Big Oil In CA Trial: We Only Found, Drilled, Refined, Sold Oil; You Used It, Warming Is YOUR Fault

[hatrack]

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“The IPCC does not say it’s the extraction and production of oil that is driving these emissions. It’s economic activity that creates the demand for energy, and that leads to emissions.” — Chevron’s attorney in an ongoing California climate change liability suit.

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After years of encountering this argument in the chat forum below, we could well have seen it going mainstream from a mile away.

To bring everyone up to speed, Big Oil and other fossil fuel giants are being put on trial for their role in producing climate harming carbon emissions. Low lying coastal cities like San Francisco are claiming that impacts like sea level rise caused by those carbon emissions are going to be costly to deal with. They’ll have to build coastal defenses with price tags at least in the tens of millions (and probably more) to protect valuable neighborhoods and industries in the very near future.

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(Big oil says they just sell the products that cause climate change. The fact that people in captive energy markets have little choice but to use them is not their fault, they say.Image source: Inside Climate News.)

But Big Oil which for years denied that climate change was happening (after they did the science that proved it was), and for still more years denied that it would be damaging, has now added a new deflection to their arsenal of distraction. They’ve come up with a perfect scape goat for the problem they’ve contributed so much to over the years. Who’s that? Well it’s you. Yes — YOU. The argument goes something like this — climate change is happening, the IPCC proves it, it’s caused by human economic activity and energy use, so it’s not our fault.

We could well call this climate change denial argument # 5,000 — deny responsibility for harms done by blaming the victim which is humankind and related human civilization itself. Never mind the fact that fossil fuel companies have lobbied for decades to prevent government policy that would actually reduce climate harms by cutting carbon emissions. Never mind the fact that monopolistic fossil fuel companies did everything they could since their inception to corner the energy market and keep humans like you and me captive to fossil fuel use. Never mind that these corporations have fought alternative, clean, non-carbon emitting energy sources like wind and solar tooth and nail — going so far as to produce public relations campaigns that demonize these non-carbon energy sources.

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https://robertscribbler.com/2018/03/23/big-oil-says-youre-to-blame-for-climate-change-not-them/#comments

[mountain grammy]

1. Hey, you got in the way of my bullet, your fault your dead.

BLAME THE VICTIMS... FUCK THE OIL COMPANIES.