Oil Companies Defeat New York City Appeal Over Global Warming (reuters.com) 75
A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected New York City's effort to hold five major oil companies liable to help pay the costs of addressing harm caused by global warming. schwit1 shares a report: Ruling in favor of BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions should be addressed under federal law and international treaties. It rejected the city's efforts to sue under state nuisance law for damages caused by the companies' "admittedly legal" production and sale of fossil fuels, and said the city's federal common law claims were displaced by the federal Clean Air Act. "Global warming presents a uniquely international problem of national concern," Circuit Judge Richard Sullivan wrote for a three-judge panel. "It is therefore not well-suited to the application of state law." Sullivan added that while the Clean Air Act did not address emissions from outside the country, foreign policy concerns and the risk of courts "stepping on the toes of the political branches" barred the city's lawsuit.
Good (Score:4, Insightful)
It's ridiculous for the government that regulated and taxed an industry to then sue that industry for existing.
Particularly when the federal government sells them land leases to extract their product, and is one of their largest customers.
Re: Good (Score:2)
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I'm imagining quite a long list of 'nuisances' I'd like to see NYC sued over..
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It would make more sense for the city to sue the citizens of NYC.
The individual citizens made the decision to buy and burn gasoline.
But since the city government represents the people, they can just sue themselves.
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The individual citizens made the decision to buy and burn gasoline.
Given that citizens are frequently exposed to advertisements that (based on clinical research) are created to frustrate logical thinking, given that the US infrastructure practically mandates owning a car, can you still say that the choice was really their own?
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Global warming is real - No one credible denies it... The question is, are the consequences of it as bad as the people predicting doomsday are telling us it is, and if so - are the prescribed solutions reasonable.
Is it reasonable to tell developing countries they can't use fossil fuels? Not by a long shot...
Is it reasonable to say Miami will be underwater by 2050? No... If it were, Real estate values there would not be growing by leaps and bounds... People would be moving away and real estate values wou
Re:Global Warming is a Religion, not Science. (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice try, but in the real world, homeowners their political influence to get the city to reject managed retreat [slashdot.org] and find some other way to fix the problem.
Global Warming is a Science [Re:Global Warming...] (Score:2)
Global warming is real - No one credible denies it... The question is, are the consequences of it as bad as the people predicting doomsday are telling us it is,
Somebody mod this +1 insightful. Yes, greenhouse effect warming is real. The questions of what are the consequences, how bad will they be, and who will they affect are all worth addressing.
and if so - are the prescribed solutions reasonable.
Indeed. More specifically, what are the possible solutions? What are the costs and benefits of each? And which, if any, should we chose?
Is it reasonable to tell developing countries they can't use fossil fuels? Not by a long shot...
Also insightful. This is why it is a hard problem. In what way would it be fair for, say, the U.S. to say "well, we produce 13.8 tons of carbon dioxide per person, but we can't let you
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There is no evidence whatsoever that changing away from fossil fuel toward sustainable energy will "bankrupt the poor." Zero. This is a fossil-fuel industry talking point.
Show me an electric car I can buy for $1000, and can relatively inexpensively drive for the next five years... Older electric vehicles (Which still cost as much as 10 to 20) $1000 ICE cars that run just fine) - in the event of a battery failure (more and more likely as it ages) costs the equivalent of another 10+ $1000 cars to keep on the road.
In the case of vehicles, which is one of the biggest emitters of pollution - it is 100% not possible for people that are actually poor to be green. At least not wi
Technopessimism [Re:Global Warming is a Science] (Score:3)
You seem to be a techno-pessimist. You think that the technology available today is the only technology that can ever exist, and the price of technology will never go down as volume increases.
