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exxonmobil
California Sues Exxon Over Decades of Plastics Deception in First-of-Its-Kind Lawsuit
"This is the single most consequential lawsuit filed against the plastics industry for its persistent and continued lying about plastics recycling."
Sep 23, 2024
In a first-of-its-kind lawsuit, California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Monday sued oil giant ExxonMobil for allegedly deceiving the public about the recyclability of plastics so as to continue increasing production.
The 147-page lawsuit, filed in San Francisco County Superior Court, came following a yearslong investigation that environmental groups were hoping would lead to legal action. They widely celebrated Bonta's move.
"This is the single most consequential lawsuit filed against the plastics industry for its persistent and continued lying about plastics recycling," Judith Enck, founder of the advocacy group Beyond Plastics and a former senior Environmental Protection Agency official, said in a statement.
"Attorney General Bonta is leading the way to corporate accountability and a cleaner and healthier world. This lawsuit will set an invaluable precedent for others to follow," she added.
Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), echoed Enck's take.
"Big Oil and the plastic industry's lies are the beating heart of the plastic waste crisis, which makes California's groundbreaking lawsuit against ExxonMobil the most important legal action to date in the global fight against plastic pollution," Wiles said in a statement.
#BREAKING: We’re suing ExxonMobil for a decades-long campaign of deception that perpetuated the plastic waste and pollution crisis.
ExxonMobil peddled #RecyclingLies to further its recording-breaking profits at the expense of our planet.
We’re holding ExxonMobil accountable. pic.twitter.com/ekhMGY3AOE
— Rob Bonta (@AGRobBonta) September 23, 2024
Plastics are made from fossil fuels, and ExxonMobil, the largest U.S.-based oil and gas producer, makes polymers that are turned into single-use plastics. Virgin plastic production has skyrocketed globally in recent decades, even as research has shown the damaging environmental and health impacts it has across its life cycle.
The petrochemical industry has long promoted recycling as a solution to plastics pollution. ExxonMobil, for example, placed a 12-page "advertorial" in Time in 1989 titled "The Urgent Need to Recycle," Bonta's office said in a statement. ExxonMobil and other companies also helped push the use of the "chasing arrows" symbol, which gives the often false impression that a product is recyclable when it's not, or unlikely to be in most areas.
Plastics recycling comes with enormous technical and economic constraints that the industry has understood—and hid—for decades, critics say. A 68-page CCI report released in February laid out the evidence against the industry, including, for example, a 1986 trade group report stating that "recycling cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution [to plastics], as it merely prolongs the time until an item is disposed of."
Estimates indicate that plastics recycling rates are far lower than the public realizes, at just 6% in the U.S. and 9% worldwide. A recent poll by CCI and Data for Progress found that U.S. voters, on average, thought the rate was 45%.
The same poll found that most U.S. voters, when prompted with information about the industry's history, supported their state taking legal action for recycling deception, as California has now done.
The lawsuit from Bonta, a Democrat who's held office since 2021, represents a "new front in the legal battles against oil and gas companies over climate and environmental issues," according toThe New York Times.
Dozens of U.S. cities and states, including California, have already filed lawsuits against Big Oil companies for their role in the perpetuating climate breakdown, but this is the most significant plastics lawsuit, observers say. New York did sue PepsiCo last year for its role in polluting the Hudson River with plastics.
Wiles of CCI drew a parallel between the newly announced suit and the dozens of climate suits that had preceded it, saying they both target the same types of lies.
"From climate to plastics, Exxon's entire business model is based on lying to the public about the harms its products cause," he said.
In recent years, the petrochemical industry has touted "advanced recycling," sometimes called "chemical recycling," in which plastic waste is broken down into virgin-like new material. However, the statement from Bonta's office argues that there are severe limitations to the technology and says that ExxonMobil's advanced recycling program is "nothing more than a public relations stunt meant to encourage the public to keep purchasing single-use plastics that are fueling the plastics pollution crisis."
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Meet the 7 Corporations Doing the Most to Undermine Democracy Worldwide
"Unless we're organized and demanding responsive governments that actually meet the needs of people, it's corporate power that's going to set the agenda," one organizer said.
Sep 23, 2024
Big Tech, Big Oil, and private equity firms are among the leading companies that profit from controlling media and technology, accelerating the climate crisis, privatizing public goods and services, and violating human and workers' rights, the International Trade Union Confederation revealed on Monday.
The ITUC has labeled seven major companies as "corporate underminers of democracy" that lobby against government attempts to hold them accountable and are headed by super-rich individuals who fund right-wing political movements and leaders.
"This is about power, who has it, and who sets the agenda," Todd Brogan, director of campaigns and organizing at the ITUC, toldThe Guardian. "We know as trade unionists that unless we're organized, the boss sets the agenda in the workplace, and we know as citizens in our countries that unless we're organized and demanding responsive governments that actually meet the needs of people, it's corporate power that's going to set the agenda."
The "corporate underminers of democracy" are:
- Amazon.com, Inc.
