What's the likelihood on this changing the industry as a whole?
The obvious lesson would be not to try to find out if your business has enormous environmental consequences.
NY State alleges ExxonMobil knew risks of climate change and defrauded investors
81–90 of 123 posts
Re: NY State alleges ExxonMobil knew risks of climate change and defrauded investors
#82So it's not that they've endangered the public, or maybe even the environment. It's that they deceived shareholders.
I think they’re using an interesting legal strategy here. They can use shareholder fraud to have legal standing to pull them into court, but the case prema facie rests on the acceptance of climate change.
Does it rely on acceptance? If ExxonMobil's research indicated their business had serious risks relating to climate change, and they failed to disclose those risks to shareholders, does it matter whether their research later on turned out to be right or not? Isn't the main claim here that they chose not to disclose information that they fully believed was correct?
Re: NY State alleges ExxonMobil knew risks of climate change and defrauded investors
#83“What we are facing now is a person whose crime dwarfs all of the crimes ever committed in human history. We were unable to find a single law applicable to his crime. So we recommend that the crime of Extinction of Life on Earth be added to international law, and that Rey Diaz be tried under it.” — Cixin Liu, The Dark Forest
Retroactive legislation is usually frowned upon or outright banned in many jurisdictions.
Criminal negligence then? Sedition? They internally predicted catastrophic damage to society. It is obscene.
Re: NY State alleges ExxonMobil knew risks of climate change and defrauded investors
#84“What we are facing now is a person whose crime dwarfs all of the crimes ever committed in human history. We were unable to find a single law applicable to his crime. So we recommend that the crime of Extinction of Life on Earth be added to international law, and that Rey Diaz be tried under it.” — Cixin Liu, The Dark Forest
Retroactive legislation is usually frowned upon or outright banned in many jurisdictions.
I believe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimes_against_humanity is literally true in this case.
Re: NY State alleges ExxonMobil knew risks of climate change and defrauded investors
#85So it's not that they've endangered the public, or maybe even the environment. It's that they deceived shareholders.
Shareholders are the public, it's a public company.
Nice job dehumanising anyone who is not well-off enough to afford risky investments. Vast majority of people who participate in this system will never be able to own shares by design. So 80-90% of people are not the public?
Re: NY State alleges ExxonMobil knew risks of climate change and defrauded investors
#86I'm super worried by these lawsuits. Instead of forcing the oil industry to invest in cleaner energies, to clean the atmosphere by for instance paying for planting massive amount of trees, or even to extract oil more sustainably... They want them to pay investors that were deceived by a fact everybody fucking knew for decades. Makes me feel we're doomed and incapable of focusing on real challenges.
It's probably a law issue. Is it illegal to lie and deceive to make money? No. Is it illegal to destroy the Earth's eco system? Only if it's intended as an act of terror. Is it illegal to mislead the share holders? Yes. So that's the crime they can prosecute.
> Is it illegal to lie and deceive to make money? No.
What, really? Isn't that the definition of fraud?
Re: NY State alleges ExxonMobil knew risks of climate change and defrauded investors
#87This is ridiculous. For decades, New Yorkers, like all Americans, have enjoyed the benefits of cheap energy. Exxon and other oil companies are giving consumers what they want.
There is no evidence that markets reflect what people want. It's just religiously taken for granted.
Even though I shouldn't try to disprove anyhting that hasn't been proven in the first place. Think about this:
When anyone purchases anything there will always be a million things they would disapprove about the product (how it's produced, how its workers are treated, how environment friendly it is, how much advertisers lie about it, what the company does with profits, does the company use unfair competition practices, does the company avoid taxes and so on and so on) but purchase it anyway because there is no alternative. The critical error and monumental stupidity is to use this purchase as a signal of approval of everything the consumer actually disapproves of.
Re: NY State alleges ExxonMobil knew risks of climate change and defrauded investors
#88I hope NY State wins the lawsuit. Typically investor fraud lawsuits have higher penalties. If it was workers rights that wouldn't be a problem for them.
Re: NY State alleges ExxonMobil knew risks of climate change and defrauded investors
#89Assume for sake of argument that climate change is catastrophic and that ExxonMobil knew as much. We’re to believe that the real victims here are ExxonMobil’s investors ?
They might not be the greatest victims but they certainly are some of the victims. They invested money in a company whose business model was unsustainable. The company knew that the business model was unsustainable but did not tell them. In the US publicly traded companies have a duty to let their shareholders know all material risks to the company that the company is aware of. The response to this is usually “but ev…
> By now everyone has heard of climate change but many still don't believe it/dispute it.
Nobody disputes climate change since climate has been changing for billions of years, just the human contribution towards it. Also, many people consider the distinction important...
Re: NY State alleges ExxonMobil knew risks of climate change and defrauded investors
#90Interesting, use that money to fund R&D to reduce CO2 in atmosphere?
We already know very well how to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, but we're doing the opposite. For example, in the EU we're adding "biofuels" to gasoline for stupid reasons and part of that comes from palm oil, which is produced where rainforests are cut down first. So we're not only trying to save the dirty ICE, but we're also destroying rainforests in order to look "green".
I don't expect anything good to come from politics under the pretense of saving the planet.