True, right now there aren't cheap used electric cars, but that's no surprise. They haven't been made long enough for there to be many used electric vehicles on the market.
in any case, the current generation of electric cars in China are about $10,000 new. The next generation just hit the market last year at a base pr [bloomberg.com]
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People that are actually poor don't drive vehicles that cost 10 to 20 thousand dollars (go ahead, find a reasonable electric car for less than that that doesn't need a new battery...) - These types of people drive rust bucket POS's
You seem to be magically forgetting the other half of this equation
You see, the rust bucket POSs were once brand new shiny cars. They became rust buckets because they have been in service for an appreciable amount of time. There are also a shitload of this type of cars in the economy so there is a lot of competition in the rust bucket zone.
Electric cars don't have that simply because they are relatively new.
But once there are enough of them they too will turn into rust buckets that can be bought for cheap.
S
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The other thing that they're forgetting about those rust buckets is the real cost. They are, indeed, cheap to buy, but they also tend to be much more expensive to maintain than a newer vehicle. They're still the cheaper choice, especially if you can do your own automotive work, but they're not as cheap as the purchase price suggests. Consider that the GP is suggesting that the rust bucket will cost $1000, but $2500 is the lowest you should really expect to pay for a car that is any good. At the moment, the
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Your argument of there being equivalent maintenance is not correct...
I didn't say it was equivalent, just that the maintenance along with the cost divided by how long you have the vehicle, plus extra fuel costs, etc. do add up to a significant fraction of what the cost of a new car would be.
Also, I looked for used cars in my area and, ignoring obvious scams (like the brand new 2021 vehicle marked down to $1750), the cheapest I could find was a 20 year old sedan on Craigslist for $2000. If you buy that, and it lasts you a year, it still costs a significant fraction of the pri
Re: Global Warming is a Science [Re:Global Warming (Score:2)
Re: Global Warming is a Religion, not Science. (Score:1)
Is it reasonable to tell developing countries they can't use fossil fuels? Not by a long shot...
Thankfully, said nations can now skip a step and base their [developing] infrastructures on the same newer shit that the rest of us apparently need to start using.
They're going to need access to nuke tech, though - including that breeder shit.
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Is it reasonable to say Miami will be underwater by 2050? No... If it were, Real estate values there would not be growing by leaps and bounds... People would be moving away and real estate values would be falling
Wow. I mean, Miami probably won't be underwater by 2050 (although I would not count on there not being massive erosion to and even complete loss of many beachfront properties), but the reasoning there is a massive fallacy. What you are saying there seems to be some sort of efficient market fallacy. There are a lot of reasons that people will not make rational choices about purchases, even if they have lots of money. Not to mention that the argument that the market for a scarce resource will go down because
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Who should I believe, you -- an uneducated random anonymous internet weirdo? Or 99% of scientists who study the issue? It's a hard choice.
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Who should I believe, you -- an uneducated random anonymous internet weirdo? Or 99% of scientists who study the issue? It's a hard choice.
Clearly,you should believe the people who cause it. The current generation is, simultaneously, the most travelled generation ever, and the most concerned about climate change ever. Also the least child-producing generation.
The people who “are too selfish to have children” by their own admission , the people who take more flights than any people in history,
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"Self-described progressives take more flights, and fly more miles than self-described Conservatives."
Oh really? Quantitatively speaking, what's the contribution of flight to global warming?
Re: Good (Score:2)
What government?
You mean the oil industries who *literally* wrote the laws, and then donned a trenchcoat with "government" written on it, to make it law (= had their puppet politicians introduce it to the other lobbyist politicians for a "vote")?
Yeah, I think I should form a largr army, and bring democracy to the USA! ;)
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Fossil fuel subsidies may be stupid, but they are the law of the land.
It makes no sense for NYC to sue oil companies because of stupid federal laws.
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You can take your head out of our ass now.
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"Particularly when the federal government sells them land leases to extract their product, and is one of their largest customers."
An industry that gets subsidized with 100 billion per year worldwide, I guess because they are so new and need help.
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An industry that gets subsidized with 100 billion per year worldwide, I guess because they are so new and need help.
It’s because you would be pissed if you hopped your flight to Europe and found there was no fuel for the plane, or worse, that ticket prices had doubled.
They subsidize an industry that you are likely highly dependent on.
You’re welcome.