- Blackstone Group
- ExxonMobil
- Glencore
- Meta
- Tesla
- The Vanguard Group
ITUC chose the seven companies based on preexisting reporting and research, as well as talks with allied groups like the Council of Global Unions and the Reactionary International Research Consortium. The seven companies were "emblematic" of a broader trend, and the confederation said it would continue to add "market-leading" companies to the list.
"While these seven corporations are among the most egregious underminers of democracy, they are hardly alone," ITUC said. "Whether state-owned enterprises in China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia; private sector military contractors; or regulation-busting tech startups, the ITUC and its partners will continue to identify and track corporate underminers of democracy and their links to the far-right."
Amazon topped the list due to its "union busting and low wages on multiple continents, monopoly in e-commerce, egregious carbon emissions through its AWS data centers, corporate tax evasion, and lobbying at national and international level," ITUC wrote.
In the U.S., for example, Amazon has responded to attempts to hold it accountable for labor violations by challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board. While its founder Jeff Bezos voices liberal opinions, Amazon's political donations have advanced the right by challenging women's rights and antitrust efforts.
"There is another force, one that is unelected and seeks to dominate global affairs."
Blackstone is the world's largest private equity firm and private real-estate owner whose CEO, Stephen Schwarzman, has given to right-wing politicians including former U.S. President Donald Trump's 2024 reelection campaign. It funds fossil fuel projects and the destruction of the Amazon and profited from speculating on the housing market after the 2008 financial crash.
The United Nations special papporteur on housing said the company used "its significant resources and political leverage to undermine domestic laws and policies that would in fact improve access to adequate housing."
ExxonMobil made the list largely for its history of funding climate denial and its ongoing lobbying against needed environmental regulations.
"Perhaps the greatest example of Exxon's disinterest in democratic deliberation was its corporate commitment of nearly four decades to conceal from the public its own internal evidence that climate change was real, accelerating, and driven by fossil fuel use while simultaneously financing far-right think tanks in the U.S. and Europe to inject climate scepticism and denialism into the public discourse," ITUC wrote.
Glencore is the world's largest commodities trader and the largest mining company when judged by revenue. Several civil society and Indigenous rights groups have launched campaigns against it over its anti-democratic policies. It has allegedly funded right-wing paramilitaries in Colombia and anti-protest vigilantes in Peru.
"The company's undermining of democracy is not in dispute, as it has in recent years pled guilty to committing bribery, corruption, and market manipulation in countries as varied as Venezuela, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Cote d'Ivoire, Nigeria, and South Sudan," ITUC said.
As the world's largest social media company, Meta's platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram have roughly as many users as everyone expected to vote in 2024 worldwide—almost 4 billion. Yet there are concerns about what its impact on those elections will be, as right-wing groups from the U.S. to Germany to India have used Facebook to recruit new members and target marginalized groups.
"Meta continues to aid right-wing political interests in weaponizing its algorithms to spread hate-filled propaganda around the world," ITUC wrote. "Increasingly, it has been engaged in dodging national regulation through the deployment of targeted lobbying campaigns."
Tesla made the list for its "belligerent" anti-union stance, as well as the vocal anti-worker and right-wing politics of its CEO, Elon Musk. Of Musk, ITUC observed:
As owner of the social networking platform X (formerly Twitter), he responded to one user's allegations about a coup in Bolivia–a country with lithium reserves considered highly valuable for electric vehicle manufacturers like Tesla–by saying, "We will coup whoever we want. Deal with it!" He has committed to donating $45 million per month to a political action committee to support the reelection campaign of Donald Trump, and sought to build close relationships with other far-right leaders, including Argentina's Javier Milei and India's Narendra Modi. Musk has also re-platformed and clearly expressed his support of white nationalist, antisemitic, and anti-LGBTQ+ accounts since taking ownership of X.
No. 7 on the list is The Vanguard Group, an institutional investor that funds many of the other companies on the list, including with billions in the stock held by workers' retirement plans.
"Effectively, Vanguard uses the deferred wages of workers to lend capital to the self-same companies complicit in undermining democracy at work and in societies globally," ITUC wrote.
ITUC is exposing these companies in part to advance its agenda for a "New Social Contract" that would ensure "a world where the economy serves humanity, rights are protected, and the planet is preserved for future generations."
It and other workers' organizations plan to push this agenda at international gatherings like the U.N. General Assembly and Summit of the Future in New York this week as well as the COP29 climate conference in Azerbaijan in November. Yet part of advancing this agenda means raising awareness about the opposition.
"There is another force, one that is unelected and seeks to dominate global affairs. It pushes a competing vision for the world that maintains inequalities and impunity for bad-faith actors, finances far-right political operatives, and values private profit over public and planetary good," ITUC wrote. "That force is corporate power."
However, Brogan told The Guardian that labor groups, when organized across borders, could fight back.
"Now is the time for international and multi-sectoral strategies, because these are, in many cases, multinational corporations that are more powerful than states, and they have no democratic accountability whatsoever, except for workers organized," Brogan said.
To that end, ITUC is gathering signatures for a petition for a global treaty holding corporate power in check.
