<
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/30/climate-crimes-oil-and-gas-environment>
"After a century of wielding extraordinary economic and political power,
America’s petroleum giants face a reckoning for driving the greatest
existential threat of our lifetimes.
An unprecedented wave of lawsuits, filed by cities and states across the US,
aim to hold the oil and gas industry to account for the environmental
devastation caused by fossil fuels – and covering up what they knew along the
way.
Coastal cities struggling to keep rising sea levels at bay, midwestern states
watching “mega-rains” destroy crops and homes, and fishing communities losing
catches to warming waters, are now demanding the oil conglomerates pay damages
and take urgent action to reduce further harm from burning fossil fuels.
But, even more strikingly, the nearly two dozen lawsuits are underpinned by
accusations that the industry severely aggravated the environmental crisis with
a decades-long campaign of lies and deceit to suppress warnings from their own
scientists about the impact of fossil fuels on the climate and dupe the
American public.
The environmentalist Bill McKibben once characterized the fossil fuel
industry’s behavior as “the most consequential cover-up in US history”. And now
for the first time in decades, the lawsuits chart a path toward public
accountability that climate activists say has the potential to rival big
tobacco’s downfall after it concealed the real dangers of smoking."
Via Robert Sanscartier.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
