undetectable guilt

A recent Vancouver Sun Opinion column by a Staff Lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law (WCEL), chastises the current City Council for not committing municipal taxpayers to a lawsuit against Big Oil. He suggests that Climate Change caused by oil producers is responsible for $50 million a year in Vancouver civic impacts, adding frankly, we can’t afford it … even though he lives in Victoria.

On their website, WCEL proclaims that it is creating legal risk for those who would harm our land, air and water and petroleum companies are a fat target for that threat. It is clear from the Opinion piece that the litigators don’t like the fact that corporations such as Shell make profits when the evidence supposedly shows that they have known since 1988 that their actions were causing Global Warming. This evil duplicity is allegedly proven by an internal Shell memo titled The Greenhouse Effect.

That purported evidence includes, however: Although the greenhouse effect has been undetectable up till now, the atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gases are steadily increasing. Whether this will result in a significant global warming and if so, when it will occur, is still a matter of debate. Does WCEL suggest Shell should have ceased operations in 1988 based on an “undetectable”, debatable, effect?
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The memo also sets out: The problem is that no obvious global solution is presently conceivable which would result in a major reduction in the rate of increase of atmospheric CO2. A report issued by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in late 1983 (see Appendix 2) concluded that only draconian measures such as a global ban on coal combustion could have any significant effect. Since such actions are neither economically or politically feasible, individual countries should be urged to study ways of adapting to the inevitable rise in temperature. From this the executives at Shell had reason to believe they could not control the global CO2 situation, even if their actions might be causing an undetectable greenhouse effect.

Shell management was further advised: The energy industry will clearly need to work out the part it should play in the development of policies and programmes to tackle the whole problem. It will not be appropriate to take the main burden, for the issues are ones that ultimately only governments can tackle, and users have an important role. This certainly appears to place greater responsibility for solving the undetectable problem on politicians and consumers, rather than on oil producers.

And how have governments tackled the “whole problem”? … hypocritically. In the US last year CNN reported that, despite curtailing oil exploration and pipeline projects, President Biden then wrote a letter to all major oil companies encouraging them to ramp-up production:

Biden’s letter on Tuesday was sent to seven oil companies: Marathon Petroleum, Valero Energy, ExxonMobil, Phillips 66, Chevron, BP, and Shell. While Biden urged the companies to take “immediate actions to increase the supply of gasoline, diesel, and other refined product,” the President also said the federal government is ready to use additional emergency powers to boost refinery capacity and output. Case dismissed.

If the 1988 internal memo represents the best evidence of Shell’s denial and deception, the plaintiffs should be laughed out of court. Surely WCEL knows this and are simply using Sue Big Oil as grandstanding to influence public sentiment for their ongoing eco-socialist agenda. Vancouver Council has done its citizens a service by distancing themselves from this nonsense.
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