You know the Gandhi saying, “First they ignore you, then they laugh ...” Yeah, that one.
Energy companies have their own version. It goes like this: First you ignore climate change, then you deny climate change, then you try to blame anything but your actions for climate change, then you complain about the cost of ending climate change. Oh, and at all stages you pay Republicans to carry your water on climate change. So far this has been a fairly decent strategy for the people raking it in by spewing it out. It’s even allowed them to argue that saving the world would be too expensive. (Because letting world civilization end, that’ll definitely save some bucks.)
Only there’s one new area of conflict that’s hitting energy companies in the only place they care about.
The notion of holding oil companies responsible for global warming, in the same way tobacco companies had to pay billions of dollars in damages over the health effects of cigarettes, had long been seen as a quixotic quest led by scruffy, oil-hating extremists. But POLITICO’s interviews with dozens of activists, industry officials and lawmakers suggest that support for a legal crusade against Exxon is growing far beyond the political fringe — and now poses the biggest existential threat the company has faced in decades.
Disinvestment is already having an impact. It’s worked to strip billions from company bottom lines, and organizations like Go Fossil Free are encouraging investors to remove their monetary support from Exxon while exposing the network of relationships that allow these companies to distort policy and influence research. But there’s a growing movement to dent polluter profits through more than just denying them investment funds.
Once merely intent on shaming the oil giant into better behavior, environmentalists are pursuing a strategy to discredit the company, weaken it politically and perhaps make it pay the kinds of multibillion-dollar legal settlements that began hitting the tobacco industry in the 1990s.
The importance of these campaigns is making Exxon and other producers more than a little nervous. Last fall, they rushed a team to Washington to fight back against efforts to separate the oil industry from both politicians and investors. They set up shop in the office of California Democratic Representative Ted Lieu to try and convince lawmakers to stay on Team Oil.
The company left empty-handed, though, after refusing to directly answer questions about whether it had suppressed internal research that underscored the threat of climate change while publicly sowing doubt about climate science, according to people in the room.
Protest disinvestment provided critical support for ending apartheid in South Africa, and it’s developing into a critical tool for finally moving companies to act on the reality of climate change. Criminalization of climate-damaging activities would take this even further toward both slowing damage and providing encouragement for both private and public entities to move toward clean solutions.