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They subsidize an industry that you are likely highly dependent on.
If you are dependent on an industry, you should pay for it.
If you are dependent on an industry that had external costs because it is damaging the environment, you should pay for your share of those costs.
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Oil companies make BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN NET PROFITS PER QUARTER.
So no moron, oil companies do not need subsidies and fuels prices would not skyrocket.
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"They subsidize an industry that you are likely highly dependent on."
Highly dependent?
In the US, 12% of people took 66% of all flights, they can pay.
https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
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That is a hyperbolic response to what is happening.
Many of these laws and rules supporting the use of oil had be created by a long term lobbing efforts by the oil companies. Much like Tobacco a while back, And than previously with Lead.
It is a situation where the government on whole is lead to believe that Oil is the only solution to such problems, thus the US need to invest into it for its key infrastructure. Now they have been alternatives and some of them overall much better, but you need to remember
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It's ridiculous for the government that regulated and taxed an industry to then sue that industry for existing.
Particularly when the federal government sells them land leases to extract their product, and is one of their largest customers.
This is about New York no longer being willing to foot the pollution bill the oil companies have been exempt from since the oil based economy became a thing. This can be solved with a carbon tax that will only hasten the death of fossil fuel energy as an already dying technology. Even if the Oil companies manage to extract some kind of US wide "God given right to pollute and make others pay for it" from SCOTUS, the rest of the world will not play that game. Oil as an energy source is going the way of coal a
Re: Good (Score:2)
Rules in their favor.
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Oil companies are not exempt, they have to follow the rules for their plants and productions. What are exempt are people like you who are not paying any extra that are the source of your own problems.
None of that matters. Oil based energy is an archaic dying technology that is being comprehensively beaten on cost by renewables. There is nothing that your political ideology can do to prevent oil ending up on the stinking garbage pile of history along with coal and steam.
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Oil isn't used just for energy - look at all the plastic packaging in the grocery store next time you're there. There are a lot of uses for oil other than burning it for energy.
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And the easiest way to make sure that the people who are using oil for purposes that generate CO2 is to force the fuel producers to bake that cost into their pricing.
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l agree with the court decision. Regulation of greenhouse gas emissions should be addressed under federal law and international treaties. It would be chaos if every municipality in the United States sued every company that produced fossil fuels.
It's ridiculous for the government that regulated and taxed an industry to then sue that industry for existing.
If the industry lied, I'd say that they are liable to be sued whether or not they are taxed. But local courts are simply the wrong mechanism.
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It's ridiculous for the government that regulated and taxed an industry to then sue that industry for existing.
Not addressing the merit, but there are some rumors that Oil industry has known about global warming since the 50s (AFAIR) and purposely fought any scientific research in this area predicting it would impact their bottom line, so not sure about this particular case, but if it was so then it wouldn't be so ridiculous. Otherwise agree, blaming a company retroactively for something they didn't know was harmful is ridiculous and any punitive measures are reasonable only when the law was broken or the company in
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It's ridiculous for the government that regulated and taxed an industry to then sue that industry for existing.
What the fuck are you talking about?
They are being sued to get them to help clean up the mess they have knowingly created.
They are not being sued for existing, they are being sued for how they exist.
Sue them for *littering* (pollution) (Score:2)
And punish them by forcing them to take back the thrash (like CO2) that landed in the athmosphere.
Just like e.g. electronics manufacturers have to take back old eletronics.
Of course then, those who *bought* that fuel ... you know the rest.
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You can't sue or punish someone for doing something you expressly permit them to do. Oil companies are specifically told by the government the limits of how and what they can pollute. That applies in the USA as well as in Germany.
It's been a while since I saw one of your ignorant posts, have you been on holidays?
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You can't sue or punish someone for doing something you expressly permit them to do.
While the judge may have been right to dismiss the suit, I don't think this argument holds water. First, there is more than one "government" here: the federal government (the argument goes) permitted the pollution, but the state was arguing that those actions were illegal under *state* law. Accepting that federal permission automatically nullifies any state law to the contrary would take federal supremacy to an unprecedented level.
