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Thomas, Coon, Newton & Frost
820 SW 2nd Ave., Ste. 200
Portland, OR 97204
Phone - (503) 228-5222
Fax - (503) 273-9175
IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE STATE OF OREGON
FOR THE COUNTY OF MULTNOMAH
COUNTY OF MULTNOMAH,
Plaintiff,
v.
EXXON MOBIL CORP., SHELL PLC
F.K.A. ROYAL DUTCH SHELL PLC,
CHEVRON CORP., BP PLC,
CONOCOPHILLIPS, MOTIVA
ENTERPRISES, LLC, OCCIDENTAL
PETROLEUM F.K.A. ANADARKO
PETROLEUM CORP., SPACE AGE
FUEL, INC., VALERO ENERGY
CORP., TOTAL SPECIALTIES USA, INC.,
MARATHON PETROLEUM CORP.,
PEABODY ENERGY CORP.,
KOCH INDUSTRIES, INC.,
AMERICAN PETROLEUM INSTITUTE,
WESTERN STATES PETROLEUM
ASSOCIATION, MCKINSEY AND
COMPANY, INC., and
DOES 1-250 INCLUSIVE,
Defendants.
Case No.
COMPLAINT
(Public Nuisance, Negligence,
Fraud & Deceit, and Trespass)
PRAYER:
$51,550,000,000
Or Laws 2012, ch. 48, Sec. 2;
ORS 21.160(1)(e)
CLAIMS NOT SUBJECT TO
MANDATORY ARBITRATION
JURY TRIAL REQUESTED
COMPLAINT FOR CIVIL DAMAGES AND ABATEMENT OF PUBLIC NUISANCE
6/22/2023 12:23 PM
23CV25164
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Thomas, Coon, Newton & Frost
820 SW 2nd Ave., Ste. 200
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Phone - (503) 228-5222
Fax - (503) 273-9175
I. NATURE OF THE CASE
1.
This is a case that seeks damages and equitable relief for harm caused to Multnomah
County (hereafter, “County” or “Plaintiff”), by Defendants’ execution of a scheme to rapaciously
sell fossil fuel products and deceptively promote them as harmless to the environment, while they
knew that carbon pollution emitted by their products into the atmosphere would likely cause deadly
extreme heat events like that which devastated Multnomah County in late June and early July
2021. Beginning on June 25, 2021, the Plaintiff, Multnomah County was scorched by the most
extreme heat event in its history. For several consecutive days and nights, a “heat dome,”
sometimes called a “blocking event” or an “extreme heat event,” boiled the County, causing
massive loss of life, grave ill health, destruction of County property, and the consumption of
resources. Over three consecutive days, County temperatures reached highs of 108°, 112°, and
116° Fahrenheit. All three of those high temperatures exceeded those of any day in any previous
year in the County, ever. Tree ring data revealed that the 2021 Pacific Northwest (“PNW”) heat
dome was the hottest event in the region since the beginning of the record time (starting in
950AD).
1
1
Heeter, K.J., Harley, G.L., Abatzoglou, J.T. et al. Unprecedented 21st century heat across the
Pacific Northwest of North America. npj Clim Atmos Sci 6, 5 (2023).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-023-00340-3.
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820 SW 2nd Ave., Ste. 200
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Phone - (503) 228-5222
Fax - (503) 273-9175
2.
Because Multnomah County has historically enjoyed a mild climate, a substantial portion
of its residents, even those who have financial resources, have no central cooling system or window
units in their homes. A total of 69 people died in Multnomah County from overheating during this
event. In a typical year, Multnomah County experiences zero deaths from heat-related illnesses.
Prior to June 2021, Multnomah County recorded only two hyperthermia deaths since 2010 — one
each in 2016 and 2018.
2
More people died from the June 2021 heat wave in Multnomah County
than died from heat in the entire state of Oregon in the past 20 years.
3
Deaths from all causes
during the heat dome were double the normal level.
3.
Many other residents fell ill from heat strokes, heat exhaustion, and dehydration. Hundreds
required emergency and critical medical care.
4.
The severity of the heat dome caused the County to expend enormous financial and human
resources that it otherwise would not have, and thus added crushing economic burden upon the
County, in tandem with the devastating human toll exacted upon its residents. In addition to
2
Multnomah County, June 2021 Extreme Heat Event, Preliminary Findings and Action Steps
https://www.multco.us/file/june-2021-heat-event-preliminary-findings-and-action-steps (last
visited June 12, 2023).
3
Id.
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Portland, OR 97204
Phone - (503) 228-5222
Fax - (503) 273-9175
providing many types of emergency health and human services for residents suffering from the
extreme heat, the County spent taxpayer money to provide people with shelter, cooling centers,
fans, food, portable air conditioners, clothes, and water. The agitation and desperation wrought by
the record heat provoked an increase in crime and violence within the County, which further taxed
the resources of law enforcement and County healthcare providers, who were already pushed
beyond their limits in trying to care for those suffering from heat strokes and heat-related illnesses.
In the wake of the June 2021 extreme heat event, the County spent significant sums of its taxpayer
monies to prepare for future ones. These expenditures included increases in shelter space, supplies,
warehousing of supplies, an early warning system, staffing, training, and tree density. Still, the
County lacks the resources to adequately prepare for comparable or more severe heat extremes.
5.
The heat dome that cost so much life and loss was not a natural weather event. It did not
just happen because life can be cruel, nor can it be rationalized as simply a mystery of God’s will.
Rather, the heat dome was a direct and foreseeable consequence of the Defendants’ decision to sell
as many fossil fuel products over the last six decades as they could and to lie to the County, the
public, and the scientific community about the catastrophic harm that pollution from those
products into the Earth’s and the County’s atmosphere would cause. In the aftermath of the June
2021 heat dome, world renown climatologists, physicists and statisticians researched the causes of
that extreme heat event and published their conclusions in peer-reviewed scientific journals. One
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Fax - (503) 273-9175
such study concluded that the occurrence of a heat wave of the intensity experienced in the study
area would have been virtually impossible without anthropogenic climate change (“ACC”).
4
6.
The same study concluded that this extreme heat event was 150 times less likely to have
occurred in the absence of ACC.
5
7.
Finally, the authors determined that in the absence of ACC, a heat event this extreme in
this region might occur, if at all, one time in 1000 years. Escalating carbon pollution has increased
the likelihood that it will reoccur every 5 to 10 years.”
6
8.
These autopsy-like climatic diagnoses corroborated prognoses that the Defendants had
since the late 1950s internally forecasted would occur: The heat catastrophe was caused by carbon
pollution emitted into and accumulated by the atmosphere that warmed the planet and the region
where the County resides, as well as dried out the region’s soil. It was so extreme and historically
anomalous that it would not have occurred so intensely, nor at all, absent that pollution. In sum,
but for carbon atmospheric pollution, the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome would have not
4
Philip, S. Y., et al., Rapid attribution analysis of the extraordinary heat wave on the Pacific coast
of the US and Canada in June 2021, Earth Syst. Dynam., 13, 1689–1713 (2022).
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1689-2022.
5
Id.
6
Id.
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820 SW 2nd Ave., Ste. 200
Portland, OR 97204
Phone - (503) 228-5222
Fax - (503) 273-9175
occurred, and in the unlikely event that some atypical heating period may have still occurred, it
would not have been as severe or as destructive.
9.
The extreme heat event that began on June 25, 2021, and the Plaintiff’s damages caused
by it, occurred because first, the Defendants’ historical carbon and methane pollution heated up
the Earth’s (and the Plaintiff’s) atmosphere and, second, the Defendants’ engaged in a sophisticated
campaign of deflection and deception that denied what they knew was the foreseeable consequence
of using their fossil fuel products.
10.
Defendants have known and foreseen for decades that their fossil fuel pollution would
cause widespread and catastrophic harm throughout the world, including to Plaintiff, but they lied
and cynically sought to sow “scientific” and public doubt in furtherance of their ceaseless,
ravenous quest for more wealth. The use and consumption of fossil fuels—oil, natural gas, and
coal—is the primary source of greenhouse gas emissions. Those greenhouse gas emissions have
warmed the earth 1.1 to 1.2 ° C since 1900.
7
The American Petroleum Institute (“API”), in
coordination with several Fossil Fuel Defendants that are long-standing members of that
organization, investigated the science and advised each other, but not the public, in stark terms
7
2020 World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Report,
https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/2020-was-one-of-three-warmest-years-
record#:~:text=The%20differences%20in%20average%20global,(1850%2D1900)%20level.
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820 SW 2nd Ave., Ste. 200
Portland, OR 97204
Phone - (503) 228-5222
Fax - (503) 273-9175
that fossil fuel usage would cause global warming and catastrophic climate changes like those
experienced in Multnomah County.
11.
API is a trade group that promotes the fossil fuel production and sales activities of its
members, which include the following Defendants: Exxon, Shell, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips,
Motiva, and Anadarko. In 1965, API’s president, Frank Ikard, stated internally to the group’s
members, “… there is still time to save the world’s peoples from the catastrophic consequence of
pollution, but time is running out.”
8
In 1965, the Defendants could have publicly admitted what
they privately understood: emissions into the atmosphere from the use of Defendants’ fossil fuels
threatened “the world’s people” with “catastrophic consequence[s].” Defendants understood that
such threats could be avoided if course corrections were implemented imminently, before “time
[runs] out.” Yet, Defendants did the opposite. They made no such public admission. They lied
publicly and repeatedly about the harm their pollution was causing and the calamities it would
cause. They chose to safeguard their financial bottom lines, rather than the health and safety of the
Plaintiff, the planet, and “the world’s peoples.”
12.
Fossil Fuel Defendants consciously decided that they would lie about the impact of their
fossil fuel products on the global climate, and regional climate that includes Multnomah County.
8
Franta, B., Early oil industry knowledge of CO
2
and global warming. Nature Clim Change 8,
1024–1025 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0349-9.
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Thomas, Coon, Newton & Frost
820 SW 2nd Ave., Ste. 200
Portland, OR 97204
Phone - (503) 228-5222
Fax - (503) 273-9175
In 1989, Fossil Fuel Defendants mobilized a campaign to create the “Global Climate Coalition”
(“GCC”). Through this organization, Fossil Fuel Defendants and others funded a marketing
campaign that intended to deceive and violate Oregon’s statutes and common law. That deception
continues to this day.
13.
In the spring of 1998, Fossil Fuel Defendants further organized their deceptive scheme into
what is now known as the “Victory” memorandum. The Defendants perceived that a “consensus”
had formed among qualified scientists and the informed public that carbon pollution from fossil
fuel consumption was substantially warming the planet and thereby inducing weather extremes
that posed an existential threat. Rather than seeking to modify their business activities to reduce
that threat, the Defendants set forth upon a plan to change the narrative about that serious problem
and undermine the consensus with pseudo-science, fabricated doubt, and a well-funded, sustained
public relations campaign to promote their spin. To that end, they sponsored a cadre of mercenary
“experts” who were selected for the purpose of seeding scientific literature and serving as moles
in climatology group think. Their role is and was to espouse fossil fuel industry-sponsored
propaganda under a false pretense that it was objective and reliable contrary science, and they
spread their disinformation across America, including in Multnomah County.
14.
In furtherance of the scheme that Defendants hatched in the “Victory” memorandum, they,
and the fabulists they sponsor, corrupted legitimate scientific literature by seeding it with anti-
science, pro-industry propaganda, upon which consumers, including consumer taxpayers in
Multnomah County, have detrimentally relied.
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820 SW 2nd Ave., Ste. 200
Portland, OR 97204
Phone - (503) 228-5222
Fax - (503) 273-9175
15.
The culpable conduct of the Fossil Fuel Defendants, as described more fully in this
Complaint includes:
(a). Defendants proclaimed that climate change was not a real or imminent
threat while they had actual knowledge that it was.
(b). Defendants had a duty to disclose under Oregon laws, but failed to disclose:
1) their own scientists confirmed that global climate change was a genuine
and serious threat; 2) that pollution from their fossil fuel products was a
direct cause of that threat; and 3) extreme heat in otherwise mild climates
like America’s Pacific Northwest was one of the threats that they predicted
was made more likely to happen with more severe consequences.
(c). To conceal their fraudulent marketing scheme, Defendants masked their
activities through front groups, dark money funding, pseudo scientists for
hire, all in an enterprise to deceive the public and Multnomah County.
(d). Defendants failed to warn the public, including Multnomah County and its
citizens of the external social, economic and environmental costs from
using their products. Instead, the Defendants created a narrative of scarcity
of resources to maintain their energy production monopoly, make higher
profits, and block development of alternative energy, so as to create a
seemingly unbreakable dependence on their products.
16.
Defendants’ false and misleading promotion and sale of fossil fuel products are causes-in-
fact of and substantial factors that caused the extreme heat event that struck the County beginning
on June 25, 2021, two similar heat events that occurred in 2022, another one in May 2023, as well
as causing an increase in the frequency and severity of wildfires, which in turn were made more
frequent and more severe by two decades of drought. The harms caused by Defendants to Plaintiff
are ongoing and will multiply. Because Defendants have polluted the atmosphere with enormous
amounts of methane and carbon dioxide, which remain aloft for decades, and they continue to do
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Fax - (503) 273-9175
so without restraint, extreme heat events will reoccur with increasing intensity and frequency.
9
Because Defendants’ carbon and methane polluting products and activities cause both global and
regional temperature rise and sustained periods of drought, Plaintiff has experienced and will
continue to experience massive, unmanageable wildfires. Plaintiff lacks sufficient resources to
prepare for the enormity of that impending harm and seeks all remedies from Defendants provided
by Oregon state law for its damages, past and future, as well as for abatement of such harms.
17.
Plaintiff Multnomah County brings this action in its sovereign capacity for the public
benefit and to promote the welfare of the public. The County of Multnomah also brings this action
as an exercise of its police power, which includes, but is not limited to, its power to prevent
pollution of the County’s property, air, and waters, to prevent and abate nuisances, and to prevent
and abate hazards to public health, safety, welfare, and the environment. Finally, the County of
Multnomah also brings this action in its capacity as parens patriae on behalf of its taxpaying
residents who have suffered and will suffer harms, including for the expenditures of County
resources arising from extreme heat events and wildfires caused by Defendants’ malfeasance,
which is further described herein. All of Plaintiff’s claims for relief arise under Oregon state
law. Plaintiff seeks no remedy under Federal law and expressly disclaims all theories of
recovery, if any, that may exist exclusively under Federal law.
9
Zhang, X., Zhou, T., Zhang, W. et al. Increased impact of heat domes on 2021-like heat extremes
in North America under global warming. Nat Commun 14, 1690 (2023).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-37309-y.
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II. THE PARTIES, JURISDICTION AND VENUE
A. Plaintiff
18.
Multnomah County is an existing county government duly formed under the laws of the
State of Oregon and is a body politic and corporate. The seat of Multnomah County is in Portland,
Oregon. The Multnomah County Board of Commissioners is duly elected to exercise the powers
of Multnomah County and has approved the filing of this lawsuit. According to the 2020 US
consensus, 815,428 people reside in Multnomah County, the state’s most populous county.
19.
Pursuant to ORS 468A.205(2) the Oregon legislature declared “that it is the policy of this
state for state and local governments, businesses, nonprofit organizations and individual residents
to prepare for the effects of global warming and by doing so, prevent and reduce the social,
economic, and environmental effects of global warming.”
20.
It has long been the policy in the State of Oregon that the discharge into the air of gases
and particulates that cause injury to human, plant or animal life is a public nuisance and, as such,
is contrary to public policy.
10
Moreover, since 1951, it has been the public policy in Oregon “[t]o
10
Smejkal v. Empire Lite-Rock, Inc., 547 P.2d 1363, 1367, 1976 Ore. LEXIS 904, *13 (April 26,
1976).
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restore and maintain the quality of the air resources of the state in a condition as free from air
pollution as is practicable, consistent with the overall public welfare of the state.”
11
21.
Multnomah County has standing and authority to bring this lawsuit under the Constitution
of the State of Oregon, Oregon Revised Statutes, The Multnomah County Charter, and under the
common law principle of parens patriae. Multnomah County has the right to bring this action to
recover damages caused by the Defendants’ malfeasance and protect the public interest and public
health of its citizens against fossil fuel induced weather extremes.
22.
