Minnesota. And then the very next day, on Thursday morning, Washington, d C. Filed its climate disinformation suit against BP, Chevron, Exon, Mobil, and Shell. Like the Minnesota case, the DC case is built around consumer protection law, not nuisance law, which the majority of other climate cases are based on. That's a really important distinction and it will be interesting to watch what happens with both the nuisance and these consumer fraud
approaches in the months ahead. We'll have more details on the Minnesota and DC cases for you right after this quick message from today's sponsor.
We're here sing these three next cases specifically because the designed conducted funding this campaign of deception, then carrying out in Minnesota and violation of the law.
Okay, so that is Attorney General from the Great State of Minnesota, Keith Ellison, announcing a lawsuit against the American Petroleum Institute exon Mobile and Coke Industries. This is a really big deal, starting with the fact that none of the other climate lawsuits have named the API and Coke, which is interesting because those are two names that you hear a lot when you hear about climate denial. But this suit is squarely focused on disinformation, so it makes
a lot of sense that API and Coke would be included. Plus, Coke does actually operate a refinery in Minnesota as well. Coke Industries and its owners, the infamous Charles and David Coke, were major funders of climate denial through the nineties and two thousands, funding various front groups and think tanks and all sorts of messaging against climate action. The API, of course, is an organization we've covered a lot in this podcast.
They've been round for over one hundred years and have been a key architect and funder of climate denial for decades. Here's environmental sociologist Bob Brule talking about how much they spent with just one PR firm, Edelman from two thousand and eight to twenty twelve.
Two thousand and eight and got seventy five million dollars that year, and then two thousand and nine, let's see, two thousand and nine, they got sixty eight million dollars. Twenty ten they got sixty three million dollars, and then in twenty eleven they got sixty eight million dollars, and then in twenty twelve fifty two million.
That's hundreds of millions of dollars in one contract to one firm over just four years. Some of that money went toward ad campaigns, some of it went to front groups, some went to pr All of it was in the service of promoting fossil fuels as a great and necessary part of America, undermining anything that said otherwise, including the science on climate change. The Minnesota case alleges that these three broke Minnesota consumer protection laws by essentially lying to
the public about climate change. It's an interesting approach because, unlike the fourteen climate liability cases making their way through various state and federal courts right now, this one is unlikely to deal with jurisdictional issues. It's a state suit about the violation of state laws. That makes it a lot harder for fossil fuel defendants to remove it to federal court, which is something they've tried to do in all of these cases. Here's Assistant Attorney General Lee Curry
spelling it out. This book Paint does not seek to hold these companies accountable for climate change.
It seeks to hold.
Them accountable for violating Minnesota's unction.
Launch.
Of course, the case also comes on the heels of weeks worth of Black Lives Matter protests that started in Minnesota over the police killing of George Floyd, and Ellison and his colleagues made the connection between climate change and racial justice. Crystal Clear. Sam Grant, the director of Minnesota three point fifty, had this to say, we have.
Freedom to profit over freedom degrees. A writer that the freedom degrees must come first because we have to live in order for anything else to happen.
And on the first page of the complaint, in the very first paragraph, it reads, quote warming will continue with devastating economic and public health consequences across the state, and in particular disproportionately impact people living in poverty and people of color. This is the first time I've seen environmental justice mentioned this explicitly in any of these climate cases.
So it's great to see it. And the DC case also notes that low income communities and communities of color and elderly communities will be disproportionately impacted by climate change. Like the Minnesota case, it also hinges on consumer protection statutes.
Filing suit under these consumer protection laws means that Minnesota and Washington d C. Do not have to prove they are suffering specific climate harms like more extreme wildfires or flooding, or rising sea levels or higher temperatures, even though of course those things are happening. They don't have to prove it. They don't have to prove that the fossil fuel companies even caused it. What they do have to prove is that the fossil field defendants lied to consumers, that they
have put out misleading information false advertising. The DC complain also includes withholding information from the public. Here's Kate Kanopka, Deputy Attorney General in charge of the Public Advocacy Division for DC. She wrote DC's climate complaint and explains how this consumer protection statute works. Here.
I want to be clear that Kate has been as a consumer protection case and so in fact, the harm comes to consumers when they are not given full and accurate information about the purchases that they are making. And so it's very important for us to keep in mind that one, there is no requirement for us to show harm, but two that really the point of the matter is is that these consumers have been harmed by their failure
to be able to make informed purchasing decisions. Our Consumer Protection Statute is an extremely broad remedial vehicle which gives us a very broad ability not only affirmativeness representations, but also the company's failure to provide information that they had that would have been material to purchasers purchasing decisions.
The DC complaint focuses quite a bit on the fossil fuel companies more recent at campaigns which highlight their investments in renewables and paint natural gas as a clean, green fuel. I'm sure you've seen these ads or heard them in various podcasts in recent years. Here's a small sampling. Some farms grow food, this one gross fuel. Doers need energy, and demand for it is expected to grow.
America's natural gas and oil companies are successfully meeting the demand for greater energy.
On natural gas can step in to keep the power flowing and the lights shining. The biggest natural gas booster by far in the last decade has been the America Petroleum Minstitute API, which is not a named defendant in the DC suit. However, the API is mentioned in the complaint. The DC folks take the stance that the fossil fueld companies fund and control the API, so they hold the
companies accountable for API's actions. This could all get pretty interesting if either of these cases makes it past the fossil fuel company's inevitable motion to dismiss these cases. If these cases get into discovery, I suspect we will see quite a bit more documentation of exactly who knew what about climate change, when they knew it, and what they did with that information. That's it for this time. Thanks for listening. We'll bring you updates on these and all
the other climate cases out there as they happen. You can also read more details about both of these cases and access the full complaints on our website drillednews dot com. I want to take a minute and thank our latest Patreon patrons. They are Robert April Maha, John Kendall, Zabarowski, Stacy Craig Harvey, Sally Francis, Mark Inyard, and a special thanks to Jonathan Starr, our Big Green Energy patron. Thank
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