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The Courts Earth

Puerto Rico Files $1 Billion Suit Against Fossil Fuel Companies (theverge.com) 112

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Puerto Rico filed suit against fossil fuel companies this week, alleging that the oil and gas giants have misled the public about climate change and delayed a transition to clean energy. The suit seeks $1 billion in damages to help Puerto Rico defend itself against climate disasters. In a complaint (PDF) filed in San Juan yesterday, Puerto Rico's Department of Justice says that the companies violated trade law by promoting fossil fuels without adequately warning about the dangers. The defendants include ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Shell, ConocoPhillips, and other energy companies.

In the complaint, Puerto Rico says it expects to pay billions of dollars in the future to cope with catastrophes made worse by climate change -- including storms like Hurricane Maria, which killed thousands of people in 2017 and triggered monthslong power outages. The suit asks defendants to contribute to a fund that would be used to mitigate the consequences of climate change and pay for measures to strengthen Puerto Rico's infrastructure against future climate-related calamities.
After Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017, thirty-seven municipalities in Puerto Rico and the capital city of San Juan filed suit against fossil fuel companies, "seeking to hold them accountable for the devastation," notes The Verge.

Last week, Portland's Multnomah County filed a lawsuit against several fossil fuel companies, blaming their emissions for the 2021 heat dome that resulted in the deaths of 69 people.
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Puerto Rico Files $1 Billion Suit Against Fossil Fuel Companies

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  • You'll be amazed how much the government has already done to fight climate change in Puerto Rico.

    • This is also the case in Cuba. Itâ(TM)s more born out of necessity due to irregular supply

      • This is also the case in Cuba. Itâ(TM)s more born out of necessity due to irregular supply

        It's solar panels. By definition, that is an irregular power supply.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2024 @06:30AM (#64632027) Homepage Journal

      Maybe they would have if the oil companies hadn't kept their climate change research hidden, and then not lied about it when the information started to become public.

      • You write as if nobody could have possibly predicted climate change without the benefit of oil company research. But climate change predictions date back to the 19th century. Modern climate research was widespread by the 1980s with a major intergovernmental panel publishing findings in 1990. Did those findings blow the lid off or cause everyone to scramble to address climate change? No, it did not. It wasn't a lack of scientific knowledge that prevented climate change from being addressed earlier. It was a

        • Modern climate research was widespread by the 1980s with a major intergovernmental panel publishing findings in 1990. Did those findings blow the lid off or cause everyone to scramble to address climate change? No, it did not. It wasn't a lack of scientific knowledge that prevented climate change from being addressed earlier. It was a combination of a lack of political will and lack of feasible alternatives to fossil fuels.

          It was bribery. We call it lobbying even when corporations do it with big bags of money. We allowed corporations to make campaign contributions, and allowed PACs to spend money on behalf of candidates so that it was possible to get around contribution limits. Now only corporations can engage in meaningful political speech because their voices (again, money) drown out everyone else's. The corporations' lawyers write laws and hand them, fully formed, to congresspeople for passage. It doesn't matter whether yo

        • It was a combination of a lack of political will and lack of feasible alternatives to fossil fuels.

          Money and propaganda from fossil fuel companies was a big contributor to that lack of political will. It still is today. [opensecrets.org]

          What are the standards for a company to be liable for something? Suppose they make a product that is harmful when used as intended. Suppose they know very well that it's harmful when used as intended. And suppose they lie about that and tell people it isn't. I'm not a lawyer, but that sounds to me like it meets the definition of civil fraud [cornell.edu].

          • I don't think lobbying had much to do with it. People don't want to change the way they live. Truly addressing climate change requires (even more so with 1970s technology) requires a radical rethinking of the way people live. Suburban lifestyles with large single family homes and long commutes isn't compatible with low carbon living. Likewise, although 2020s electric cars are pretty compelling, almost nobody wanted 1970s electric cars (which were glorified golf carts). Even today, the lack of political will

      • by taustin ( 171655 )

        Given how expensive and unreliable electricity is in Puerto Rico now, if everybody had an EV, they'd be in even worse shape than they are now. It's the same problem as making everyone buy EVs in the rest of the US: the infrastructure to support it simply doesn't exist, and won't for decades.

        Only, in Puerto Rico, it's magnified a hundredfold by the fact that they can't support current usage.

  • It would be so easy to say yes and go back to sleep.

    The answer is a bit more complex. Of course the fossil fuel companies only want to make benefit whatever the consequences on the long term might be. Of that point, yes, they are guilty, like any company focussing on thier own benefit, disregarding the impact of their decision.

    But, what about the consumers? It is not that difficult to understand that using massively thir product is dangerous on the long term for eveyone on the planet. Should there be no dem

    • But, what about the consumers? It is not that difficult to understand that using massively thir product is dangerous on the long term for eveyone on the planet.