On June 22, 2023, the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously on
a resolution declaring that ACC has caused an on-going public nuisance of climate related mass
catastrophe events driven by human caused climate change that has increased the frequency,
duration, and intensity of multiple disasters, which include extreme heat events (including, but not
limited to, “heat domes”), wildfires (and wildfire-generated smoke), and drought. Thus, the
existence of a public nuisance that burdens the County from anthropogenic climate change is
memorialized by official decree of Multnomah County.
11
Id. (citing Oregon Laws 1951, Chapter 425, § 7).
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B. Defendants
1. Oil and Gas Defendants
23.
The Oil and Gas Defendants and Coal Defendants in this action, both individually and
collectively, have substantially polluted the world’s atmosphere with the greenhouse gases
(“GHG”) that super heat the planet’s surface and catalyze extreme heat events. About three quarters
of all fossil fuel combustion CO
2
emissions in history have occurred since the 1960s and estimates
have more than half occurring since the late 1980s and even as late as 1994.
12
The annual rate of
CO
2
emissions by some estimates from production, consumption, and use of fossil fuels has
increased by more than 60% since 1990.
13
Cumulative carbon analysis allows an accurate
calculation of net annual CO
2
and methane emissions attributable to each Defendant by quantifying
the amount and type of fossil fuel products each Defendant extracted and placed into the stream of
commerce, and multiplying those quantities by each fossil fuel product’s carbon factor.
14
24.
The Oil and Gas Defendants, listed below, (along with their co-venturer carbon majors) are
12
R. J. Andres et al., A synthesis of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel combustion, 9
BIOGEOSCIENCES1845, at 1851 (2012), https://bg.copernicus.org/articles/9/1845/2012/bg-9-1845-
2012.pdf. (last visited June 20, 2023); See also ¶¶ 165-174.
13
Le Quéré et al., Global Carbon Budget 2016, 8 EARTH SYST. SCI. DATA 605, at 630 (2016),
https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/8/605/2016/essd-8-605-2016.pdf. (last visited June 20. 2023).
14
Richard Heede, Tracing Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide and Methane Emissions to Fossil Fuel
and Cement Producers, 1854–2010, 122 CLIMACTIC CHANGE 229-241 (2014),
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10584-013-0986-y.pdf; see also, Richard Heede,
Carbon Majors: Update of Top Twenty companies 1965-2017, CLIMATE ACCOUNTABILITY
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directly responsible for the majority of global GHG emissions from 1965-present.
25.
Exxon Mobil Corp. (“Exxon”) is incorporated in New Jersey, with its principal place of
business in Irving, Texas. It is registered with the SEC and is traded under the symbol, “XOM.”
Exxon, along with Defendants, BP, Shell, Chevron and their predecessor corporations constituted
a group in the 1970’s known as the “Seven Sisters,”
15
which controlled around 85% of the world’s
petroleum reserves.
16
26.
Exxon is an American multinational oil and gas corporation and has consistently ranked as
the world’s second largest company by revenue.
17
It is one of the largest of the world’s Big Oil
companies.
18
INSTITUTE (Oct. 9, 2019), https://climateaccountability.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/CAI-
PressRelease-Top20-Oct19.pdf (last visited June 20. 2023).
15
“Seven Sisters” was a common term for the seven transnational oil companies of the
“Consortium for Iran” oligopoly or Enterprise, which dominated the global petroleum industry
from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s. The industry group consisted of Anglo-Iranian (started as
Anglo-Persian) Oil Company (now BP), Gulf Oil (later part of Chevron), Royal Dutch Shell,
Standard Oil Company of California (SoCal, now Chevron), Standard Oil Company of New Jersey
(Esso, later Exxon, now part of Exxon Mobil), Standard Oil Company of New York (Socony, later
Mobil, also now part of ExxonMobil), and Texaco (later merged into Chevron).
16
Ian Mann, Shaky industry that runs the world, THE TIMES (Jan. 24, 2010),
https://www.timeslive.co.za/ideas/2010-01-24-shaky-industry-that-runs-the-world/ (last visited
June 14, 2023).
17
Fortune, Global 500, FORTUNE 500, https://fortune.com/fortune500/2022/ (last visited June 14,
2023).
18
Id.
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27.
Exxon is vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas industry,
including exploration and production, refining, transport, distribution and marketing,
petrochemicals, plastics, power generation and trading.
28.
When ranked by oil and gas reserves, Exxon, is ranked 14th in the world.
19
Exxon’s total
assets at the end of 2018 were valued at $346.2 billion.
20
29.
Exxon manages, directs, and controls its and its subsidiaries’ policies and practices related
to climate change and fossil fuel production. Exxon is the second largest investor-owned
greenhouse gas emitter.
21
19
Steve Forbes, Will We Rid Ourselves of This Pollution?, FORBES (Mar. 20, 2007),
https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2007/0416/033.html?sh=350a237f22f4 (last visited June 14,
2023).
20
Exxon Mobil, 2018 Annual Report Pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange
Act of 1934 (Form 10K), EXXONMOBIL (Feb. 27, 2019),
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/34088/000003408819000010/xom10k2018.htm (last
visited June 15, 2023).
21
Exxon Mobil, 2018 Financial & Operating Review, EXXONMOBIL (2019)
https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/-/media/Global/Files/annual-report/2018-Financial-and-
Operating-Review.pdf (last visited June 14, 2023).
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Thomas, Coon, Newton & Frost
820 SW 2nd Ave., Ste. 200
Portland, OR 97204
Phone - (503) 228-5222
Fax - (503) 273-9175
30.
Exxon is the largest non-government owned company in the energy industry.
22
Exxon is
organized functionally into several global operating divisions, namely Upstream, Downstream and
Chemical, such as Exxon Coal & Minerals, Inc. It also owns hundreds of smaller subsidiaries, all
fossil fuel based, such as Imperial Oil Limited (69.6% ownership) in Canada, and SeaRiver
Maritime, a petroleum shipping company.
31.
Exxon’s upstream operation includes exploration, extraction, shipping, and wholesale
operations. Those operations drive much of ExxonMobil’s revenue, accounting for approximately
70% of the total.
23
32.
Exxon’s downstream operation, consisting of marketing, refining, and retail operations, is
based in Houston, Texas. Exxon merged its refining and marketing divisions, namely ExxonMobil
Refining and Supply Company and ExxonMobil Fuels, Lubricants & Specialties Marketing
Company in 2018, which enables ExxonMobil to generate more cash flow from downstream
22
Roslan Khasawneh, Exxon Mobil Eyes Multi-Billion Dollar Investment at Singapore Refinery:
Executive, REUTERS (Oct. 3, 2018), https://www.reuters.com/article/us-singapore-bunker-sibcon-
exxon-mobil-idUKKCN1MD0EF (last visited June 14, 2023).
23
Exxon Mobil, ExxonMobil Financial and Operations Summary: Overview and Highlights,
EXXONMOBIL (2018)
https://web.archive.org/web/20181024231915/https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/company/an
nual-report/financial-operating-highlights (last visited June 14, 2023).
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820 SW 2nd Ave., Ste. 200
Portland, OR 97204
Phone - (503) 228-5222
Fax - (503) 273-9175
activities – helping the energy giant to counter the volatility in its upstream business. Exxon’s
downstream operations include its sales of petroleum-based consumer products in Oregon.
33.
ExxonMobil Chemical is a petrochemical company which was created by merging Exxon’s
and Mobil’s chemical industries. Its principal products include petroleum-based olefins and
aromatics, ethylene glycol, polyethylene, and polypropylene along with specialty lines such as
elastomers, plasticizers, solvents, process fluids, oxo alcohols and adhesive resins.
34.
Exxon’s “Mobil 1” brand is the market leader in high-value synthetic lubricants and is sold
in Oregon.
24
35.
Exxon’s “Infineum” line is a joint venture with Royal Dutch Shell that manufactures and
markets petroleum additives for the fuel and lubricant industries to commercial and consumer
markets.
25
The Infineum line manufactures and markets crankcase lubricant additives, fuel
additives, and specialty lubricant additives, as well as automatic transmission fluids, gear oils, and
industrial oils.
26
Infineum is a formulator, manufacturer and marketer of petroleum additives for
24
ExxonMobil, ExxonMobil 2018 Financial & Operating Review, EXXONMOBIL (Apr. 2. 2019)
https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/-/media/Global/Files/annual-report/2018-Financial-and-
Operating-Review.pdf (last visited June 18, 2023)
25
Jack W. Plunkett, Plunkett's Chemicals, Coatings & Plastics Industry Almanac: The Only
Complete Guide to the Chemicals Industry (2009).
26
Id.
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820 SW 2nd Ave., Ste. 200
Portland, OR 97204
Phone - (503) 228-5222
Fax - (503) 273-9175
the fuel and lubricant industries. Their products include small engine, passenger car motor, heavy-
duty engine, gas engine, and marine oils along with fuels, transmission fluids, viscosity modifiers,
and pour point depressants.
27
Their products are classified into five distinct groups: driveline
additives, engine oil additives, fuel additives, marine additives and industrial products and are sold
worldwide, including in Oregon and Multnomah County.
36.
Exxon advertises, markets, and sells its products in Oregon and Multnomah County. Exxon
conducts substantial fossil fuel product business in Oregon and purposefully avails itself of the
rights, obligations, and privileges of Oregon’s laws.
37.
Exxon also has a known joint venture with another carbon major, Petrobras,
28
which is
responsible for gigatons of industrial CO
2
e GH emissions from 1965-2023.
38.
Considering Exxon’s responsibility, coupled with those of its joint venture carbon major
partner, Exxon is responsible for substantial GHG emissions from 1965-2023 in both the direct
and indirect use of their products.
27
Bloomberg, Infineum International Limited – Company Profile and News, BLOOMBERG
https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/2573746Z:LN?leadSource=uverify%20wall (last
visited June 20, 2023).
28
ExxonMobil, Petrobras and ExxonMobil Form Strategic Alliance, ExxonMobil (Dec. 14, 2017)
https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/news/news-releases/2017/1214_petrobras-and-exxonmobil-
form-strategic-alliance (last visited June 20, 2023).
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820 SW 2nd Ave., Ste. 200
Portland, OR 97204
Phone - (503) 228-5222
Fax - (503) 273-9175
39.
Exxon is a major carbon emitter, and its emissions are a substantial factor and cause of
enormous harm to Plaintiff for which Exxon is individually as well as jointly and severally liable
to Plaintiff.
40.
Exxon engaged in an enterprise of misrepresentation about the effect its activities would
have on the climate, and that they could cause such an extreme heat event to occur. Exxon’s
misrepresentations and fraud were a substantial factor and cause of enormous harm to Plaintiff for
which Exxon is individually as well as jointly and severally liable to Plaintiff.
41.
Shell PLC F.K.A. Royal Dutch Shell PLC (“Shell”) is a public limited company registered
in England and Wales, with its international headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands. Shell’s
headquarters for its U.S. operations is in Houston, Texas. Shell manages, directs, and controls its
and its subsidiaries’ policies and practices related to climate change and fossil fuel production.
Shell is the seventh largest investor-owned greenhouse gas emitter.
42.
Shell has operations in over 70 countries, produces nearly 3.2 million barrels of oil
equivalent per day, sold 64.2 million tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) during 2021 and has
Page 20 – COMPLAINT
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820 SW 2nd Ave., Ste. 200
Portland, OR 97204
Phone - (503) 228-5222
Fax - (503) 273-9175
interests in 10 refineries.
29
Like Exxon, Shell has billions in proven reserves. As of the end of
December 2014, Shell boasted 13.7 billion barrels of oil equivalent.
30
Shell is registered with the
SEC and is traded as RDSA. At the end of 2018, Shell reported $339.2 billion in assets.
31
43.
Like Exxon, Shell is vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas
industry, including exploration and production, refining, transport, distribution and marketing,
petrochemicals (plastics), power generation and trading.
32
44.
Shell branded gasoline was sold in Oregon through retail stations and wholesale
distributors. Shell lubricants are sold through Christensen USA in Oregon.
33
Shell’s website
29
Shell Global, Who We Are, SHELL PLC https://www.shell.com/about-us/who-we-are.html (last
visited June 14, 2023).
30
Shell Global, Recommended Cash and Share Offer for BG Group PLC by Royal Dutch Shell
PLC, SHELL PLC (Apr. 8, 2015) https://www.shell.com/media/news-and-media-
releases/2015/recommended-cash-and-share-offer-for-bg-group-plc.html (last visited June 14,
2023).
31
Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Form 20-F Annual Report Pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the
Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (Mar. 14, 2019) https://shell.gcs-web.com/static-files/548074c8-
9ff1-4e08-9c69-ffd2c081f875
(last visited June 14, 2023).
32
Vertical integration is the merging together of two businesses that are at different stages of
production—for example, a food manufacturer and a chain of supermarkets. Merging in this way
with something further on in the production process (and thus closer to the final consumer) is
known as forward integration. The Economist, Vertical Integration, THE ECONOMIST (Mar. 20,
2019) https://www.economist.com/news/2009/03/30/vertical-integration (last visited June 18,
2023).
33
Shell United States, Find a Shell Lubricants Dealer, Shell United States
https://www.shell.us/business-customers/lubricants-for-business/lubricants-distributor-
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Phone - (503) 228-5222
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reflects at least 205 Shell gas stations in Oregon, with as many as 156 in the Multnomah County
area as of June 22, 2023.
34
45.
Shell owns “Pennzoil,” “Quaker State” and “Jiffy Lube.” Shell sells its engine oil and
lubricants in Multnomah County, Oregon, and around the world. Shell claims to be the number
one global lubricant supplier, delivering market-leading lubricants to consumers in over 100
countries.
35
Shell advertises, markets, and sells its products, including consumer products, in
Multnomah County. Shell conducts substantial fossil fuel product business in Oregon and
purposefully avails itself of the rights, obligations, and privileges of Oregon’s laws.
46.
Shell is responsible for substantial GHG emissions from 1965-2023 in both the direct and
end use of their products.
47.
Shell also has joint ventures with another carbon major, Gazprom,
36
which is responsible
for substantial GHG emissions from 1965-2023. Shell also has known joint ventures with another
locator.html (last visited June 15, 2023); Christensen, Fuel Products, Lubricants, Partners,
Christensen USA https://christensenusa.com/products/ (last visited June 15, 2023).
34
Shell United States, Gas Station Near Me, SHELL UNITED STATES
https://www.shell.us/motorist/gas-station-near-me (last visited June 14, 2023).
35
Shell United States, Shell Engine Oils and Lubricants, SHELL UNITED STATES
https://www.shell.com/motorist/oils-lubricants (last visited June 14, 2022).
36
Reuter Staff, Gazprom, Shell to invest $13 billion in projects in Russia: Russian Energy Minister,
Reuters (June 16, 2016) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-forum-gazprom-shell/gazprom-
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Phone - (503) 228-5222
Fax - (503) 273-9175
carbon major, National Iranian Oil Company,
37
which is also responsible for substantial GHG
emissions from 1965-2023.
48.
Shell also has known joint ventures with another carbon major, China Petroleum,
38
which
is responsible for substantial GHG emissions from 1965-2023. Shell also has known joint ventures
with another carbon major, Pemex,
39
which is responsible for substantial GHG emissions from
1965-2023.
49.
Shell also has a known joint venture with another carbon major, Abu Dhabi National Oil
Company,
40
which is responsible for substantial GHG emissions from 1965-2023.
shell-to-invest-13-billion-in-projects-in-russia-russian-energy-minister-idUSKCN0Z223G (last
visited June 14, 2023).
37
Tom DiChristopher, The Billion-Dollar Gold Rush to Tap into Iranian Oil, CNBC (Nov. 6,
2016) https://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/03/the-billion-dollar-gold-rush-to-tap-into-iranian-
oil.html (last visited June 14, 2023).
38
Offshore Energy, Shell, CNPC Form Well Manufacturing JV (The Netherlands), OFFSHORE
ENERGY (Jun. 20, 2011) https://www.lngworldnews.com/shell-cnpc-form-well-manufacturing-jv-
the-netherlands/ (last visited June 20. 2023).
39
Oil & Gas Journal, Pemex to Acquire Interest in Shell Texas Refinery, OIL & GAS JOURNAL
(Aug. 31, 1992) https://www.ogj.com/home/article/17218678/pemex-to-acquire-interest-in-shell-
texas-refinery (last visited June 20. 2023).
40
Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, Our Partners, ABU DHABI NATIONAL OIL COMPANY
https://www.adnoc.ae/en/our-partners (last visited June 14, 2023).
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Phone - (503) 228-5222
Fax - (503) 273-9175
50.
