If you are looking for a press release from supporters of the New York Attorney General on the upcoming #ExxonKnew trial, look no further than Dana Drugmand’s recent piece in Climate Liability News. The blog, though structured like an actual news article, features exclusively one-sided commentary from some of the most active #ExxonKnew promoters and functions as little more than a press release in hopes of generating greater coverage for their flailing campaign.
“Hard-nosed, Uncompromised Journalism”
Recall that Climate Liability News (CLN) is a dark money anti-energy organization staffed by a team of climate activists. Though they describe themselves as a “news organization” with “hard-nosed, uncompromised journalists,” CLN was established in 2017 to promote climate liability litigation, hiring former InsideClimate News #ExxonKnew editor Lynn Zinser as their chief editor on day one. Their board of directors is composed exclusively of #ExxonKnew activists as well, like Richard Wiles and Kert Davies, each with significant roles in the climate litigation movement outside of CLN.
For example, Davies is a former Greenpeace staffer credited with establishing its ExxonSecrets project and attended the secret strategy meeting at the Rockefeller Family Fund in January 2016. There, he and other assembled activists and funders strategized on how to coordinate to “delegitimize Exxon” “creat[e] scandal.”
Wiles, in addition to other projects, heads up CNL’s parent organization, the Climate Communications and Law (CCL) group. CCL came under scrutiny recently when it was accused of violating Maryland law by failing to register as a foreign agent. The charge could result in individual fines for the organization’s leadership.
The Team
Drugmand’s post, which clocks in at just under two thousand (!) words, reads like a press release masquerading as a blog. Every single person quoted in the blog is a proponent of the #ExxonKnew campaign, and over half are directly involved in lawsuits against the company, including Ann Carlson.
As Energy In Depth wrote last month, Ann is a consultant to the plaintiffs in the climate liability cases:
“Ann Carlson is a professor at UCLA Law School’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, which has hosted numerous events in support of climate litigation. In addition to her position at UCLA, Carlson serves as a consultant for Sher Edling in their lawsuits against energy companies, undermining any perceived notion of independent academic analysis of the litigation.” (emphasis added)
Drugmand cites Carlson as a “UCLA environmental law professor,” but fails to disclose her concrete ties to the lawyers suing energy producers.
Another participant in Drugmand’s press release is Michael Gerrard, faculty director and founder of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School. Yet again, Energy In Depth has previously exposed his ties to the #ExxonKnew campaign:
“Gerrard has written extensively about climate change and environmental law and is a strong supporter of the #ExxonKnew campaign, speaking out in support of the New York Attorney General’s lawsuit against ExxonMobil. Additionally, he’s worked behind the scenes to support investigative action against the company. In 2018 the Sabin Center filed an amicus brief in New York City’s appeal of the district court decision to dismiss the city’s climate change lawsuit against fossil fuel companies.”
The connect-a-dots doesn’t stop there. Vic Sher is an attorney at the law firm Sher Edling where he is actively suing energy producers for climate change damages, and Supran, a vocal anti-Exxon activist, is the author of an anti-Exxon study that has already been thoroughly debunked by Energy In Depth and others.
Email records have revealed that Sharon Eubanks, a participant in the infamous 2012 La Jolla conference, pitched attorneys general on lawsuits against Exxon specifically. Dan Zarrilli, New York City’s chief climate policy advisor, is involved in that city’s lawsuit against energy producers. The list could go on, but the point is this: everyone in Drugmand’s piece is a member of the same team and spoke on the record like teammates.
Sounds a little bit like a press release, doesn’t it?
Untangling the Facts
If this were a legitimate news story, Drugmand would’ve included at least one contrasting opinion to balance out the story. But since it isn’t, she left them out. The truth in her arguments suffered as a result.
Take her claim that New York’s investigation “found Exxon had kept two sets of books accounting for potential costs of greenhouse gas regulations—one set was made public while the other was used for internal calculations. As a result of Exxon’s fraud, the company was exposed to far greater risk from climate change regulations than investors were led to believe.” This is simply not the case.
Without a uniform method of calculating carbon costs, all energy companies use unique metrics to calculate real and theoretical costs of climate policies. As it has stated publicly, ExxonMobil uses two different calculations to measure the cost of potential future policies regulation emissions, the Proxy Cost of Carbon and the Greenhouse Gas Cost. Their proxy costs measure the impact of climate policies on consumer demand, while the greenhouse gas costs are used to determine the viability of certain projects under various scenarios.
So yes, ExxonMobil uses two methods to calculate its carbon footprint, each of which are in complete compliance of the law. Where’s the story here?
That’s the catch: there isn’t. Drugmand’s blog post was merely a press release in disguise. With CLN under greater scrutiny these days, posts like this show they have yet to earn any credibility.