Second, not being legally prevented from taking an act does not mean that
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The consumers are burning it and creating the pollution, not the oil companies.
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I'm a Gen-Xer so you little shits will have longer to wait than you think. That said - I agree climate change is a problem but as the GP said this was pure fucking idiocy on NYC's part. We all, collectively, have used and benefitted from oil so it's pretty fucking childish to pretend it's all "their" fault. Would be hilarious if all the major gas companies just stopped selling gas or oil of any sort, where they are able to, to NYC.
The solution here is pretty straightforward. Invest in better solar, wind, an
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Would be hilarious if all the major gas companies just stopped selling gas or oil of any sort, where they are able to, to NYC.
That is always my response. If they don't like it and don't want it then just cut them off. Problem solved. Why exactly is this not an acceptable solution?
Of course, maybe give them a heads up in advance, cause they will be so fucked. No need to take pleasure in their ruin.
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Shut up, old Boomer faggot. You have no idea what you're talking about because you're OLD and are going to DIE soon. Just sit back in your rocker, watch your reruns, and fucking die already. The world does not belong to YOU anymore, Boomer, because your way of doing things fucked it up. So we take it away from you now. Seriously we need to round up all you old Boomers and put you in a home somewhere, where you can't do any more damage.
Oooh, that you had the stones to post that as AC is impressive. It
Step one (Score:2)
"admittedly legal" production and sale of fossil fuels
Ban the sale of fossil fuels within the city limits of NYC. Then maybe people will take you seriously. And not think this is just a grab for more revenue via the court system.
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The judges didn't say their claims were without merit, they merely said a State didn't have the scope to address a problem that's bigger than the whole Country.
Try to prove it. I'd take that case. I'd blow NYC out of the water. They'd be dumb enough to rely on NASA data. I'd pull up archive data and old newspaper articles to prove they've changed the data. Anytime "scientists" change data they're lying. The data is the data. You never change it to suit your hypothesis or theory.
CO2 is a symptom, not the cause. It's like applying a fire hose to a flame and not the base that is really what's on fire. Historical records prove that. Ignoring it is only playing into a
NY Again... (Score:2)
New York City and State have a history of bringing these kind of suits in attempts to create law that no legislature will enact. This behavior screams for a reform where the lawyers who bring these cases must be held personally liable for their targets legal fees, with zero indemnity from the public. Trust me, they will stop in a New York nanosecond if that were the case.
Wrong target (Score:2)
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Sue all those people who drive cars in the city (Score:2)
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And all those planes that keep landing at the airports.
Here's a better thought. Let's sue BLM, NAACP, the democrats and other organizations that have destroyed cities throughout the country. Burning and releasing all those environmentally harmful compounds. All based on lies.
Saying there's a problem with CO2 is also a lie. It's a symptom, not the cause. Historical records prove that. You have the heat, then you see a rise in CO2 as life starts back up. All it is is a way to extract money from people to give to the leftists.
Need to mitigate damages while on appeal (Score:1)
Sue the PANYNJ and TBTA (Score:2)
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority own and operate the airports, bridges, tunnels, ports, and many of the highways in and around New York and New Jersey. They are responsible for all of the carbon emissions generated by the users of their facilities. Shut down the facilities and the carbon emissions are gone. The economy of New York will go with it, but it's all for a good cause.
Judge Richard Sullivan... (Score:2)
I knew Judge Sullivan's name was familiar, he's the one who handled the copyright infringement case Hughes v Benjamin [reason.com] (aka Sargon of Akkad), and not only ruled in Benjamin's favor but awarded him $37k in attorney fees due to Hughes' tweets indicating it was a bad faith lawsuit.
In summary... (Score:2)
...the entire suit boiled down to someone insisting "Now look what you made me do!"
Thank god it was tossed out.
Look, I love to blame anyone but myself for my odious and self-destructive habits. I'd love if I could just insist that someone write me a big fat check because I eat crappy food, drink too much, and don't get enough physical exercise.