Shell also has a known joint venture with another carbon major, Kuwait National Petroleum
Corporation,
41
which is responsible for substantial GHG emissions from 1965-2023.
51.
Considering Shell’s responsibility, coupled with those of its joint venture carbon major
partners, Shell and its affiliates have contributed a substantial amount of industrial GHG emissions
from 1965 to 2023.
52.
Shell is a major carbon emitter, and its emissions are a substantial factor and cause of
enormous harm to Plaintiff for which Shell is individually and jointly and severally liable to
Plaintiff.
53.
Shell has engaged in an enterprise of misrepresentation about the effect its activities would
have on the climate, and that they could cause such an extreme heat event to occur. Shell’s
misrepresentations and fraud were a substantial factor and cause of harm to Plaintiff for which
Shell is individually and jointly and severally liable to Plaintiff.
41
360 Feed Wire, Kuwait Petroleum and Shell Sign Agreement for Long-Term Supply of LNG to
Meet Domestic Energy Needs, OIL AND GAS 360 (Dec. 27, 2017)
https://www.oilandgas360.com/wired-news-kuwait-petroleum-and-shell-sign-agreement-for-
long-term-supply-of-lng-to-meet-domestic-energy-needs/ (last visited June 15, 2023).
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820 SW 2nd Ave., Ste. 200
Portland, OR 97204
Phone - (503) 228-5222
Fax - (503) 273-9175
54.
Chevron Corporation (“Chevron”) is incorporated in Delaware with its principal place of
business in San Ramon, California. Chevron manages, directs, and controls its and its subsidiaries’
policies and practices related to climate change and fossil fuel production.
42
Chevron is a publicly
traded corporation registered with the SEC and its symbol is “CVX.”
55.
Chevron Corporation is an American multinational energy corporation. One of the
successor companies of Standard Oil, it is headquartered in San Ramon, California, and active in
more than 180 countries.
56.
Like Exxon and Shell, Chevron is a fully integrated oil company, engaged in every aspect
of the oil industry, including hydrocarbon exploration and production, refining, marketing, and
transport; chemicals manufacturing and retail sales; plastics from petrochemicals and power
generation.
43
42
Richard Heede, Tracing anthropogenic carbon dioxide and methane emissions to fossil fuel and
cement producers, 1854–2010, CLIMATIC CHANGE, (Nov. 22, 2013)
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10584-013-0986-y.pdf (last visited June 15, 2023).
43
Chevron, Our History, CHEVRON, https://www.chevron.com/about/history (last visited June 15,
2023).
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Thomas, Coon, Newton & Frost
820 SW 2nd Ave., Ste. 200
Portland, OR 97204
Phone - (503) 228-5222
Fax - (503) 273-9175
57.
Chevron sells the “Delo,” “Ursa,” “Havoline,” “IsoClean” and “Techron” heavy duty diesel
engine oils, coolants/antifreeze, transmission fluids, gear oils, greases and hydraulic oils in
Multnomah County and Oregon.
58.
Chevron is one of the world’s largest oil companies; as of 2017, it ranked nineteenth in the
Fortune 500 list of the top U.S. closely held and public corporations and sixteenth on the Fortune
Global 500 list of the top 500 corporations worldwide.
44
It was also one of the Seven Sisters that
dominated the global petroleum industry from the mid-1940s to the 1970s.
45
59.
According to its 2017 corporate disclosures, Chevron had $253.8 billion in total assets and
11.7 billion barrels in proven reserves.
46
60.
Chevron markets and sells its products in Multnomah County and Oregon. Chevron
conducts substantial fossil fuel product business in Oregon and purposefully avails itself of the
rights, obligations, and privileges of Oregon’s laws.
44
Fortune, Chevron | 2022 Fortune 500, FORTUNE
https://fortune.com/company/chevron/fortune500/ (last visited June 15, 2023).
45
Id.
46
Chevron, 2017 Annual Report, CHEVRON (2018)
https://www.chevron.com/-/media/chevron/annual-report/2017/2017-Annual-Report.pdf (last
visited June 15, 2023).
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Thomas, Coon, Newton & Frost
820 SW 2nd Ave., Ste. 200
Portland, OR 97204
Phone - (503) 228-5222
Fax - (503) 273-9175
61.
Chevron is responsible for substantial GHG emissions from 1965-2023 in both the direct
emissions from their industry and the end use of their products.
62.
Like Shell, Chevron partners with other carbon majors worldwide.
63.
Chevron also has known joint ventures with another carbon major, PDSVA,
47
which is
responsible for substantial GHG emissions from 1965-2023. Chevron and BP also have known
joint ventures with other carbon majors, Eni, Sonangol, and Total SA.
48
Eni is responsible for
substantial GHG emissions from 1965-2023. Sonangol is responsible for substantial GHG
emissions from 1965-2023. Total SA is responsible for substantial GHG emissions from 1965-
2023. Chevron also has known joint ventures with Nigerian National Petroleum,
49
which is
responsible for substantial GHG emissions from 1965-2023.
47
Chevron, Venezuela, CHEVRON, https://www.chevron.com/worldwide/venezuela. (last visited
June 20. 2023); Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), ADNOC Signs Landmark Strategic
Partnership Agreements with Eni and OMV in Refining and Trading, ABU DHABI NATIONAL OIL
COMPANY (Jan. 27, 2019) https://www.adnoc.ae/en/news-and-media/press-releases/2019/adnoc-
signs-landmark-strategic-partnership-agreements. (last visited June 15, 2023).
48
NS Energy, EU clears Angolan LNG joint venture by BP, Chevron, Eni, Sonangol and Total,
NS ENERGY (May 16, 2012) https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/news/newseu-clears-angolan-
lng-joint-venture-by-bp-chevron-eni-sonangol-and-total-170512/ (last visited June 15, 2023).
49
Chevron, Nigeria, CHEVRON, https://www.chevron.com/worldwide/nigeria (last visited June 15,
2023).
Page 27 – COMPLAINT
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820 SW 2nd Ave., Ste. 200
Portland, OR 97204
Phone - (503) 228-5222
Fax - (503) 273-9175
64.
Considering Chevron’s responsibility, coupled with those of its joint venture carbon major
partners, Chevron and its affiliates have contributed substantial GHG emissions from 1965-2023.
65.
Chevron is a major carbon emitter, and its emissions are a substantial factor and cause of
enormous harm to Plaintiff for which Chevron is individually and jointly and severally liable to
Plaintiff.
66.
Chevron engaged in an enterprise of misrepresentation about the effect its activities would
have on the climate, and that they could cause such an extreme heat event to occur. Chevron’s
misrepresentations and fraud were a substantial factor and cause of enormous harm to Plaintiff for
which it is individually and jointly and severally liable to Plaintiff.
67.
BP PLC (“BP”) is a public limited company registered in England and Wales, with its
international headquarters in London, England. The headquarters for BP’s U.S. operations is in
Houston, Texas. BP manages, directs, and controls its and its subsidiaries’ policies and practices
related to climate change and fossil fuel production. BP is the third largest investor-owned
greenhouse gas emitter.
Page 28 – COMPLAINT
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820 SW 2nd Ave., Ste. 200
Portland, OR 97204
Phone - (503) 228-5222
Fax - (503) 273-9175
68.
BP is one of the world’s seven oil and gas “supermajors” (including Exxon, Shell, Chevron,
ConocoPhillips among others).
50
Like Exxon, Shell, and Chevron, BP is vertically integrated in
both the production, refining and marketing of oil-based products.
69.
BP upstream activities include exploring for new oil and natural gas resources, developing
access to such resources, and producing, transporting, storing, and processing oil.
51
In 2017, BP
produced around 3.6 million barrels per day of oil equivalent,
52
of which 2.26 million barrels per
day were liquids and 7.744 billion cubic feet was natural gas. In 2017, BP boasted reserves of
18.441 million barrels per day of oil equivalent.
53
70.
BP downstream activities include the refining, marketing, manufacturing, transportation,
trading and supply of crude oil, petrochemicals and petroleum-based plastic and resin
50
Tom Bergin, Oil Majors Output Grown Hinges On Strategy Shift, REUTERS (Aug. 1, 2008)
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oilmajors-production-idUSL169721220080801 (last visited
June 15, 2023).
51
Forbes, BP Company Overview & News, FORBES
https://www.forbes.com/companies/bp/?sh=6e11aa61384b#41b79e1c384b (last visited June 15,
2023).
52
BP, BP Annual Report and Form 20-F 2017, BP (2018)
https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/investors/bp-
annual-report-and-form-20f-2017.pdf (last visited June 15, 2023).
53
Id.
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products.
54
BP’s downstream operation is responsible for BP’s fuels, lubricants and petrochemical
businesses and has major operations located in Europe, North America, and Asia.
55
71.
Castrol is BP’s main brand for industrial and automotive lubricants and is applied to a large
range of BP oils, greases and similar products for most lubrication applications, selling these
products worldwide,
56
including in Multnomah County. BP has three refineries located in the US
that represent about 40% of their global refining capacity.
57
BP markets petroleum products in
more than 50 countries worldwide.
58
It has around 18,300 service stations.
59
72.
BP is registered with the SEC and is traded as “BP.” On July 28, 2018, it was reported that
BP has acquired a portfolio of unconventional oil and gas assets from BHP Billiton Petroleum
54
Forbes, BP Company Overview & News, FORBES
https://www.forbes.com/companies/bp/?sh=6e11aa61384b#41b79e1c384b (last visited June 15,
2023).
55
Reuters, BP PLC Stock Price & Latest News, REUTERS
https://www.reuters.com/markets/companies/BP.L (last visited June 15, 2023).
56
BP, Castrol, BP https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/who-we-are/our-brands/castrol.html
(last visited June 15, 2023).
57
BP, Refineries, BP, https://www.bp.com/en_us/united-states/home/what-we-do/production-
and-operations/refineries.html (last visited June 15, 2023).
58
BP, BP Annual Report and Form 20-F 2017, BP (2018)
https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/investors/bp-annual-
report-and-form-20f-2017.pdf (last visited June 15, 2023).
59
Id.
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Thomas, Coon, Newton & Frost
820 SW 2nd Ave., Ste. 200
Portland, OR 97204
Phone - (503) 228-5222
Fax - (503) 273-9175
(North America) for $10.5 billion.
60
BHP was also a member of API.
61
BP markets and sells its
products in Multnomah County and Oregon. BP conducts substantial fossil fuel product business
in Oregon and purposefully avails itself of the rights, obligations, and privileges of Oregon’s laws.
73.
BP is responsible for substantial GHG emissions from 1965-2023.
74.
As of February 27, 2022, BP held 19.75% of the shares of Rosneft Oil Company (OTC:
OJSCY).
62
Rosneft serves as the leader of Russia’s petroleum industry and remains the world’s
largest publicly traded petroleum company. BP and Rosneft have a joint-venture agreement to
develop prospective resources in East and West Siberia. Rosneft is responsible for substantial GHG
emissions from 1965-2023.
75.
BP, along with China Petroleum and Basra Oil Company, are working in partnership to
develop Rumaila, an oil field in Iraq and the third-largest producing field in the world, estimated
60
Sonali Paul and Ron Bousso, BP pays $10.5 billion for BHP shale assets to beef up U.S.
business, REUTERS (Jul. 26, 2018) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bhp-divestiture-bp-
idUSKBN1KG34V (last visited June 15, 2023).
61
BHP, Industry Associations 2019 Review: Second Update, BHP (2019)
https://www.bhp.com/about/operating-ethically/industry-associations/2019-review-second-
update (last visited June 15, 2023).
62
BP, BP to Exit Rosneft Shareholding, BP (Feb. 27, 2022)
https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/news-and-insights/press-releases/bp-to-exit-rosneft-
shareholding.html (last visited June 15, 2023).
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to have around 17 billion barrels of recoverable oil remaining.
63
BP is also providing technical
assistance to the North Oil Company to aid the redevelopment of the Kirkuk field in Iraq. Kirkuk
is estimated to have around 9 billion barrels of recoverable oil remaining. Basra Oil Company and
North Oil Company are two of the nine companies that are owned by the Iraq National Oil
Company,
64
another carbon major which is responsible for substantial GHG emissions from 1965-
2023.
76.
BP also has known joint ventures with another carbon major, Sonatrach,
65
which is
responsible for substantial GHG emissions from 1965-2023.
77.
Considering BP’s responsibility, coupled with those of its joint venture carbon major
partners, BP and its affiliates have contributed a substantial amount of industrial emissions from
1965-2023 in both direct emissions from their extraction and refining and the end use of their
products.
63
BP, What We do, Iraq, Reviving One of the World's Super-giant Oilfields, BP
https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/what-we-do/bp-worldwide/bp-in-iraq.html (last visited
June 15, 2023).
64
Reuters, Iraq transfers ownership of nine state oil companies to new National Oil Company,
REUTERS, (Oct. 18, 2018, 10:18 AM), https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-oil/iraq-transfers-
ownership-of-nine-state-oil-companies-to-new-national-oil-company-idUSKCN1MS27E (last
visited June 15, 2023).
65
BP, BP Has a Long History of Working in Algeria, BP
https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/what-we-do/bp-worldwide/bp-in-algeria.html (last
visited June 15, 2023).
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78.
BP is a major carbon emitter, and its emissions are a substantial factor and cause of
enormous harm to Plaintiff for which it is individually and jointly and severally liable to Plaintiff.
79.
BP has engaged in an enterprise of misrepresentation about the effect its activities would
have on the climate, and that they could cause such an extreme heat event to occur. BP’s
misrepresentations and fraud were a substantial factor and cause of enormous harm to Plaintiff for
which it is individually and jointly and severally liable to Plaintiff.
80.
ConocoPhillips is incorporated in Delaware, with its principal place of business in
Houston, Texas. ConocoPhillips manages, directs, and controls its and its subsidiaries’ policies and
practices related to climate change and fossil fuel production.
81.
ConocoPhillips is the world’s largest independent pure-play exploration and production
company ranking No. 77 in the 2022 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by
total revenue.
66
ConocoPhillips is the fifth largest investor-owned greenhouse gas emitter.
67
66
Fortune, Fortune 500 List, FORTUNE https://fortune.com/fortune500/ (last visited June 15, 2023).
67
Paul Griffin, The Carbon Majors Database CDP Carbon Majors Report 2017, CDP (Jul. 2017)
https://cdn.cdp.net/cdp-production/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/Carbon-Majors-
Report-2017.pdf?1501833772 (last visited June 15, 2023).
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82.
Like Exxon, Shell, Chevron and BP, ConocoPhillips is a fully integrated oil company.
ConocoPhillips was created through the merger of American oil companies Conoco
Inc. and Phillips Petroleum Co. on August 30, 2002.
68
In 2012, ConocoPhillips spun
off its downstream assets as a new, separate company, Phillips 66.
69
83.
Phillips 66 is the fourth-largest lubricants supplier in the United States. Phillips 66 claims
that, with its world-class research and development facilities and eight proprietary blending and
packaging facilities, Phillips 66 lubricants are sold in more than 80 countries, including the United
States under the brands of “Phillips 66,” “Red Line” and “Kendall.”
70
84.
ConocoPhillips participates in chemicals and plastics production worldwide through a 50
percent interest in Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LLC (CPChem), one of the world’s largest
producers of olefins, polyolefins, aromatics and styrenics, piping, and proprietary plastics.
71
68
ConocoPhillips, Form 8-K12G3, (Aug. 30, 2002),
http://edgar.secdatabase.com/2323/89882202001082/filing-main.htm (last visited June 15,
2023).
69
Christopher Helman, As ConocoPhillips Spins Off Refining Assets, Think Twice Before Buying
The New Phillips 66, FORBES, (Apr. 30, 2012),
https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2012/04/30/as-conocophillips-spins-off-
refining-assets-should-you-own-the-new-phillips-66/?sh=230ec05b4eb7 (last visited June 15,
2023).
70
Id.
71
New York Encyclopedia, ConocoPhillips, NEW YORK ENCYCLOPEDIA,
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/ConocoPhillips (last visited June 15, 2023).
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85.
As of 2014, CP Chem has 5,000 employees worldwide, $9 billion in assets, and
36 manufacturing and research facilities in eight countries, including the United States, Belgium,
China, Colombia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and South Korea.
72
86.
ConocoPhillips is registered with the SEC and is traded as “COP.” ConocoPhillips markets
and sells its products in Multnomah County and Oregon. ConocoPhillips conducts substantial
fossil fuel product business in Oregon and purposefully avails itself of the rights, obligations, and
privileges of Oregon’s laws.
