Exxon Mobil on Monday was accused by California’s attorney general, the Sierra Club and others of conspiring to defame the oil giant and damage its business prospects amid a debate over whether plastics can be effectively recycled. environmental groups.
The claims are an escalation in a legal dispute between oil companies and environmental groups that have long been at odds over environmental issues related to fossil fuels, plastics and climate change.
Exxon’s lawsuit features language used by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who sued Exxon in September, stating that Exxon is misleading people by promoting the idea that its products are single-use plastics. The company claims it ran a “deceptive campaign” to encourage people to buy single-use plastics. It might be possible to recycle it. Plastics are made from fossil fuels and are more difficult to recycle than other materials such as paper and metals. Bonta’s lawsuit, filed in San Francisco Superior Court, criticized the company’s “advanced recycling” program, a process that breaks down plastic to create new materials such as fuel.
“ExxonMobil is not engaged in a decades-long secret mission to brainwash or deceive the public,” the company said in a federal lawsuit filed Monday in the Eastern District of Texas.
Exxon said Mr. Bonta later made false statements about the effectiveness of the company’s recycling technology in interviews and other forums, causing future deals to fall apart. “Advanced recycling is not a ‘farce’ or a ‘myth,'” the company said in its lawsuit.
A California Department of Justice spokesperson called the lawsuit “another attempt by ExxonMobil to distract from ExxonMobil’s own illegal deceptions,” and said Bonta will “vigorously litigate the case.” He said he was looking forward to it.
Exxon is seeking monetary damages and retraction from Bonta and environmental groups.
Representatives for the Sierra Club and other organizations named in the lawsuit (San Francisco Baykeeper, Heal the Bay, and Surfrider Foundation, all based in California) immediately responded to requests for comment Monday. did not respond. Those groups had filed their own lawsuits against Exxon in parallel with Bonta’s lawsuit, alleging violations of the National Nuisance and Unfair Competition Act.
Monday’s lawsuit also named Australian charity Intergenerational Environmental Justice Fund. The group is described in the lawsuit as acting on behalf of Andrew Forrest, the founder of Australian mining company Fortescue Metals Group, who has become a critic of Exxon. Exxon said the charity hired the Cotchett Pitre McCarthy law firm to “represent” the environmental groups that filed the parallel lawsuit.
The charity said in a statement on Tuesday that it is not a subsidiary of, owned or managed by Fortescue or Mr Forrest’s environmental foundation Minderoo. A Minderoo spokesperson said Monday’s lawsuit misstated the company’s activities.
Niall McCarthy, a partner at Cotchett Pitre & McCarthy, called the lawsuit a “PR campaign” with no merit and said the group supported the lawsuit. “To suggest that they are ‘representatives’ for anyone is unfounded and fails to recognize that these nonprofits are on the front lines of the fight over plastics,” he said.
Fortescue advocates a transition away from oil and instead uses hydrogen as fuel. In its lawsuit, Exxon described the company as a competitor in the energy transition space. A Fortescue spokeswoman said Tuesday that the company rejected Exxon’s claims that the company orchestrated the lawsuit to gain a competitive advantage.
In a separate statement, Forrest said that “any accusations of commercial interest” related to the case are false, and that the fossil fuel industry “is running out of time and is seeking technological solutions to phase out fossil fuels.” He said he was aware that there were measures in place.
Bonta’s September lawsuit was filed after more than two years of investigation, including subpoenas to Exxon and industry groups, and he seeks damages that he says could reach “billions of dollars.” Ta.
Energy companies are facing numerous lawsuits from state and local governments, including California, for misleading the public about climate change in order to continue selling fossil fuels. The California plastics case represents a new direction in that long-running legal battle, built on a similar premise surrounding deception claims.
In its recent report, The Plastic Recycling Scam, the advocacy group Center for Climate Integrity concluded that plastic recycling has largely failed because it was too expensive to do on a large scale. Even if recycling is technically possible, virgin plastic is cheaper, reducing the incentive to use recycled materials. However, oil companies and the plastics industry continued to promote recycling as a solution to plastic waste, the report said.
According to Environmental Protection Agency data, less than 10 percent of the plastic produced in 2018 ended up being recycled, although recycling rates were much higher for some categories of plastic. Data shows that the rate at which plastic is converted into energy has steadily increased in recent years.
Exxon’s legal fightback also prompted a lawsuit from pipeline company Energy Transfer. He was accused of inciting protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 and 2017 against Greenpeace and other environmental groups. Energy Transfer said Greenpeace disseminated false information to damage its reputation and damage its business interests. Greenpeace denies playing a leading role in the protests. A trial in the case is scheduled to begin in February in North Dakota.