      If it's not that difficult, then why are so many people still denying that thir[sic] product is dangerous on the long term for eveyone[sic] on the planet? Obviously it IS that difficult for some people to understand, and Big Oil has willfully spread a lot of propaganda about oil, which they conclusively knew to be false because we have seen the studies they have done which contradict their marketing. This makes what they did fraud on a scale well beyond any other fraud ever committed.

      But, maybe we are in a period where the criminals are legitimate and while people doing things to make the world a better place are going to jail..

      Legitimate? Not exactly

  • by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2024 @01:56AM (#64631741) Homepage

    Bet #1: They are hoping for a fat settlement, so that the companies can avoid all the expenses and publicity of defending this suit.

    Bet #2: If they actually get a pile of money, they will be unwilling to commit to spending the money exclusively "to help Puerto Rico defend itself against climate disasters". The money will go into the general fund and be spent on pork.

    • Re:Grift (Score:4, Funny)

      by vbdasc ( 146051 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2024 @03:40AM (#64631857)

      Pork? It could be worse for the environment. It could be beef.

      • by taustin ( 171655 )

        How much environmental impact is there to long pork. Because that's the pork it will be spent on.

    • by JBMcB ( 73720 )

      Bet #2: If they actually get a pile of money, they will be unwilling to commit to spending the money exclusively "to help Puerto Rico defend itself against climate disasters". The money will go into the general fund and be spent on pork

      Heck no I won't take that bet. My state is so dependent on tobacco money they had to raise taxes when the settlement payouts decreased due to fewer people smoking. They finally managed to close the gap by legalizing marijuana and taxing that.

  • This is extortion by lawsuit. There is still a lot of uncertainty about co2 causing harm. The data that John Robson presents in the Climate Change Discussion Nexus does a pretty good job of showing how the harms are just not what the alarmists claim. If you consider the benefits we get from coal, oil and gas like keeping 3/4 of the people on earth alive is worth any efforts we need to expend to mitigate climate change. Even if it is man made or natural. We keep building where things can be broken by nature.
    • There is still a lot of uncertainty about co2 causing harm.

      Only in the same sense that there is a lot of election mistrust, where people don't believe the votes are counted accurately, and they believe there are lots of bogus votes being cast, because people lied to them about it.. And here you are, helping spread lies.

      We have more people but we are healthier longer lived than ever before. Most of this was only possible through the use of fossil fuels.

      Of course this is false. For example, we need a strong transportation network to enable commerce that underpins progress, but we could have done that with rail instead of all of this road, and it would have used a lot less energy to produce and opera

      • There is still a lot of uncertainty about co2 causing harm.

        .... And here you are, helping spread lies.

        Co2 levels follow warming they do not lead warming. How do you explain that? You cannot push a rope. If Co2 was the cause it must precede the effect unless you believe in psychic global warming. Co2 increases greening. Data is unequivocal the earth has greened due to higher levels of co2. This is in stark contrast to predictions of desertification.

        We have more people but we are healthier longer lived than ever before. Most of this was only possible through the use of fossil fuels.

        Of course this is false. ...but we could have done that with rail instead of all of this road.

        Population is Up. Life expectancy is up. What is false about that? You have to power the trains. They run on coal or oil or electricity made by coal or oil.

      • by HiThere ( 15173 )

        There ARE always unintended consequences. More people/year have died installing roof-top solar panels than have died building nuclear plants. Of course, a lot more panels were installed, but this was an unintended consequence.

        For wind-power there's an increasing problem of what to do with the windmill blades that are no longer serviceable. Last time I checked there was no provision for recycling them, and no decent way of disposing of them. (I think they ended up in landfill, but that required special m

        • More people/year have died installing roof-top solar panels than have died building nuclear plants.

          Yes, it's stupid to put them on residential roofs before we cover all of the parking lots. However, 99% of those people died because they did something fucking stupid, like not use a roof anchor.

          For wind-power there's an increasing problem of what to do with the windmill blades that are no longer serviceable. Last time I checked there was no provision for recycling them

          Last time you checked was before 2021 I take it [siemensgamesa.com].

    • by msk ( 6205 )

      Your Slashdot ID is surprisingly high for a fossil fuel industry shill.

  • Puerto Rico and others are acting like the pointy-hair boss. When your mismanagement and poor planning results in a shit show, blame it on others and try to milk them for millions of dollars. The key pile of bullshit is the phrase "delayed the transition to clean energy". Nothing was stopping anyone from doing so voluntarily. Collectively, people understood that it wasn't in their best interest to do so. Forcing them to do so only pisses people off. And when they realize that they're being conned in th

  • I can sue EV makers for not having enough charging stations for their vehicles?

    I can sue drug manufacturers for producing drugs they KNOW harm people?

    I can sue anyone for anything I darn well please?

    Yup - this is a STUPID lawsuit - should be thrown out!
  • Seems to me that these types of suits are similar to the family of a victim of gun violence suing the manufacturer of the gun, rather than the person that then used the gun to kill their family member, sorta.

    Discuss.

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