87.
ConocoPhillips is responsible for substantial GHG emissions from 1965-2023 in both
direct emissions from their extraction and refining and end use of their products.
88.
ConocoPhillips is a major carbon emitter, and its emissions are a substantial factor and
cause of enormous harm to Plaintiff, for which it is individually and jointly and severally liable to
Plaintiff.
72
Chevron Phillips Chemical, Who We Are, CHEVRON PHILLIPS CHEMICAL,
https://www.cpchem.com/who-we-are/company-history (last visited June 15, 2023).
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89.
ConocoPhillips has engaged in an enterprise of misrepresentation about the effect its
activities would have on the climate, and that they could cause such an extreme heat event to occur.
ConocoPhillips’s misrepresentations and fraud were a substantial factor and cause of enormous
harm to Plaintiff for which it is individually and jointly and severally liable to Plaintiff.
90.
Motiva Enterprises, LLC (“Motiva”) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Saudi Arabia
Refining Company (“Aramco”). Motiva has an interest in a joint-venture partnership with Shell
and Texaco known as Motiva Enterprises, LLC, which refines and markets petroleum products in
the eastern and Gulf Coast areas of the United States under the Texaco and Shell brands. Motiva
Enterprises, LLC, is a fully owned affiliate of Aramco and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
73
91.
State-owned Saudi Aramco is one of the world’s largest petrochemical companies, with
2018 sales of almost $356 billion. In 2019, Aramco announced plans to invest $15 billion to
acquire a 20% stake in a Reliance Industries Ltd. unit that includes one of the world's largest
polypropylene businesses.
74
73
Aramco, Saudi Aramco and Shell Finalize Agreement to Separate Motiva Assets, ARAMCO
(Mar. 7, 2017) https://www.aramco.com/en/news-media/news/2017/motiva-shell-aramco-
separation (last visited June 15, 2023).
74
Frank Esposito, Saudi Aramco continues growth with Texas acquisition, (Aug. 21, 2019, 1:25
PM), PLASTIC NEWS EUROPE, https://www.plasticsnews.com/news/saudi-aramco-continues-
buying-spree-flint-hills-feedstocks-site-texas (last visited June 15, 2023).
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92.
In March, Aramco paid a little more than $69bn (€61bn) for a 70% stake in global
commodity and engineering resins supplier Saudi Basic Industries Corp.
75
Saudi Aramco also has
partnered with Dow Inc. on the Sadara plastics and petrochemicals joint venture in Saudi Arabia.
93.
In 2017, Aramco purchased Motiva Enterprises, LLC from Co-Defendant Shell, including
the Port Arthur, Texas refinery and the right to sell Shell branded gasoline and diesel in numerous
US states, including Oregon.
94.
SABIC (Saudi Arabia Basic Industries Corporation) is a public petrochemical company
founded in 1976 and based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. SABIC is 70% owned by Aramco.
76
95.
SABIC is active in chemicals and intermediates, industrial polymers, fertilizers, and
metals. SABIC is the world’s third-largest producer of polyethylene and the fourth-largest
75
On March 27, 2019, SABIC announced that state-owned energy company Saudi Aramco signed
a share purchase agreement to acquire a 70% majority stake in SABIC from the Public Investment
Fund of Saudi Arabia in a private transaction worth $69.1 billion. Aramco, Saudi Aramco Signs
Share Purchase Agreement to Acquire 70% Majority Stake in SABIC from the Public Investment
Fund of Saudi Arabia, ARAMCO (Mar. 27, 2019) https://www.aramco.com/en/news-
media/news/2019/aramco-sabic (last visited June 15, 2023).
76
Bloomberg, Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC: Saudi Arabia): Stock Quote & Company
Profile - Businessweek, BLOOMBERG,
https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/SABIC:AB?leadSource=uverify%20wall (last visited June
15, 2023).
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producer of polypropylene and polyolefins in general.
77
The company operates in more than 40
countries across the world, has 60 manufacturing sites and employs over 40,000 people. According
to Forbes, SABIC generated about $35 billion in sales in 2017.
78
96.
Motiva’s products include diesel, gasoline, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), aviation fuel,
and lubricants, which are supplied to American states in the South, Mid-Atlantic, and the
Northeast. Marketing outlets include 5200 Shell and 76-branded service stations, and 24 storage
and distribution terminals.
97.
Motiva is registered to do business in Oregon. Motiva markets and sells its products in
Oregon through its joint ventures with co-Defendants. Motiva conducts substantial fossil fuel
product business in Oregon and purposefully avails itself of the rights, obligations, and privileges
of Oregon’s laws.
77
Plastics Technology, Top 10 Largest Plastic Producing Companies, PLASTICS TECHNOLOGY
https://www.plastics-technology.com/articles/top-largest-plastic-producing-companies (last
visited June 15, 2023).
78
Forbes, Saudi Basic Industries, Company Overview & News, FORBES,
https://www.forbes.com/companies/saudi-basic-industries/#2aa3a7a073dc (last visited June 15,
2023).
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98.
Parent company Aramco is the world’s largest contributor to global industrial GHG and is
responsible for substantial GHG emissions from 1965-2023 in both direct emissions from their
industry and end use of their products.
99.
Motiva is a major carbon emitter, and its emissions are a substantial factor and cause of
enormous harm to Plaintiff for which it is individually and jointly and severally liable to Plaintiff.
100.
Motiva engaged in an enterprise of misrepresentation about the effect its activities would
have on the climate, and that they could cause such an extreme heat event to occur. Motiva’s
misrepresentations and fraud were a substantial factor and cause of enormous harm to Plaintiff for
which it is individually and jointly and severally liable to Plaintiff.
101.
Occidental Petroleum F.K.A. Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (Anadarko) is an American
Petroleum and natural gas exploration company headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas.
Anadarko is ranked 257th on the Fortune 500
79
and is registered with the SEC and is traded as
79
Fortune 500, Anadarko Petroleum, FORTUNE, https://fortune.com/fortune500/2016/anadarko-
petroleum/ (last visited June 15, 2023).
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APC.
102.
Anadarko, in addition to exploration and production, engages in petroleum and natural gas
gathering, processing, treating, and transportation. The company also participates in the hard
minerals business through its ownership of non-operated joint ventures and royalty arrangements.
103.
As of December 31, 2018, the company had approximately 1.473 billion barrels of oil
equivalent of proved reserves, 45% of which was oil reserves, 37% of which was natural gas, and
18% was natural gas liquids. In 2018, the company produced 666 thousand barrels of oil equivalent
per day.
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104.
In 2019, Anadarko was acquired by Occidental Petroleum. Occidental Petroleum is
responsible for substantial GHG emissions from 1965-2023.
105.
Anadarko operates in the upstream, midstream, and downstream marketing of its oil-based
80
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation 2018 Form 10-K
Annual Report, U.S. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION,
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/773910/000077391019000009/apc201810k-10k.htm
(last visited June 15, 2023).
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products, including plastics.
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106.
The company’s international operations accounted for 14% of total sales volumes during
2018 and 12% of total proved reserves at year-end 2018. The company has holdings in Algeria,
Ghana, Mozambique, Colombia, and The Ivory Coast among others.
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107.
Anadarko markets and sells consumer products
83
worldwide, including in Oregon.
Anadarko conducts substantial fossil fuel product business in Oregon and purposefully avails itself
of the rights, obligations, and privileges of Oregon’s laws.
108.
Anadarko is responsible for substantial GHG emissions from 1965-2023 in both direct
emissions from their extraction and end use of their products.
109.
Considering Anadarko’s responsibility, coupled with its parent carbon major Occidental,
Anadarko and its parent are responsible for substantial GHG emissions from 1965-2023 in both
direct emissions from the extraction and end use of their products.
81
Business Wire, Occidental Completes Acquisition of Anadarko, BUSINESS WIRE (Aug. 8, 2019,
11:21 AM) https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190808005586/en/Occidental-
Completes-Acquisition-of-Anadarko (last visited June 15, 2023).
82
Fortune 500, Anadarko Petroleum, FORTUNE, https://fortune.com/fortune500/2016/anadarko-
petroleum/ (last visited June 15, 2023).
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Forbes, Anadarko Petroleum, FORBES https://www.forbes.com/companies/anadarko-
petroleum/?sh=40dcb73c468c (last visited June 15, 2023).
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Phone - (503) 228-5222
Fax - (503) 273-9175
110.
Anadarko is a major carbon emitter, and its emissions are a substantial factor, producing
cause, and proximate cause of enormous harm to Plaintiff for which it is individually and jointly
and severally liable to Plaintiff.
111.
Anadarko engaged in an enterprise of misrepresentation about the effect its activities would
have on the climate, and that they could cause such an extreme heat event to occur. Anadarko’s
misrepresentations and fraud were a substantial factor and cause of enormous harm to Plaintiff for
which it is individually and jointly and severally liable to Plaintiff.
112.
Defendant, Valero Energy Corporation, (“Valero”) is a corporation organized under the
laws of the state of Delaware, with its principal place of business at One Valero Way, in San
Antonio, Texas.
113.
Valero Energy Corporation is the world’s largest independent petroleum refiner. Through
its subsidiaries, Valero Energy Corporation owns 15 petroleum refineries in the United States,
Canada, and the United Kingdom which generate total throughput capacity of approximately 3.2
million barrels per day. Valero Energy Corporation and its subsidiaries supply approximately 7,000
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independently owned fuel outlets carrying its family of brands in the United States, Canada, the
U.K., Ireland, and Mexico, as well as rack and bulk markets in those countries and Peru.
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114.
Valero Energy Corporation determines and directs marketing, production, and/or
distribution of fossil fuel products for itself and its subsidiaries. Additionally, Valero Energy
Corporation directs policy and procedures for itself and its subsidiaries regarding the marketing,
advertising, climate change, and greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel products, and
communications strategies concerning climate change and the link between fossil fuel use and
climate-related impacts on the environment and communities.
115.
Valero Energy Corporation subsidiary, Valero Marketing and Supply Company, has been
registered to do business in Oregon and has had a designated agent for service of process in Oregon
from 1999 to the present. Valero Energy Corporation subsidiary, Valero Payment Services
Company, has been registered to do business in Oregon and has had a designated agent for service
of process in Oregon from 2015 to the present. Valero Energy Corporation subsidiary, Valero
Refining Company-California, has been registered to do business in Oregon and has had a
designated agent for service of process in Oregon from 2000 to the present.
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Valero, Our History Advancing the Future of Energy Through the Years
https://www.valero.com/about/our-history (last visited June 18, 2023).
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116.
At times relevant herein, Valero Energy Corporation, individually, and through one or more
of its subsidiaries, sold fossil fuel products including fuels, engine oils, lubricants, and/or greases
at several gas stations owned and/or operated in Oregon including but not limited to stations
located in the Oregon cities of Ashland, Bend, Eugene, Klamath Falls, and Medford. Valero Energy
Corporation and the subsidiaries it controls conduct substantial fossil fuel product business in
Oregon and purposefully avails itself of the rights, obligations, and privileges of Oregon’s laws.
117.
Valero is responsible for substantial GHG emissions in both direct emissions from their
refining, transportation, and retail sales of their products.
118.
Fossil fuel emissions attributable to Valero Energy Company and the subsidiaries it controls
are a substantial factor and cause of enormous harm to Plaintiff for which the company is
individually and jointly and severally liable to Plaintiff. Valero Energy Company refused to
disclose the truth about the nature and degree to which its fossil fuel operations, and those of the
subsidiaries it controls, could super heat and thereby harm Multnomah County. This Defendant’s
deception is a substantial factor and cause of enormous harm to the Plaintiff for which the
Defendant is individually and jointly and severally liable to Plaintiff.
119.
Koch Industries, Inc., (“Koch”) is a corporation organized and existing under the laws of
the State of Kansas with its headquarters located in Wichita, Kansas. Koch is the second largest
privately held company in the United States and earned more than $120 billion in revenue in
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2022.
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120.
Koch Industries, Inc. consists of multiple subsidiaries and affiliates, many of which are and
have been involved in the exploration, extraction, production, manufacturing, refining,
distribution, and/or marketing of petroleum products. Those subsidiaries unnamed in this
Complaint are DOES 1-25.
121.
One such subsidiary, Flint Hills Resources LP, formerly known as Koch Petroleum Group,
is a wholly owned subsidiary of Koch Industries which sells gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, ethanol,
polymers, intermediate chemicals, base oils, and asphalt. It operates refineries with a combined
crude oil processing capacity of more than 700,000 barrels per day.
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Additionally, it transports
petroleum products through a network of over 4,000 miles of pipeline.
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122.
Koch Industries, Inc. has a substantial presence in the State of Oregon. According to the
company website, Koch Industries, Inc. accounts for 1,617 jobs and $148,591,526 in wages and
85
Murphy, A., America’s Largest Private Companies Forbes (Decemner 1, 2022)
https://www.forbes.com/lists/largest-private-companies/?sh=4d6a7d9cbac4 (last visited on June
18, 2023).
86
Flint Hills Resources, The Rewards of Refining, https://www.fhr.com/products-services/fuels-
and-aromatics (last visited on June 18, 2023).
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Id.
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benefits in the State of Oregon.
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One of its wholly owned subsidiaries, Georgia Pacific, has 4
locations in Oregon, including one in Multnomah County, which account for total combined
compensation and benefits, including direct and indirect jobs, of $450,000,000, and capital
investments and acquisitions in Oregon since 2013 valued at $746,000,000.
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123.
Several Koch Industries, Inc. subsidiaries, including the petroleum refining, distributing,
and transporting subsidiary, Flint Hills Resources LP, are registered to do business in the State of
Oregon. Flint Hills Resources LP and its predecessor entities have been registered to do business
in Oregon from 1995 to the present.
124.
Koch Industries, Inc. controls and has controlled companywide decision making about the
amount and scope of its fossil fuel production and sales, including those of its subsidiaries. Koch
Industries, Inc. determines and directs marketing, production, and/or distribution of fossil fuel
products by its subsidiaries. Additionally, Koch Industries, Inc. controls and has controlled
companywide decision making on matters including but not limited to marketing, advertising,
climate change, and greenhouse gas emissions from its fossil fuel products, and communications
88
Koch Industries, Driving Change Around the World – Locations
https://www.kochind.com/about/locations (last visited on June 18, 2023).
89
Georgia Pacific Our Locations https://www.gp.com/about-us/locations/oregon/ (last visited on
June 18, 2023).
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strategies concerning climate change and the link between fossil fuel use and climate-related
impacts on the environment and communities, on behalf of itself and its subsidiaries.
125.
Defendant Koch Industries, Inc. and its predecessors, successors, parents, subsidiaries,
affiliates, and/or divisions, are collectively referred to herein as “Koch.”
126.
Koch is responsible for substantial GHG emissions in both direct emissions from their
industry activities, and end use of their products.
127.
At times relevant herein, Koch, through one or more of its subsidiaries, sold fossil fuel
products including fuels, engine oils, lubricants, and/or greases at several gas stations owned
and/or operated in Oregon. Upon information and belief, Koch, and the subsidiaries it controls.
conduct substantial fossil fuel product business in Oregon and Koch purposefully avails itself of
the rights, obligations, and privileges of Oregon’s laws.
128.
Fossil fuel emissions attributable to Koch and the subsidiaries it controls are a substantial
factor and cause of enormous harm to Plaintiff for which the company is individually and jointly
and severally liable to Plaintiff. Koch refused to disclose the truth about the nature and degree to
which its fossil fuel operations, and those of the subsidiaries it controls, could super heat and
thereby harm Multnomah County. Instead, Koch has funded a concerted effort to deceive the public
through climate change denial campaigns. This Defendant’s deception is a substantial factor and
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cause of enormous harm to the Plaintiff for which the Defendant is individually and jointly and
severally liable to Plaintiff.
129.
Defendant Total Specialties USA, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of TotalEnergies, S.E.
and/or its predecessor Total S.A. and, at times relevant herein, marketed, distributed, and sold the
fossil fuel products of TotalEnergies, S.E. and/or its predecessor Total S.A. Total Specialties USA
Inc. is incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Houston, Texas.
130.
