The fire power of Republican attorney generals could protect Exxon Mobil against probing questions of whether it willfully violated consumer protection laws.
As per a filing in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, a group of eleven state attorneys general all of whom are Republican, are protesting an investigation into whether Exxon Mobil Corp violated consumer protection laws when it sold fossil fuel products.
The attorney generals from Texas, Arkansas, Michigan, Alabama, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Arizona, Oklahoma, Utah, Nebraska and South Carolina have filed a brief in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan which supports a lawsuit by Exxon to halt a probe by New York’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Massachusetts’ Attorney General Maura Healey.
Schneiderman and Healey, both of whom are Democrats, are leading the charge to see whether Exxon violated consumer protection laws by selling fossil fuels while failing to reveal information about the effects of burning them on the global climate.
The eleven Republican attorney generals have claimed in their brief that Schneiderman and Healey are abusing their power and violating Exxon’s rights to free speech by “using law enforcement authority to resolve a public policy debate” over whether carbon emissions cause climate change.
The brief filed by 11 Republican revolves around a May 17 article that appeared in the National Review, a conservative magazine, in which the author, Scott Pruitt, who was the attorney general of Oklahoma at that time, claimed that “scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind.”
It will not surprise you to know that Scott Pruitt has been appointed by President Donald Trump to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.
Despite Pruitt’s claim, the fact of the matter is that a vast majority of scientists believe that carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels is a major contributor to global climate change. Carbon dioxide is a trigger for sea level rise, for frequent violent storms and drought.
In an interview to CNBC, Pruitt had conveniently side-stepped the issue: while the vast majority of scientists have said that carbon dioxide is a major contributor, Pruitt disagreed to carbon dioxide being the “primary contributor” to climate change.
In 2015, having probed Peabody Energy on a similar clause, Schneiderman reached a settlement with the company with Peabody Energy agreeing to appropriately convey its financial risks associated with climate change and change its language in its public statements as part of the settlement.
“We will continue to pursue our fraud investigation under New York law, despite attempts by Exxon and Big Oil’s beneficiaries to delay and distract from the serious issues at hand,” said Schneiderman’s spokeswoman, Amy Spitalnick.
The case is Exxon Mobil Corporation v. Healy, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 17-cv-02301.
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