"For international institutions like the United Nations to reflect the democratic will of workers, they must be willing to hold these corporate underminers of democracy accountable," the petition reads. "That is why we are calling on you to support a robust binding international treaty on business and human rights, one that addresses the impact of transnational corporations on the human rights of millions of working people."
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'Colossal Waste': US Leads Way in Public Spending on False Climate Solutions
"The fossil fuel industry delays climate action, distracts from real solutions that would end the fossil fuel era, and does everything in its power to squeeze the last drops of profit from a dying industry, at the expense of all of us."
Aug 29, 2024
Among the world's wealthiest countries, the U.S. leads the way in spending public money on so-called climate "solutions" that have been proven to "consistently fail, overspend, or underperform," according to an analysis released Thursday by the research and advocacy group Oil Change International.
The group's report, titled Funding Failure, focuses on international spending on carbon capture and fossil-based hydrogen subsidies, which continues despite ample data showing that the technological fixes have "failed to make a dent in carbon emissions" after 50 years of research and development.
The report details how five countries account for 95% of all carbon capture spending, with the U.S. investing the most taxpayer money in the technology, at $12 billion in subsidies over the last 40 years.
Norway comes in second with $6 billion going to carbon capture and storage, while Canada has spent $3.8 billion, the European Union has spent $3.6 billion, and the Netherlands has poured $2.6 billion into the technology, with which carbon dioxide emissions are compressed and utilized or stored underground.
"It is nothing short of a travesty that funds meant to combat climate change are instead bolstering the very industries driving it."
Harjeet Singh, global engagement director for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, toldThe Guardian that the subsidies amount to a "colossal waste of money."
"It is nothing short of a travesty that funds meant to combat climate change are instead bolstering the very industries driving it," said Singh.
While proponents claim carbon capture and storage reduces planet-heating carbon emissions, OCI notes, it was originally developed in the 1970s "to enhance oil production, and this remains its primary use," with the technology "barely" reducing emissions.
High-profile carbon capture failures in the U.S. include the Petra Nova project in Houston, Texas, which cost nearly $200 million in taxpayer funds and whose captured emissions were later used for crude oil production, and the FutureGen project, "which swallowed $200 million and never materialized."
"Investing in carbon capture delays the transition to renewable energy," reads OCI's report. "Instead of wasting time and money on technologies that do not work, governments must commit to justly and urgently phasing out fossil fuels before it's too late."
Despite the lack of data supporting the use of carbon capture, the group said, countries including the U.S. are "preparing to waste hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on these ineffective technologies, further benefiting the fossil fuel industry."
OCI highlighted how the U.S. and Canada, while ostensibly fighting the climate crisis, have spent a combined $4 billion in public money to explicitly "pay oil companies to produce more oil," with the subsidies going to carbon capture for "enhanced oil recovery."
The report also found that in addition to the $12 billion in taxpayer funds the U.S. has spent on carbon capture and fossil hydrogen—a leak-prone gas produced through energy-intensive processes that cause their own emissions—the government has spent an estimated $1.3 billion on the 45Q tax credit, which allows companies to write off tax for every ton of carbon dioxide they store underground.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) increased the amount given to companies in 45Q tax credits from $35 to $60 per ton, meaning that the subsidy could grow to over $100 billion in the next 10 years.
OCI's Policy Tracker shows that overall public spending on carbon capture and hydrogen could grow by between $115 billion and $240 billion in the coming decades.
"We need real climate action, not fossil fuel bailouts!" said OCI in a post on social media.
The group's report also highlights that fossil fuel giants such as ExxonMobil have shifted from carbon capture skeptics to outspoken proponents of the technology—with the company bragging to investors that carbon capture and hydrogen would help its Low Carbon Business Unit make "hundreds of billions of dollars" and grow to be "larger than ExxonMobil's base business."
Exxon didn't launch its carbon capture efforts until 2018, having spent several years and hundreds of millions of dollars on another "climate solution" that ultimately failed: the use of algae to make biofuels.
Since then, Exxon has "pushed for direct government funding for carbon capture, particularly at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)," successfully lobbying for $12 billion allocated in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill in 2021 for "carbon management research, development, and demonstration."
Exxon also lobbied for the increased rate of the 45Q tax credit in the IRA and "played a 'central role' in drafting a 2019 DOE-sponsored report on carbon capture that determined Congress would need to create an incentive of around $90 to $110 per ton to support carbon capture deployment," according to OCI.
The Guardian on Thursday reported that Exxon still "chases billions in U.S. subsidies for a 'climate solution' that helps drill more oil," describing how the oil giant hosted an event at the Democratic National Convention earlier this month where senior climate strategy and technology director Vijay Swarup praised the IRA for helping Exxon pursue carbon capture and said: "We need new technology and we need policy to support that technology. We need governments working with private industry."
Exxon's enthusiasm for carbon capture, said OCI, is an example of how "the fossil fuel industry delays climate action, distracts from real solutions that would end the fossil fuel era, and does everything in its power to squeeze the last drops of profit from a dying industry, at the expense of all of us."
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