Total Specialties USA Inc. is and/or has been registered to do business in the State of
Oregon and has and/or previously had designated an agent for service of process in Oregon. Total
Specialties USA Inc. does substantial fossil fuel product-related business in Oregon, and a
substantial portion of its fossil fuel products are transported, distributed, marketed, and/or sold in
Oregon. For instance, Total Specialties USA Inc. maintains regular sales or distribution
relationships with Oregon distributors and sellers of Total fossil fuel products, including engine
oils, lubricants, greases, and/or industrial petroleum products. Said Oregon distributors or sellers
include, but are not necessarily limited to, Mighty Auto Parts, which maintains one or more retail
stores in Oregon, and Advance Auto Parts, which maintains several retail stores in Oregon,
including multiple retail stores in Multnomah County. Total Specialties USA Inc. conducts
substantial fossil fuel product business in Oregon and purposefully avails itself of the rights,
obligations, and privileges of Oregon’s laws.
131.
Defendant Total Specialties USA Inc., and its predecessors, successors, parents,
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subsidiaries, affiliates, and divisions, are collectively referred to herein as “Total.”
132.
Total is responsible for substantial GHG emissions from 1965-2023 in both direct
emissions from their industry activities, and end use of their products.
133.
Fossil fuel emissions attributable to Total are a substantial factor in causing enormous
harm to Plaintiff for which the company is individually and jointly and severally liable to Plaintiff.
Total refused to disclose the truth about the nature and degree to which its fossil fuel operations
could super heat and thereby harm Multnomah County. This Defendant’s deceptions have caused
substantial harm to the Plaintiff for which the Defendant is individually and jointly and severally
liable.
134.
Marathon Oil Corporation is incorporated under the laws of the State of Delaware with its
corporate headquarters and principal place of business located in the Marathon Oil Tower in
Houston, Texas.
135.
Marathon Oil Corporation consists of multiple subsidiaries and affiliates involved in the
exploration, extraction, production, and marketing of fossil fuel products. As of December 31,
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2020, the company had 972 million barrels of oil equivalent of estimated proven reserves. In 2020,
the company sold 383 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day.
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136.
Marathon Oil Company is an energy company incorporated in the State of Ohio with its
principal place of business in Houston, Texas. Marathon Oil Company is a wholly owned
subsidiary and/or corporate ancestor of Marathon Oil Corporation which acts on Marathon Oil
Corporation’s behalf and subject to Marathon Oil Corporation’s control.
137.
Marathon Oil Corporation subsidiary, Marathon Oil Company, has been registered to do
business in Oregon and has had a designated agent for service of process in Oregon from 1982 to
the present.
138.
Marathon Petroleum Corporation was a wholly owned subsidiary of Marathon Oil
Corporation until was spun off from the operations of Marathon Oil Corporation in 2011.
91
Marathon Petroleum is a company organized and existing under the laws of the state of Delaware
with its principal place of business in Findlay, Ohio.
90
Marathon Oil Corporation Form 10-K, December 31, 2020
https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/101778/000010177821000018/mro-
20201231.htm (last visited on June 18, 2023).
91
Marathon Landing Page, Announcement that Marathon Oil and Marathon Petroleum
Corporation are separate entities as of 2011, https://www.marathon.com/ (last visited on June 18,
2023).
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139.
Marathon Petroleum Corporation operates the nation’s largest refining system, with a crude
oil refining capacity of approximately 2.9 million barrels per day from 13 refineries across the
United States, including Anacortes, Washington.
92
140.
Marathon Petroleum Corporation owns the general partner and majority limited partner
interest in MPLX LP, a midstream company that owns and operates gathering, processing, and
fractionation assets, as well as crude oil and light product transportation and logistics
infrastructure.
93
MPLX LP subsidiary, Marathon Pipe Line LLC, operates pipelines, storage tanks,
and marine facilities across the country, including a pipeline called the “Boise – Pasco 8”-6”
Products” pipeline which runs through northeastern Oregon.
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141.
Marathon Petroleum Corporation maintains a coast-to-coast retail network of gas stations
where Marathon Petroleum Corporation products are sold, including Marathon branded stations as
well as stations bearing the ARCO brand which Marathon Petroleum Corporation acquired in
92
Marathon, Nation’s Largest Refiner, MPC Refinery Locations in the US,
https://www.marathonpetroleum.com/Operations/Refining/ (last visited on June 18, 2023).
93
Marathon Petroleum Corporation, We are MPC - About Us,
https://www.marathonpetroleum.com/About/ (last visited on June 18, 2023).
94
Marathon Petroleum Corporation, Coast to Coast Retail Network
https://www.marathonpetroleum.com/Operations/Retail/ (last visited on June 18, 2023).
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2018.
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There are currently 41 ARCO stations in the State of Oregon, several of which are in
Multnomah County.
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142.
Marathon Petroleum Corporation was registered to do business in Oregon from 1982 until
on or after 2017 and has had a designated agent for service of process in Oregon from 1982 to the
present. Marathon Petroleum Corporation subsidiary, Marathon Pipeline LLC has been registered
to do business in Oregon and has had a designated agent for service of process in Oregon from
2019 to the present.
143.
Defendants Marathon Oil Corporation, Marathon Oil Company, and Marathon Petroleum
Corporation and their predecessors, successors, parents, subsidiaries, affiliates, and divisions are
collectively referred to herein as (“Marathon”).
144.
Marathon conducts substantial fossil fuel product business in Oregon and purposefully
avails itself of the rights, obligations, and privileges of Oregon’s laws.
145.
According to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, Marathon is responsible
95
ARCO, Gas Station Locations https://www.arco.com/en-us/northwest/find-a-
station/multnomah%20county,%20OR/ (last visited on June 18, 2023); Number of gas Stations in
the United States in 2023,
https://www.scrapehero.com/location-reports/ARCO-USA/ (last visited on June 18, 2023).
96
Id.
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for 42,655,513 metric tons of CO
2
e from 2010 to 2020.
146.
Marathon is responsible for substantial GHG emissions from 1965-2023 in both direct
emissions from their industry, and end use of their products.
147.
Marathon’s public statements and proclamations made in furtherance of its campaign of
deception and denial, and its repeated failure to warn the public and consumers of global warming-
related hazards when it marketed, advertised, and sold its products, were intended to conceal, and
mislead the public and consumers about the serious adverse consequences from continued use of
Marathon’s products. Said conduct was intended to reach and influence Multnomah County, as
well as its residents, among others, to continue unabated use of Defendants’ fossil fuel products,
resulting in Multnomah County’s injuries.
148.
Fossil fuel emissions attributable to Marathon are a cause and substantial factor of
enormous harm to Plaintiff for which the company is individually and jointly and severally liable
to Plaintiff. Marathon refused to disclose the truth about the nature and degree to which its fossil
fuel operations could super heat and thereby harm Multnomah County. Marathon’s deceptions are
a substantial factor and cause of enormous harm to the Plaintiff for which this Defendant is
individually and jointly and severally liable to Plaintiff.
149.
Space Age Fuel, Inc. was organized under the laws of Oregon in 1982. Its principal place
of business is 15525 SE FOR MOR CT, Clackamas, OR 97015. Space Age Fuel, Inc. is a resident
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of the State of Oregon and purposefully avails itself of the rights, obligations, and privileges of the
laws of Oregon.
150.
Space Age Fuel is a fossil fuel marketer, and retail distributor.
151.
Space Age Fuel owns a retail chain of fuel and convenience stores. Space Age Fuel operates
predominately under the Space Age brand along with the Exxon and Union 76 brands.
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152.
Over the years Space Age Fuel Inc. has experienced rapid growth. Space Age Fuel Inc. is
one of the largest independent marketers in the State of Oregon.
153.
Space Age Fuel consists of four divisions which are the company operated stations,
commercial sales accounts, commercial freight deliveries and home heating oil deliveries.
Currently Space Age Fuel currently operates nine truck and trailers in the Pacific Northwest.
154.
Space Age Fuel delivers its own fossil fuel and the fossil fuel of others in the state of
Oregon. Space Age Fuel currently operates twenty-one locations and supplies another 60 retail and
wholesale fueling facilities.
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Space Age, Retail, http://spaceagefuel.com/retail/ (last visited on June 18, 2023).
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155.
Space Age Fuel also transports fuel for other Petroleum companies when the need arises.
Space Age Fuel sells both unbranded and branded products. Space Age Fuel’s branded products
are with Exxon and ConocoPhillips.
156.
Space Age is responsible for substantial GHG emissions from 1982-2023 in both direct
emissions from their storage, transportation and end use of their products.
157.
During the years 2010 through 2021, Space Age Fuel contributed 7,601,219 metric tons of
CO
2
greenhouse gas emissions in Oregon.
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These numbers were self-reported to the Oregon
Department of Environmental Quality. Carbon emissions attributable to this Defendant are a cause
and substantial factor of enormous harm to Plaintiff for which this Defendant is individually and
jointly and severally liable to Plaintiff. This Defendant’s refusal to disclose that its fossil fuel
activities could cause substantial damage to Plaintiff and deadly consequences to the County’s
inhabitants was a substantial factor and cause of enormous harm to Plaintiff for which this
Defendant is individually and jointly and severally liable to Plaintiff.
98
Fuel Suppliers, 2010 – 2021 – Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Fuel Use, Oregon DEQ,
https://www.oregon.gov/deq/ghgp/Pages/GHG-Emissions.aspx (last visited June 13, 2023).
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2. Coal Defendants
158.
Peabody Energy Corporation (“Peabody”) is a multi-national energy company
incorporated in the State of Delaware and with its principal place of business in St. Louis, Missouri.
Through a diverse web of affiliates and subsidiaries, Peabody is the world’s largest coal extractor
by volume. Peabody is registered with the SEC and is traded under ticker “BTU.”
159.
Peabody primary business consists of the mining, sale, and distribution of coal, which is
purchased for use in electricity generation and steelmaking. Peabody also markets, brokers and
trades coal through offices in China, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
160.
In 2017, Peabody recorded sales of 191.5 million tons of coal.
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Peabody markets coal to
electricity generating and industrial customers in more than 25 nations on six continents. As of
December 31, 2017, the company had approximately 5.2 billion tons of proven and probable coal
reserves.
100
161.
Peabody maintains ownership of majority interests in 23 surface and underground mining
99
Peabody, Annual report which provides a comprehensive overview of the company for the past
year, PEABODY (2021), https://www.peabodyenergy.com/Investor-Info/Shareholder-
Information/Annual-Report (last visited June 15, 2023).
100
Id.
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operations located throughout the United States and Australia.
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On information and belief,
Peabody directs some of its business activities into Oregon and purposefully avails itself of the
rights, obligations, and privileges of the laws of Oregon.
162.
In the United States, company-owned mines are located in Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona,
New Mexico, Illinois, and Indiana. Peabody’s largest operation is the North Antelope Rochelle
Mine located in Campbell County, Wyoming, mining more than 92 million tons of coal in 2016.
102
Peabody spun off coal mining operations in West Virginia and Kentucky into Patriot Coal
Corporation in October 2007.
163.
Vitol Group, the biggest independent oil trader, and mining giant Coal Defendant Peabody
Energy Corp. have joined forces. The companies have teamed with a U.K. startup which has
developed a process to pulverize coal, remove impurities and pollutants, and blend it with crude
or fuels for use by refineries and other customers.
103
101
Peabody Energy, Operations, PEABODY ENERGY, https://www.peabodyenergy.com/ (last
visited June 15, 2023).
102
Mine Safety and Health Administration, MSHA Mine Overview, MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH
ADMINISTRATION, https://www.msha.gov/ (last visited June 15, 2023).
103
Andy Hoffman, Oil Trader Vitol Teams with Peabody to Grind Coal for Refineries,
BLOOMBERG (Jul. 18, 2018), https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/oil-trader-vitol-teams-with-peabody-
to-grind-coal-for-refineries-1.1109759 (last visited June 15, 2023).
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164.
Peabody also has known joint venture with another carbon major, Coal India.
104
Peabody
Coal India ranks eighth among the top twenty companies. Coal India is responsible for substantial
GHG emissions from 1965-2023 in both direct emissions from their industry and end use of their
products.
165.
Peabody is responsible for fossil fuel generated GHG emissions from 1965-2023, in both
direct emissions from their industrial operations and end use of their products.
105
166.
Along with its joint venture, Peabody is responsible for substantial fossil fuel sourced GHG
emissions from 1965-2023. GHG emissions attributable to Peabody are a substantial factor and
cause of enormous harm to Plaintiff for which Peabody is individually and jointly and severally
liable to Plaintiff. Peabody’s failure to disclose the truth that its GHG emissions could cause
extreme heat events and thereby inflict great damage to Plaintiff is a substantial factor and cause
of enormous harm to Plaintiff for which Peabody is individually and jointly and severally liable to
Plaintiff.
104
Mineweb, Coal India to ink joint venture with Peabody, MINEWEB (May 18, 2011, 6:20 AM),
https://www.mining.com/coal-india-to-ink-joint-venture-with-peabody/102/ (last visited June 15,
2023).
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Griffin, supra footnote 67.
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167.
The Oil and Gas Defendants and Coal Defendants listed above are collectively responsible
for a substantial portion of all GHG emissions from 1965-2023, in both direct emissions from their
industry activities and end use of their product.
106
168.
Thus, these Oil and Gas Defendants and Coal Defendants (together called “Fossil Fuel
Defendants”) were a substantial factor and cause of the County's damages from extreme heat
events, wildfires, and droughts described herein.
169.
Decades ago, the Fossil Fuel Defendants knew that their fossil fuel activities would
substantially contribute to a dramatic rise in the concentration of GHG in the atmosphere and that
the concentration of GHG in the atmosphere would lead to significant temperature changes, which
would, in turn, lead to changes in the global climate, such as the increased frequency and intensity
of extreme weather-related events like the heat dome and wildfires. They knew and should have
known that immediate and sustained reductions in carbon pollution from their products were
required to avoid a new normal of fossil fuel induced climate catastrophes. Had the Defendants
disclosed the truth somewhere along the way, that because of the mass consumption of Defendants’
fossil fuel products, regions like Multnomah County would experience high temperatures for a
sustained period more than 35 degrees F above normal, including highs of 116 degrees F in June,
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an environmentally conscious community and leadership structure like that in the County would
have been able to prepare for such an extreme. The Defendants knew and foresaw that which the
County did not: The climate change that the Defendants were causing did not just include the
melting of distant ice caps, stranding of polar bears, rising of sea levels, and the diminishment of
Greenland, but rather, could heat and smoke choke the County to a degree that was deadly to many
of its inhabitants and unparalleled in its history.
170.
When an allegation is made in this Complaint to an act or omission of the Defendants,
unless specifically attributed or otherwise stated, such allegations assert that the officers, directors,
agents, employees, or representatives of the Defendants committed or authorized such an act or
omission, or failed to adequately supervise or properly control or direct their employees while
engaged in the management, direction, operation or control of the affairs of Defendants, and did
so while acting within the scope of their employment or agency. In addition, each Fossil Fuel
Defendant acted individually, as well as in concerted or coordinated action with other Defendants,
when causing economic harm and property damages to the Plaintiff, as well as in the negligent
and/or intentional creation of a public nuisance in the County.
3. Estimated Carbon Footprint for Fossil Fuel Defendants
171.
Each Oil and Coal Defendant above is a major carbon emitter. Each Defendant's carbon
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footprint,
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the amount of carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases) historically emitted from
its operations and products is a substantial factor in causing the warming that is responsible for the
occurrence, frequency and severity of the extreme weather events alleged by Plaintiff, including
107
Defendants have reported on their equity production of crude oil and natural gas and related
fossil fuels since the passage of the Securities Act in 1933, and even earlier in annual reports to
shareholders. However, oil and gas companies only began reporting on refinery output and
petroleum product sales in the 1990s (often much later) in annual reports to shareholders or 10-Ks
or 20-Fs filed with the SEC. Plaintiff has used publicly available data to estimate emissions of
carbon dioxide (CO
2
) on three components of emissions attributed to the Defendant:
1. Fossil fuel production method: emissions based on the carbon contained in the company’s
net equity production of crude oil and natural gas on an annual basis, deducting for
sequestered net non-energy uses of petroleum for lubricants, petrochemicals, and road oil,
and the combustion of the carbon fuels by a particular Defendant’s worldwide consumers
who use those fuels as intended;
2. Refinery Output method: emissions based on the carbon content of company-reported
petroleum products supplied through the company’s own refineries (or share of jointly
owned refineries), ignoring output of petrochemical and other non-combustible feedstocks.
