Independent Australia - Elliott Negin
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ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy have been major contributors to global
warming (Image by Dan Jensen) |
Author Elliott Negin is a senior writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists.This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute. |
As it turns out, they overestimated the time span — and underestimated the price tag.
At the end of December, the Marshall Fire devastated Boulder County, laying waste to more than 6,000 acres and incinerating more than 1,000 homes and seven commercial buildings at a projected cost of U.S.$1 billion (AU$1.4 billion), making it Colorado’s most destructive fire in terms of property loss.
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Fossil fuel giants hit by court rulings over climate impacts  |
In fact, four of the five biggest Colorado fires by acreage have occurred since then, ranging from 108,000 to nearly 209,000 acres.
Both ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy – an Alberta, Canada-based company – have a large carbon footprint in Colorado.
ExxonMobil has produced more than one million barrels of oil from Colorado deposits, according to the Colorado communities’ complaint, and its subsidiary XTO Energy currently produces 60 million cubic feet of natural gas per day from 492,000 acres in Rio Blanco County.
There are also 95 Exxon and Mobil gas stations in the state. Altogether, the company’s production and transportation activities in Colorado were responsible for more than 420,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions between 2011 and 2015, according to the complaint.
Meanwhile, Suncor’s U.S. headquarters is based in Denver and its oil refinery, which produces 98,000 barrels of refined oil per day, is less than five miles (eight kilometres) from downtown.
Suncor’s gas stations, which sell Shell, Exxon and Mobil brand products, supply about 35% of the gasoline and 55% of the diesel sold in the state, according to a 2016 Denver Business Journal article.
Farmers claim win over fossil fuel industry
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The Colorado communities
contend
that ExxonMobil and Suncor were aware that their products caused global
warming as early as 1968, when a
report
commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. oil and gas
industry’s largest trade association, warned of the threat burning fossil
fuels posed to the climate.
Regardless, ExxonMobil and Suncor not only continued to produce and market
fossil fuel products without disclosing the risks, the communities’ complaint
charges, but they also engaged in a decades-long disinformation campaign to
manufacture doubt about the reality and seriousness of climate change.
‘Defendants’ actions have already caused or contributed to rising
temperatures in Colorado,’
the complaint states.
‘Colorado has seen average temperatures rise by 2.5 degrees [Fahrenheit] over the last 50 years, with over a 2 degree [Fahrenheit] rise since 1983.’
Those higher temperatures have
extended what used to be a four-month-long fire season in western states to
six to eight months, if not all year round, according to the
U.S. Forest Service. Wildfires are starting earlier, burning more intensely and destroying
larger areas of land than ever before.
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The corporations making big money, paying no tax and laughing at us 
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That share could amount to billions of dollars to help cover the cost of an increasing number of heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, intense precipitation and floods.
Boulder’s April 2018 lawsuit was not the first U.S. climate-related case against the fossil fuel industry.
New York City and eight coastal California cities and counties, including San Francisco and Oakland, had already filed similar lawsuits against ExxonMobil and other oil and gas companies, seeking compensation for damage to their communities.
As of today, at least 27 states, counties and cities have sued major fossil fuel companies for climate-related fraud or damages, or both — and with good reason.
The cost of climate change-related disasters is continuing to climb.
Indeed, the Marshall Fire was just one of the 20 climate and weather disasters in 2021 that resulted in at least $1 billion in damages, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, just two shy of the record-breaking 22 in 2020 and significantly more than the average of 6.3 large-scale U.S. disasters per year between 2000 and 2009.
All told, last year’s billion-dollar disasters resulted in U.S.$145 billion (AU$203.5 billion) in damages – 52% higher than in 2020 – and 688 deaths.
The common denominator in these escalating numbers? Climate change.
Rachel Licker, a senior climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said:
“The fingerprints of climate change were all over many of the billion-dollar events that hit the United States in 2021. We’re essentially watching longstanding climate projections of the past come true.”The Harsh Economics of Climate Change 12min 02 sec
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