Defendant may run only its own crude oil through its refineries, or, more commonly,
supplement refinery input with third party crude oil;
3. Petroleum product sales method: emissions based on the carbon content of company-
reported sale of petroleum products such as jet-fuel, gasoline, distillate fuels, heavy fuels,
propane, and the like. As with the refinery output method, the emission factor per barrel
(bbl) of each fuel is well known, hence the emissions of CO
2
for each Defendant’s sales of
petroleum products can be estimated. Vertically integrated Defendants procure additional
quantities of finished petroleum products to supplement those refined in its refineries and
often sell far more petroleum products than refined through its global supply chains to
wholesalers and branded gas stations.
Plaintiff’s estimate of each Defendant’s carbon footprint is a good faith effort to compile the
figures based on the information available. As such, the estimates herein are conservative. Through
the process of discovery, continued research, and development by experts, Plaintiff will amend the
carbon footprint quantity of each Defendant over a given period of time as new information is
obtained.
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but not limited to the 2021 heat dome, the extreme heat of 2022, the ongoing drought and the
Oregon wildfires and wildfire-generated smoke. Defendant’s historical carbon emissions can be
measured as a linear carbon-to-climate temperature response.
172.
Based on the information available, the table below indicates, from 1965 to 2022,
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for
each Defendant, the total extraction-based emissions and the total petroleum product sales
emissions, both totals expressed in tons of carbon dioxide emitted (i.e., tCO
2
e). These figures
exclude emissions from flaring, refinery emissions, Defendant’s own fuel use, vented CO
2
, and
fugitive methane, the calculation and addition of which will substantially increase Defendant’s
carbon footprint for the time in question. Scientists have established a simple yet robust metric for
measuring the “dose-response” relationship between cumulative CO
2
emissions and global
warming, as measured in degrees Celsius. The formula is referred to as TCRE, the Transient
Climate Response to Cumulative CO
2
Emissions. TCRE is the proportionality constant that links
a quantity of CO
2
emissions to a global temperature increase. The relationship between the amount
of emissions and the change in temperature is near linear. The TCRE range is reported as for every
1000 Pac (petagrams of carbon) emitted there is a change in the global mean surface temperature
between 1.0°C -2.3°C.
109
108
Data for the year 2023 is not yet available but we know these Fossil Fuel Defendants are
emitting mTCO
2
.
109
IPCC, Climate Change 2021 The Physical Science Basis (2021),
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM_final.pdf (p.28);
Damon, “The proportionality of global warming to cumulative carbon emissions,” Nature, June
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173.
Emissions attributed to top companies from petroleum products and natural gas sales:
COMPANY
YEARS OF COVERAGE
PRODUCTION-RELATED
MTCO
2
British Petroleum
1965-2022
31,212
Chevron
1965-2022
39,034
ConocoPhillips
1965-2022
14,102
ExxonMobil
1965-2022
37,120
Occidental
1965-2022
4,072
Peabody Energy
1965-2022
15,186
Shell
1965-2022
28,546
TotalEnergies
1965-2022
12,478
174.
Based on the information available, from 2010 to 2022, the carbon emissions from the
combustion of petroleum and natural gas products sold by Defendant Marathon, totaled 4,575
MtCO
2
.
175.
Based on the information available, from 1955 to 2022, the carbon emissions from the
combustion of natural gas products only sold by Defendant Anadarko/Occidental, totaled 757
MtCO
2
.
176.
Based on the information available, from 2006 to 2022, the carbon emissions from the
11, 2009 (carbon–climate response (CCR), defined as the ratio of temperature change to
cumulative carbon emissions, is in the range 1.0–2.1 °C per trillion tonnes of carbon (Tt C)
emitted.
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combustion of petroleum products only sold by Defendant Koch Industries, totaled 1,720 MtCO
2
.
177.
Based on the information available, from 2010 to 2022, the carbon emissions from the
combustion of petroleum products only sold by Defendant Motiva, totaled 1,108 MtCO
2
.
178.
Based on the information available, from 2010 to 2022, the carbon emissions from the
combustion of petroleum products only sold by Defendant Valero Energy totaled 4,737 MtCO
2
.
179.
The graph below illustrates the steady rise of carbon emissions from the burning of oil,
natural gas and coal from 1900 to 1950, when the total CO
2
emitted by the entire industry began
to rise dramatically. If the Fossil Fuel Defendants had heeded the warnings provided by their own
scientists in 1965, the 2021 heat dome would likely not have occurred.
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180.
The chart below illustrates that half of the total global emissions from the combustion of
fossil fuels were emitted into the atmosphere since 1994. The combined emissions from these three
industries between 1950 and 2020 increased approximately nine-fold. These charts starkly
demonstrate that since the early 1960’s, when Defendants were firmly aware of the catastrophic
consequences of excess atmospheric carbon pollution from the normal use of their products,
instead of pausing on the supply of oil, gas, and coal, and thus tamping down on the rising
cumulative toxic emissions, they ramped up extraction refining and sales approximately eight-
fold. Instead of hitting the proverbial brakes, they hit the gas. But for the Fossil Fuel Defendants’
conduct, more than half of the total greenhouse gas accumulation would not have occurred, the
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climate would not have dramatically warmed and extreme weather events would not be as severe
or as frequent as those that have been smothering the County since late June 2021.
4. Trade and Front Groups
181.
The American Petroleum Institute (“API”) is a national trade association representing the
oil and gas industry, formed in 1919. API is headquartered in Washington, DC. In 2021, API
reported total revenues of $228,789,035.
182.
The following Defendants and/or their predecessors in interest are and/or have been API
members at times relevant to this litigation: Exxon, Shell, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, Motiva,
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and Anadarko, all of whom have actively served on boards, committees and groups for API.
110
183.
API is a nonprofit corporation registered to do business in Oregon during the period at
issue in this lawsuit.
184.
With more than 600 members, API is the country’s largest oil trade association.
185.
API asserts that it “speak[s] for the oil and gas industry to the public, Congress and the
Executive Branch, state governments and the media.”
111
API states that it “negotiate[s] with
regulatory agencies, represent[s] the industry in legal proceedings, participate[s] in coalitions and
work[s] in partnership with other associations to achieve [its] members’ public policy goals.”
112
API’s purpose is to advance the individual members’ collective business interests, which includes
increasing consumers’ consumption of oil and gas to Defendants’ financial benefit. Among other
110
API’s full membership is much more extensive, and includes predecessors to the Fossil Fuel
Defendants named herein, American Standard of Indiana (BP), Asiatic (Shell), Ashland
(Marathon), Atlantic Richfield (BP), British Petroleum (BP), Chevron Standard of California
(Chevron), Esso Research (ExxonMobil), Ethyl (formerly affiliated with Esso, which was
subsumed by ExxonMobil), Getty (ExxonMobil), Gulf (Chevron, among others), Humble
Standard of New Jersey (ExxonMobil/Chevron/BP), Marathon, Mobil (ExxonMobil), Pan
American (BP), Shell, Standard of Ohio (BP), Texaco (Chevron), Union (Chevron), Skelly
(ExxonMobil), Colonial Pipeline (ownership has included BP, ExxonMobil, and Chevron entities,
among others), Continental (ConocoPhillips), Dupont (former owner of Conoco), Phillips
(ConocoPhillips), and Caltex (Chevron).
111
About API, American Petroleum Institute, https://www.api.org/about (last visited on June 12,
2023).
112
Id.
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functions, API coordinates among members of the petroleum industry and gathers information of
interest to the industry and disseminates that information to its members.
186.
API has coordinated and participated in a deliberate misinformation campaign to downplay
and/or outright deny the causal relationship between the GHG emissions of its members and
extreme weather events like those described herein. API’s deception is a substantial factor and
cause of enormous harm to the Plaintiff for which this Defendant is individually and jointly and
severally liable to Plaintiff. Upon information and belief, API has directed business activities into
Oregon and purposefully availed itself of the rights, obligations, and privileges of the laws of
Oregon.
187.
The Western States Petroleum Association (“WSPA”) is a non-profit trade association
headquartered in Sacramento, California, representing Fossil Fuel Defendants’ interests in
Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. Its members include, and at times relevant
to this matter, have included ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, Valero, Marathon, and BP.
188.
The Western States Petroleum Association was founded in 1907 and represents companies
that account for the bulk of petroleum exploration, production, refining, transportation, and
marketing in the five western states of Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.
189.
WSPA has engaged in a climate deception/misinformation campaign in Oregon to continue
to further the business objectives of its carbon polluting members. WSPA has conducted substantial
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business activities in Oregon and purposefully availed itself of the rights, obligations, and
privileges of the laws of Oregon.
190.
WSPA has coordinated and participated in a deliberate misinformation campaign to
downplay and/or deny the causal relationship between the GHG emissions of its members and
extreme weather events like that those described herein. WSPA’s deception is a substantial factor
and cause of enormous harm to the Plaintiff for which this Defendant is individually and jointly
and severally liable to Plaintiff.
5. Other Defendants
191.
McKinsey and Company, Inc. United States is a privately owned entity headquartered in
New York, New York. McKinsey is registered to do business in Oregon and in all fifty states. At
all relevant times, McKinsey has transacted business throughout Oregon, including in Multnomah
County. McKinsey has conducted substantial business activities in Oregon and purposefully
availed itself of the rights, obligations, and privileges of the laws of Oregon.
192.
Defendant McKinsey & Company, Inc. is a corporation organized under the laws of the
state of New York. McKinsey’s principal place of business is located at 711 Third Avenue, New
York, NY 10017. It may be served with process via its registered agent, Corporation Service
Company, at 80 State Street, Albany, NY 12207.
193.
Defendant McKinsey Holdings, Inc. is a Delaware corporation with its principal place of
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business is located at 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017. It may be served with process via
its registered agent, Corporation Service Company, 251 Little Falls Drive, Wilmington, DE 19808.
194.
Upon information and belief, McKinsey & Company, Inc. is the parent company of
McKinsey & Company Holdings, Inc., which is itself the parent company of both McKinsey &
Company, Inc. United States and McKinsey & Company, Inc. Washington D.C. Upon information
and belief, each subsidiary corporation is wholly owned by its parent. to as (collectively
“McKinsey”).
195.
McKinsey is one of the world’s largest and most influential consulting companies.
McKinsey prides itself on learning the intimacies of its clients’ businesses, embedding itself in
management, and evolving “transformational partnerships” with actual boots on the ground.
McKinsey’s work with fossil fuel entities dates back several decades. Though McKinsey promotes
itself as being “committed to protecting the planet,” McKinsey counts at least seventeen mining
and fossil fuel companies among its biggest clients. McKinsey’s claims of commitment to
environmental protectionism stand in stark contrast to the millions of dollars it has earned assisting
its fossil fuel and mining company clients in promoting themes to deny the existence and/or gravity
of ACC.
196.
Since 2010, McKinsey has worked for at least forty-three of the hundred companies that
have pumped substantial tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere since 1965.
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197.
Those forty-three companies, when accounting for the customers who use their products,
were responsible for a substantial share of the greenhouse gas emissions from the fossil fuel
industry, including Defendants, in the past several decades.
198.
Chevron is one of McKinsey’s biggest clients, generating at least $50 million in consulting
fees in 2019. Saudi Aramco, number one on the list, has been a McKinsey client since at least the
1970s. During that half a century, Chevron’s total emissions were approximately 43.7 gigatons (43
billion tons) of carbon dioxide. In 2019, energy-related emissions for the entire planet amounted
to about 33 gigatons, according to the International Energy Agency.
199.
Other top McKinsey fossil fuel clients include ExxonMobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell,
Russia’s Gazprom, and Qatar Petroleum.
200.
McKinsey has coordinated and participated in a deliberate misinformation campaign to
downplay and/or outright deny the causal relationship between the GHG emissions of its members
and extreme weather events like that those described herein. McKinsey’s deception is a substantial
factor and cause of enormous harm to the Plaintiff for which this Defendant is individually and
jointly and severally liable to Plaintiff.
201.
DOES 25-250, are heretofore unnamed entities, organizations or persons actively engaged
in the GHG emissions, or in the deceptive enterprise that have harmed Multnomah County.
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C. Ven ue
202.
Venue is proper in Multnomah County under ORS 14.080(1) because a substantial portion
of the causes of action asserted by Plaintiff herein arose in Multnomah County.
III. FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS
A. Anthropogenic Climate Change (ACC) is Scorching the Planet
203.
Fossil fuels are a primary cause of global warming. This is the consensus among the world’s
leading scientists.
113
Present-day concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO
2
) are at higher
levels than at any time in at least the past two million years.
114
204.
ACC is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the
globe, including in the Pacific Northwest and Multnomah County.
115
In 1960, the atmospheric
113
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), Chapter
2.1, (2023) (“Human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have
unequivocally caused global warming, with global surface temperature reaching 1.1°C above
1850-1900 in 2011-2020. Global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase over 2010-
2019, with unequal historical and ongoing contributions arising from unsustainable energy
use…”). https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM_final.pdf
114
Gulev, S. K. et al. Changing State of the Climate System. In Climate Change 2021: The Physical
Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (eds. Masson-Delmotte, V. et al.)(Cambridge
University Press Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 287–422), (2021)
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009157896.004.
115
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concentration of CO
2
was measured at 317 ppm. Today it is 423 ppm.
205.
The fossil fuel products that Defendants marketed, distributed, extracted, refined,
transported, and sold, when used as intended, release greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide
(CO
2
) and methane, which trap atmospheric heat.
206.
The earth’s temperature depends on the balance between energy entering and leaving the
planet’s system. When sunlight reaches the planet surface, it can either be reflected into space or
absorbed by the earth. Incoming energy that is absorbed by the earth warms the planet. Once
absorbed, the planet releases some of the energy back into the atmosphere as heat (also called
infrared radiation). Solar energy that is reflected to space does not warm the earth.
207.
Global temperatures have warmed by 1.1°C to 1.2°C since 1900.
116
Global warming has
destabilized the planet’s climate patterns and has caused an increased frequency and intensity of
extreme weather events, like the 2021 PNW heat dome.
208.
The scientific community has determined and declared that because of rising greenhouse
gas emissions, planet Earth is facing an unprecedented and accelerating climate emergency.
Scientists have warned that ACC has substantially contributed to rising land, air and oceanic
116
Id.
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temperatures, the melting of the polar ice sheets, and the increased frequency and severity of
extreme heat events, wildfires, drought, floods, and storms.
117
In sum, scientists have declared that
unabated climate change presents a “code red” danger to humanity.
118
209.
Changes in Oregon’s climate are being harshly felt and growing worse at a rapid pace. Nine
of Oregon’s hottest years in recorded history have occurred since the year 2000 and seven have
come since 2010.
119
210.
Multiple scientific studies have found that climate change is already contributing to
extreme heat waves, widespread drought conditions, severe wildfires, coastal erosion, and other
erratic weather conditions in Oregon.
120
Unless carbon emissions decline considerably, these
impacts will intensify over the coming decades.
121
211.
According to the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute, if greenhouse gas emissions
continue at current levels, the annual temperature in Oregon is projected to increase by 5°F by the
117
Fleishman, Erica, and Oregon Climate Change Research Institute. 2023. Sixth Oregon Climate
Assessment. : [Corvallis, Oregon] : Oregon Climate Change Research Institute, Oregon State
University, https://energyinfo.oregon.gov/blog/2023/1/11/occris-sixth-climate-assessment-
outlines-climate-change-effects-on-oregon (last visited June 13, 2023).
118
Id.
119
Id.
120
Id.
121
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2050s and 8.2°F by the 2080s, with the greatest seasonal increases in summer.
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212.
The Oregon Climate Change Research Institute has found that ACC poses a significant
threat to Oregon’s forestry, fisheries, water supplies, and coastal resources. In addition to extreme
heat events, the OCCRI predicts that other likely ACC-related impacts include winter flooding,
summer droughts, loss of shoreline, forest fires, worsening air quality, diminished fish and wildlife
habitat, retreating glaciers, decreased snowpack, and increased disease vectors and invasive
species.
213.
Increased temperatures are projected to contribute to: (i) decreased winter snowpack and
changes in the timing and volume of streamflow fed by snowmelt; (ii) increased summer water
demand, especially during more intense and longer summer droughts; (iii) increased risk of
flooding due to more intense snow events and sea level rise; (iv) increased risk of fire in forest
lands, open space, and in areas where forest and residential lands overlap; (v) increased risk of
heat-related morbidity and mortality during more intense summer heat waves like the extreme heat
event of June 2021; (vi) increased summer air pollution and related health impacts; (vii) decreased
summer hydropower production and increased summer energy demand, especially from air
conditioning; (viii) increased harm to aquatic wildlife because of warmer water temperatures in
122
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streams, rivers, lakes; and (ix) increased shifts in habitat, invasive species, and insects affecting
forest health, agriculture, and ecosystem function.
B. Oregonians Died and Multnomah County Suffered Damages Because of
Defendants’ Fossil Fuel Activities – 2021 PNW Heat Dome
214.
In June of 2021, the Pacific Northwest experienced an extreme weather event unlike any
the region has ever experienced. The extreme weather event occurred earlier in the summer, before
residents could naturally acclimate to warmer temperatures.
123
Additionally, the heat dome brought
a prolonged period of heat intensity never experienced in the region.
124
215.
Multnomah County, known for its traditionally mild climate, was unprepared for the
devastation the heat dome unleashed on its citizens. Although extreme heat is one of the leading
causes of weather-related deaths in the United States
125
— in some years killing more people than
all other weather hazards (except hurricanes) combined — the severity of these conditions and
123
Multnomah County, Preliminary Review on Excessive Heat Deaths,
https://www.multco.us/preliminary-review-excessive-heat-deaths-multnomah-county-june-2021
(last visited June 12, 2023).
124
Id.
125
CDC, Extreme Heat and Your Health,
https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/features/trackingheat/index.html#:~:text=Extreme%20heat%20events
%2C%20or%20heat,inability%20to%20cool%20down%20properly. (“Extreme heat events, or
heat waves, are one of the leading causes of weather-related deaths in the United States. When
temperatures rise in the summer, extremely hot weather can cause sickness or even death. Heat
stress is heat-related illness caused by your body’s inability to cool down properly.”).
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their impacts was new for customarily cool and wet Multnomah County.
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216.
On June 25, 2021, the high temperature in Multnomah County was 95° F. The average high
temperature for this date prior to 2021 was 76° F.
127
217.
On June 26, 2021, the high temperature in Multnomah County was 108° F. The average
high temperature for this date prior to 2021 was 76.4° F.
128
218.
On June 27, 2021, the high temperature in Multnomah County was 112 ° F. The average
high temperature for this date prior to 2021 was 76.7° F.
129
219.
On June 28, 2021, the high temperature in Multnomah County was 116° F. The average
high temperature for this date prior to 2021 was 77° F.
130
126
Multnomah County, Preliminary Review on Excessive Heat Deaths,
https://www.multco.us/preliminary-review-excessive-heat-deaths-multnomah-county-june-2021
(last visited June 12, 2023).
127
This average is calculated from temperature readings from 1991 to 2020 for June 25.
https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/portland-or/day/june-25 (last visited on June 12,
2023).
128
This average is calculated from temperature readings from 1991 to 2020 for June 26.
https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/portland-or/day/june-26 (last visited on June 12,
2023).
129
This average is calculated from temperature readings from 1991 to 2020 for June 27.
https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/portland-or/day/june-27 (last visited on June 12,
2023).
130
This average is calculated from temperature readings from 1991 to 2020 for June 28.
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220.
The temperature readings on June 26, 27, and 28 were so far outside the normal distribution
of temperatures that this heat event was classified as an extreme weather event—and perhaps the
most extreme in history.
131
The graph below shows how outside of the mean temperatures were:
https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/portland-or/day/june-28 (last visited on June 12,
2023).
131
Multnomah County, June 2021 Extreme Heat Event, Preliminary Findings and Action Steps
https://www.multco.us/file/june-2021-heat-event-preliminary-findings-and-action-steps (last
visited June 12, 2023).
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221.
The occurrence of the heat dome was “virtually impossible” without ACC caused by
Defendants’ fossil fuel related activities and enterprise.
132
222.
Another study that evaluated the 2021 PNW heat dome concluded, “[i]t is clear… that
anthropogenic warming of the planet contributed to the severity of this event.”
133
223.
Yet another study determined that “while the extreme heat was unprecedented, it was
nevertheless mechanistically linked to regional climate change.
134
224.
Defendants’ carbon emissions were a substantial factor in causing the dramatic warming
of the region’s surface temperature, the decrease in atmospheric moisture and the desiccation of
the region’s soil. Defendants’ collective emissions fueled an impenetrable and slow-moving high-
pressure system, all of which combined to cause the 2021 PNW heat dome.
132
Philip, et al., supra, Footnote 4.
133
White, R.H., Anderson, S., Booth, J.F. et al. The unprecedented Pacific Northwest heatwave of
June 2021. Nat Commun 14, 727 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-36289-3.
134
Bartusek, S., Kornhuber, K. & Ting, M. 2021 North American heatwave amplified by climate
change-driven nonlinear interactions. Nat. Clim. Chang. 12, 1143–1150 (2022).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01520-4.
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225.
Defendants’ GHG emissions were a substantial factor in causing the occurrence and
severity of the heat dome. The heat dome would have been less likely to occur without Defendants’
GHG emissions and the warming it caused. Even if the heat dome would have occurred absent a
Defendant’s GHG contributions, the heat dome would have been less severe and less catastrophic
in and to Multnomah County.
226.
The 2021 PNW heat dome event was responsible for approximately 619 heat-related deaths
in Canada, a 95% increase over the number reported for late-June in prior years. The State of
Washington recorded 196 heat-related deaths. Oregon recorded 100 deaths, 69 of which occurred
in Multnomah County, which the coroner ruled were caused by hyperthermia. These deaths were
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in virtually every zip code of Multnomah County.
227.
In prior years, the County reported zero heat-related deaths. Elderly persons living alone
in muti-family buildings without air conditioning in densely populated parts of the region
accounted for a large percentage of those who perished.
228.
In a typical year, there are about 95 deaths from all causes in the last week of June. In 2021
there were 186, nearly double the average during the previous three years.
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229.
In addition to casualties and injuries, the heat dome’s impacts were far-reaching. Roads,
rails, bridges, power stations, utilities, hardscapes, parks, levees, greenscapes, and buildings were
impacted. Asphalt melted. Businesses shuttered. Tourists fled. Marine life perished. Circuits fried.
Productivity plummeted as the heat drove the outdoor labor force indoors, away from their jobs,
simply to survive. Multnomah County incurred immediate costs by treating people with heat-
related symptoms and establishing air-conditioned emergency shelters, among other costs. The
County recorded 257 emergency visits for heat illness, compared to a typical volume of 83 visits
for that same time of the year.
230.
To the North, the heat dome sparked wildfires, which in turn generated smoke-related
health impacts, as well as eventual floods and mudslides.
231.
Long term global warming and soil drying transformed the heat dome from “virtually
impossible” to a more than likely a 10 yearly reoccurrence if the climate continues to warm from
the current 1.2ºC to 2°C over pre-industrial times.
135
232.
“Global warming caused a
∼
0.8°C–1°C increase in heatwave temperatures. Future
135
Bartusek, S., Kornhuber, K. & Ting, M. 2021 North American heatwave amplified by climate
change-driven nonlinear interactions. Nat. Clim. Chang. 12, 1143–1150 (2022).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01520-4.
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warming would lead to a
∼
5°C increase in heatwave temperature by the end of the 21st century.”
136
233.
“Climate model projections indicate a rapidly increasing risk of the PNW regularly
experiencing 2021-like extreme summer temperatures, with a 50% chance of yearly occurrence by
2050. The 2021 summer temperatures experienced across the PNW provide a benchmark and
impetus for communities in historically temperate climates to account for extreme heat-related
impacts in climate change adaptation strategies.”
137
234.
In light of the 2021 PNW extreme heat wave, “policymakers and governments need to
prepare for events beyond current records – particularly with trends caused by ACC enhancing the
probability of extremes. Heatwaves are deadly—but better preparation can save lives. Planning
ahead can reduce mortality from climatic extremes. For example, city heat plans that include
actions such as establishing cooling centers or reducing hours of work for outdoor workers can
reduce heat impacts. Policy changes following the 2003 European heatwave led to fewer deaths
after the similar magnitude 2006 event.
138
136
Emily Bercos-Hickey, et al. “Anthropogenic contributions to the 2021 Pacific Northwest
heatwave.” Geophysical Research Letters 49 (2022).
137
Id.
138
Thompson, V., Mitchell, D., Hegerl, G.C. et al. The most at-risk regions in the world for
high-impact heatwaves. Nat Commun 14, 2152 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-
37554-1 (last visited on June 18, 2023).
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235.
During Summer 2021, the number of Heat-Related Illness Emergency Department or
urgent care clinic (ED) visits were over twice those observed in past years (2016-2019).
Multnomah County recorded 266 heat-related Emergency Department visits in 2021. In 2020, the
County recorded 55 visits. In 2021, Multnomah County recorded 52 heat related hospitalizations.
In the prior three years, from 2018 to 2019, the County averaged 4 hospitalizations.
236.
Increasing CO
2
emissions and global temperatures are expected to create more extreme
heat events in Multnomah County in the future, in the form of heatwaves, wildfires, and storms.
Damage from extreme weather events restricts access to essential services, including clean water,
food, basic sanitation, and health care. Trauma from the loss of friends, family, and community
also creates stress and affects mental health. This stress grows over time if limited resources are
available for mental and physical care, recovery, and reconstruction efforts.
C. ACC Has Caused Deadly Fires and Smoke Plumes that Have Harmed the
Public Health of Multnomah County
237.
On September 7th and 8th of 2020 several fires inundated Oregon. Five of these fires were
megafires—which are greater than 100,000 acres in size.
139
These fires became known as the Labor
139
Report, Oregon Forest Resources Institute, Economic Impacts to Oregon’s Forest Sector
September 2021, 1.0 Executive Summary at p. 8 https://oregonforests.org/sites/default/files/2021-
09/OFRI-LaborDayFiresEconomicReport_Final%20Sept%202021.pdf.
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Day 2020 fires.
140
There were 12 other fires ranging from 112 to 50,951 acres.
141
238.
Multnomah County was inundated with smoke from these fires. On Monday September 7,
2020, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) issued an air quality alert for
Multnomah County.
142
239.
Multnomah County remained under a dense smoke warning from September 12-17, 2020.
This smoke intrusion incident resulted in the most hazardous air quality in the world for a period
of time and the worst ever recorded in Multnomah County.
143
240.
In response, Multnomah County was required to provide KN95 masks, emergency
services, shelters, and fire response management. In the wake of the smoke intrusion incident, the
County replaced 1,200 air filters and provided extensive HVAC maintenance.
D. ACC is Contributing to the Frequency and Severity of Deadly Wildfires and
Smoke
241.
Anthropogenic climate change, induced by the burning of fossil fuels, has caused an
140
Id.
141
Id.
142
Report, Wildfire Threat and Smoke Intrusion Incident, After Action Report/Improvement Plan
(AAR/IP) Multnomah County, Oregon May 8, 2021, p. 4.
143
Id. at 5.
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increase in the frequency and severity of wildfires in Oregon, which not only destroy lives,
property and natural resources, but also generate plumes of toxic smoke which in the last ten years
has damaged the health and property of residents of Multnomah County.
242.
Wildfire-generated plumes of smoke inject fine particulate matter (PM2.5) at high
altitudes, increasing long-range transport of PM2.5 from locations outside of the County where
they have caused a health hazard.
243.
Excessive PM2.5, pollution from wildfires cause numerous human health problems,
including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, acute lower respiratory illness, asthma, ischemic
heart disease, and lung cancer that disproportionately affect vulnerable populations, such as
children with respiratory ailments, the elderly, people of color, and the economically
disadvantaged
144
244.
The health problems are amplified in airsheds closest to a specific fire event, but impacts
can extend over vast distances depending on wind patterns and other factors. The particulates are
dangerous to human health.
144
Reid CE, Maestas MM. Wildfire smoke exposure under climate change: impact on respiratory
health of affected communities. CURR OPIN PULM MED. Mar 25, 2019, pp 179-187.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6743728/.
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245.
Wildfire-generated particulate matter has increased dramatically in Oregon, which has
directly impacted the health of people in Multnomah County. From 1979 through 2019, the
duration of the fire weather season in forests in Oregon has increased by 43 percent, and the annual
number of days when fire danger was extreme increased by 166 percent. Widespread drought has
led to increased fire danger.
246.
The Oregon Global Warming Commission stated its 2023 report to the legislature that:
“Climate change is already having a measurable impact on Oregon’s landscape,
communities and economy. Oregon is experiencing increased temperatures,
changing precipitation patterns, reduced snowpack, drier summers, and more
frequent and damaging wildfires. Since the 2020 Report to the Legislature, extreme
heat events, severe drought conditions, shifting precipitation patterns, and high-
intensity wildfires have continued to inflict significant damage on Oregonians,
communities, the environment, and the economy. These impacts are projected to
become more frequent and severe as temperatures increase and global climate
conditions become more extreme and unpredictable.”
247.
The report further predicted, “Warmer temperatures and drier conditions increase the risk
of more frequent and severe wildfires.”
248.
The total area of land burned by wildfire each year has increased in Oregon over the past
35 years, and wildfires have grown larger and spread into higher elevations during this period. In
the Pacific Northwest, the number of days with extreme wildfire danger have more than doubled
since 1979. Drought, increased aridity, and reductions in relative humidity contribute to the
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growing fire risk in Oregon. As global temperatures increase, wildfires are expected to become
larger and fire seasons increasingly extreme in Oregon and across the West.
249.
ACC, induced by the burning of fossil fuels, has substantially contributed to hotter, drier
conditions that generate more toxic smoke from wildfires. ACC has substantially contributed to
diminished air quality and increased levels of harmful ground level ozone. Wildfire-generated
smoke triggers asthma symptoms.
250.
ACC, induced by the burning of fossil fuels, has substantially contributed to air quality
related respiratory illness visits at hospital emergency departments and urgent care clinics in the
County. In 2022, a total of 84,081 visits in Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas Counties were
due to air quality-related illness, most of which occurred in Multnomah County. From 2016 to
2022, Multnomah County recorded steadily increased visits each year except in 2021, which
recorded a level similar to 2017.
251.
In September of 2020, Multnomah County experienced a spike in medical visits for asthma
caused by poor air quality as a result of ACC-related wildfire smoke. Asthma-related emergency
room visits in Multnomah County increased by nearly one-third in the four weeks during and after
wildfires in 2020.
252.
The Labor Day fires of 2020 produced extreme smoke levels resulting in unhealthy air
quality in Multnomah County.
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253.
The air quality index in Multnomah County from September 10th through the 13th
repeatedly broke records during the Labor Day 2020 fires (215, 287, 288 and 477 AQI,
respectively).
145
AQI above 200 is considered “very unhealthy.”
146
Before 2015, Portland did not
have a single day with air quality ≥ Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups (USG) from wildfire smoke
since air quality monitoring began in 1985.
147
From 2015 to 2022, Portland had 26 ≥ USG days or
3.3 ≥ USG days/year.
148
In 2020, Portland had its first days over the unhealthy AQI level with 3
very unhealthy and 5 hazardous days.
149
In 2022, Portland had 3 ≥ USG days.
150
254.
AQI categories from wildfire smoke have been increasing since around 2012, with more
frequent days at more “unhealthy” or worse levels, including the record-breaking events of
September 2020.
151
Scientists expect this trend will continue and worsen.
255.
The Labor Day 2020 fires were among the worst ever in Oregon history, scorching nearly
145
State of Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, Wildfire Smoke Trends and the Air
Quality Index (May 2023)
https://www.oregon.gov/deq/wildfires/Documents/WildfireSmokeTrendsReport.pdf (last visited
June 21, 2023).
146
Id.
147
Id.
148
Id.
149
Id.
150
Id.
151
Id.
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1,500 square miles of mainly forested areas, the largest area in the state’s recorded history. Strong
and dry winds, combined with desiccated vegetation, drove the rapid growth of the fires. A key
driver of the wildfires was unusually high aridity (the drop in atmospheric water vapor), a trend to
which fossil fuel induced climate change substantially contributed.
256.
The Labor Day fires are also part of a regional trend. Total annual area burned in Oregon
has increased during the last 35 years.
152
As aridity has increased, wildfires have spread into higher
elevations that previously were cool and moist enough to deter fire expansion.
153
257.
The United Nations Environment Programme Report, authored by 52 international
scientists, linked global spread of landscape-scale wildfires to global overheating that is “turning
landscapes into tinderboxes, while more extreme weather means stronger, hotter, drier winds to
fan the flames.”
154
258.
More than a dozen rigorous peer-reviewed studies and meta-analyses (synthesis studies)
confirm the presence of a consistent pattern of increased wildfire events and severity in Oregon
152
Oregon Department of Energy, OCCRI’s Sixth Climate Assessment Outlines Climate Change
Effects On Oregon https://energyinfo.oregon.gov/blog/2023/1/11/occris-sixth-climate-
assessment-outlines-climate-change-effects-on-oregon (last visited on June 21, 2023).
153
Id.
154
United Nations Environmental Program, Spreading like Wildfire: The Rising Threat of
Extraordinary Landscape Fires (2022) https://www.unep.org/resources/report/spreading-wildfire-
rising-threat-extraordinary-landscape-fires (last visited June 20, 2023).
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that is attributable to fossil fuel induced ACC.
155
259.
Anthropogenic climate change, induced by the burning of fossil fuels, has caused and
155
See Dennison et al. (2014) (increased Western wildfire attributed in part to warmer and drier
summer conditions (drought severity). For all ecoregions combined, the number of large fires
increased at a rate of seven fires per year, while total fire area increased at a rate of 355 km
2
per
year.”); Westerling (2016) (reaffirmed the tight association between wildfire activity and the
relatively high cumulative warm-season actual evapotranspiration and early spring snow melt.
Notably, there was a +1000% increase in wildfire activity from 2003-2012 and the increase was
attributed to spring and summer temperature increases.); Abatzoglou and Williams (2016)
(“anthropogenic increases in temperature and vapor pressure deficit significantly enhanced fuel
aridity across western forests during 2000–2015, contributing to 75% more forested area
experiencing high fire-season fuel aridity and an average of 9 additional days per year of high fire
potential. ACC accounted for
∼
55% of observed increases in fuel aridity and wildfire potential in
recent decades.”); Holden et al. 2017 (declines in summer precipitation and rain days associated
with GHG increases are the primary driver of increases in wildfire area in the West.); Abatzoglou
et al. (2021) (“the 2020 Labor Day fires in Oregon exceeded the area burned in any single year for
at least the past 120 years, contributing to hazardous air quality and massive smoke plumes.
Unusually warm conditions with limited precipitation occurred in the 60-days prior to the fires.
Exceptionally strong winds and dry air drove rapid rates of fire spread. The concurrence of these
drivers created conditions unmatched in the observational record.”); Mass et al. 2021 (“the Labor
Day fires of 2020 were driven by strong … highly unusual winds. Wildfires produced dense smoke
that initially moved westward over the Willamette Valley and eventually covered the entire region.
Air quality rapidly degraded to hazardous levels, representing the worst levels in recent decades.”);
Hawkins et al. (2021) (“ACC factors (fuel aridity, warmer temperatures during dry wind events)
increased fuel aridity and likelihood of extreme fire weather by 40% in northern California and
Oregon.”); Dahl et al. (2023) (linked increases in burned forest area across the West and
southwestern Canada to the vapor pressure deficit, meaning drier atmospheric conditions produced
drought-stressed plants and soils that readily burned. The study used a robust global energy balance
carbon-cycle model and a suite of downscaled climate models to “attribute emissions to vapor
pressure deficit from 1901–2021 and cumulative forest fire area from 1986–2021. Emissions were
responsible for 48% of long-term rise in vapor pressure deficit and, correspondingly, 37% of the
cumulative area burned. Emissions also contributed to nearly half the increase in drought- and fire-
danger since 1901.”); MacDonald et al. 2023 (Synthesizing the literature on climate-wildfire
attribution studies finding that there was a “striking increase in annual area burned in the West
related to increasing temperatures and the atmospheric vapor pressure deficit. ACC was the main
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exacerbated wildfires in Oregon that harmed Multnomah County. ACC has increased the vapor
pressure deficit and the summer temperatures dramatically, two conditions that influence the
frequency and severity of wildfires. Other ACC factors contributing to increasing wildfire activity
include unusually strong winds, a higher incidence of lightning, longer fire seasons, and decreased
snowpack.
260.
The vapor pressure deficit and summer temperatures are likely to further increase in the
decades ahead, meaning even more extreme wildfire events are forecasted.
261.
Since 2020, wildfires have cost Oregon $3 billion in structure losses in this decade alone.
The 2020 Labor Day wildfires were the most destructive urban-wildland fires on record, killing 11
people, destroying 4300 homes, and triggering $422 million in federal aid.
156
All told, there were
driver behind wildfire activity. The trend is projected to increase without reductions in GHGs.);
Turco et al. 2023 (Used the latest simulations for climate change attribution and detection studies
showing that nearly all observed increases in burned area in California over the past half-century
was attributed to ACC (summer temperature increases, dryness). Model simulations using ACC
factors alone accounted for 172% (range 84 to 310%) more area burned than simulations with
natural forcing only (no ACC in the model). Their results indicate that observed increases in burned
area was primarily due to greater fuel aridity (from drying and summer temperatures).
156
Eckert, T, $422M federal grant approved to assist 2020 Oregon wildfire survivors, OPB, Oct.
6, 2022 https://www.opb.org/article/2022/10/06/federal-assistance-for-2020-oregon-wildfires-
survivors/#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20Department%20of%20Housing,fires%20throughout%20Ore
gon%20in%202020. (last visited on June 21, 2023).
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21 fires in Oregon in summer/fall of 2020, 12 of which started over the Labor Day weekend,
producing “smoke waves” which detrimentally impacted smoke and air quality levels in
Multnomah County.
262.
Wildfire-generated toxic smoke plumes have caused damage to Multnomah County, its
residents, and its property. As carbon emissions continue, and global temperatures increase
Multnomah, County will suffer more extreme heat days, more poor air quality days, larger
wildfires, and more “smoke waves.”
263.
GHGs from Fossil Fuel Defendants’ emissions caused the fires to burn more severely and
more intensely, which in turned caused smoke penetration and related harm in and to Multnomah
County. Drought conditions are linked to climate-driven temperature increases across wide swaths
of the western United States, which evaporates soil of moisture which in turn makes heatwaves
more severe. Changes in climate will affect future fire frequency and severity.
157
Climate change
157
Halofsky, J.E., Peterson, D.L. & Harvey, B.J. Changing wildfire, changing forests: the effects
of climate change on fire regimes and vegetation in the Pacific Northwest, USA. fire ecol 16, 4
(2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s42408-019-0062-8 (According to projections based on historical
records, current trends, and simulation modeling, protracted warmer and drier conditions will drive
lower fuel moisture and longer fire seasons in the future, likely increasing the frequency and extent
of fires…).
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will result in longer wildfire seasons, increased wildfire frequency, larger burn zones, and
increased wildfire severity.
158
264.
Wildfires were sparked during the 2021 heat dome and thereafter.
159
Because of
Defendants’ acts or omissions related to the burning of fossil fuels, Multnomah County will suffer
harm from smoke penetration, including adverse health impacts on its citizens from the intense
smoke. As one climatologist described the matter, “it’s like someone poured gasoline on the
forest.”
160
E. Extreme Heat is Here to Stay and Is Caused By Defendants’ Activities – 2022
Heatwave
265.
In 2022, Multnomah County experienced seven consecutive days of temperatures above
158
USDA Northwest Climate Hub, How do Climate and Wildfire Relate?
https://www.climatehubs.usda.gov/hubs/northwest/topic/climate-change-and-wildfire-idaho-
oregon-and-washington (last visited June 13, 2023);
159
Bartusek, S., Kornhuber, K. & Ting, M. 2021 North American heatwave amplified by climate
change-driven nonlinear interactions. Nat. Clim. Chang. 12, 1143–1150 (2022).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01520-4.
160
Burns, J, We know climate change set the conditions for Oregon fires. Dis it stoke the flames,
too? Sept. 21, 2020 https://www.opb.org/article/2020/09/21/oregon-wildfires-climate-change-
role/ (last visited on June 18, 2023); Abatzoglou, J. T., Rupp, D. E., O'Neill, L. W., & Sadegh,
M. (2021). Compound extremes drive the western Oregon wildfires of September
2020. Geophysical Research Letters, 48 https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL092520 (“studies suggest
that climate change has contributed to increased fuel aridity and longer fire seasons and the
probability of compound hot-dry extremes and climate projections suggest continued warming
with slight decreases in summer precipitation in the Pacific Northwest over the 21st century.”).
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95 F from July 25 through July 31.
161
266.
This heatwave took the lives of five Multnomah County residents.
162
267.
In 2022, the County recorded 172 heat-related illness Emergency visits, which was 40%
greater than the number of visits between 2016 and 2019.
268.
Defendants’ activities have caused unprecedented and excessive heat to plague Multnomah
County.
F. ACC Has Caused Droughts that Will Continue to Wreak Havoc on Multnomah
County
269.
Over the last three years, a severe drought caused by the emissions from the burning of
Defendants’ fossil fuel products has strained the water supply to communities, agriculture, and
ecosystems. Water availability is central to the state’s economy, contributing significantly to the
161
Ehrlich, A., Portland breaks record for consecutive days of temperatures 95 or higher July 31,
2022, https://www.opb.org/article/2022/07/31/portland-breaks-record-for-consecutive-days-of-
temperatures-95-or-higher/ (last visited on June 18, 2023).
162
Multnomah County, Medical Examiner confirms five heat deaths during summer 2022, March
7, 2023, https://www.multco.us/multnomah-county/news/news-release-medical-examiner-
confirms-five-heat-deaths-during-summer-2022 (last visited June 21, 2023).
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resilience of agricultural and livestock production, public health, urban environments, energy
supply, fisheries, and industry.
163
270.
Virtually all of Oregon is in a multiple-year drought, defined as drought that persists for
more than one water year. Impacts on human and natural systems become more severe in each
consecutive year of drought as groundwater, soils, and surface-water bodies continually dry
without normal recharge.
164
271
In 17 of the last 23 water years, Oregon’s precipitation was below normal. In terms of
precipitation, water years 2001 and 2020 ranked as the third and fifth driest water years in Oregon
since 1895.
165
272.
The average temperature in Oregon also was warmer than normal in 18 of the last 23 water
years, which contributed to increases in evapotranspiration and drought frequency.
166
273.
For 2020, the drought was the most severe in Oregon’s recorded history. The 2020 drought
163
Oregon Climate Assessment, January 2023, Fleischman, Editor, Oregon State University,
https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/technical_reports/gt54kw197) (last visited June 20,
2023).
164
Id.
165
Id.
166
Id.
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was driven by a combination of low precipitation and high evapotranspiration, which in turn
produced well above normal temperatures.
167
274.
Yearly estimates of soil moisture from tree rings suggested that the years 2000–2021 were
the driest in Oregon since at least 800 CE. These years were characterized by low snowpack,
decreased summer streamflow, low precipitation during all seasons, and steadily rising evaporative
demand due to climate change-induced aridification.
168
275.
Persistent and severe droughts have occurred in Oregon since 2000. These droughts were
driven by ACC, which substantially contributed to low winter precipitation and snowpack and low
summer precipitation and high winter temperature. Low precipitation contributed to each drought,
but temperature and snowpack also affected drought severity and impacts. An estimated 19 percent
of the soil moisture deficits in the West from 2000–2021 were caused by fossil fuel induced
ACC.
169
276.
Evaporation is expected to increase in Oregon as temperatures increase. Warm air holds
more moisture than cool air, so projected increases in total evaporation are driven by projected
increases in vapor pressure deficit. Even if the net water balance (precipitation minus evaporation)
167
Id.
168
Id.
169
Id.
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increases on average, the likelihood of drought, particularly during summer, increases as
precipitation becomes more intense and seasonal. The severity and duration of droughts are
projected to increase across most of Oregon. Droughts are projected to be 11–33 percent longer
and at least 40 percent more severe by the end of the century.
170
G. Defendants Had Knowledge on the Impact of Their Fossil Fuel Activities—But
Chose Windfall Profits Over Humanity
277.
The connection between burning fossil fuels and atmospheric CO
2
pollution was first
suspected in the scientific literature in 1856.
171
The connection was confirmed in 1930.
172
In 1954,
scientists at the California Institute of Technology (“Cal Tech”) proposed to the API to commission
a study that would differentiate carbon molecules released from the burning of fossil fuels versus
natural sources.
173
Cal Tech had already determined from tree ring studies that fossil fuels had
caused the atmospheric concentrations of CO
2
to rise by 5% in the past 100 years or so.
174
In 1955,
the API funded the Cal Tech study, received the results, but never published the same.
175
In 1959,
the renown physicist Edward Teller appeared at an API meeting and warned that the combustion
170
Id.
171
Franta, B. Early oil industry knowledge of CO
2
and global warming. Nature Clim Change 8,
1024–1025 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0349-9
172
Id.
173
Id.
174
Id.
175
Id.
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of fossil fuels was contaminating the atmosphere, and would soon raise global temperatures
sufficiently to melt the polar ice caps and raise the sea level.
176
278.
On March 29, 1958, Charles Keeling began recording daily carbon in the Earth’s
atmosphere at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii.
177
Keeling’s first reading on March 29, 1958,
measured the atmospheric CO
2
concentration at 313 ppm.
178
279.
By the 1950s, the Fossil Fuel Defendants (herein also called “Oil Defendants”) discovered
that climate change would present dangerous risks to the world’s population.
179
In response, they
engaged in decades-long concerted effort to keep Multnomah County, and the rest of the United
States in the dark about those risks, while they reaped profits by false and deceptive consumer
176
Id.
177
Britannica, Keeling Curve, BRITANNICA, https://www.britannica.com/science/Keeling-Curve
(last visited June 18, 2023).
178
ACS, The Keeling Curve: Carbon Dioxide Measurements at Mauna Loa, ACS,
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/keeling-curve.html
(last visited June 18, 2023).
179
American Institute of Physics. The discovery of Global Warming, AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF
PHYSICS, (2022) https://history.aip.org/climate/index.htm#contents (last visited June 20, 2023);
Craig Harmon, The Natural Distribution of Radiocarbon and the Exchange Time of Carbon
Dioxide Between Atmosphere and Sea, Tellus, 1-17 (9
TH
Ed. 1957); Roger Revelle & Hans E.
Seuss, Carbonates and carbon dioxide, Memoirs of the Geological Society of America 239–295
(1957).
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advertising misinformation.
280.
In 1967, Shell, with assistance from Exxon, Chevron and BP, gathered ocean data
concerning its oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico and studied wave, wind, barometric pressure,
storms, sea level, and current changes and trends on its six platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.
180
The
report was necessary to develop and calibrate environmental forecasting theories to protect the
industry’s platforms. What they found out guided their marketing strategies for the next five
decades. There is also evidence that they built their offshore platforms higher to contend with
ocean rise from warming.
281.
Thus, more than fifty years ago, scientists for the Fossil Fuel Defendants concluded that
“doubling in CO
2
could increase average global temperature 1°C to 3°C by 2050….10°C predicted
at poles.” In the 1968 report for the American Petroleum Institute (API), attached as Exhibit 1, the
scientists stated:
a) “Significant temperature changes are almost certain to occur by the year
2000 and these could bring about climatic change…if the Earth’s
temperature increases significantly, a number of events might be
expected to occur including the melting of the Antarctic ice cap, a rise
in sea levels, warming of the oceans and an increase in photosynthesis.”
180
M. Patterson, An Ocean Data Gathering Program for the Gulf of Mexico, Society of Petroleum
Engineers (1969), (Available at: https://www.onepetro.org/conference-paper/SPE-2638-MS.) (last
visited June 20, 2023).
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b) “It is clear that we are unsure as to what our long-lived pollutants are
doing to our environment; however, there seems to be no doubt that the
potential damage to our environment could be severe.”
181
282.
A 1969 supplemental report by scientists for API, projected that based on current fuel usage
at the time, atmospheric CO
2
concentrations would reach 370 ppm by the turn of the century.
182
They proved to be ominously correct. It was 369.34 ppm in 2000.
183
283.
API’s scientists connected the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentrations to the use of fossil
fuels, warning that the temptations and consequences of ignoring CO
2
as a pollutant could be of
global importance as a factor that could change man’s environment.
184
This report was
disseminated to the oil industry through API, including to Oil Defendants Exxon, Shell, BP,
181
E. Robinson & R.C. Robbins, Final Report, Sources, Abundance, and Fate of Gaseous.
Atmospheric Pollutants, SRI Project PR-6755, prepared for American Petroleum Institute, at 109-
110.
182
E. Robinson & R.C. Robbins, Sources, Abundance, and Fate of Gaseous Atmospheric
Pollutants Supplement, Stanford Research Institute (June 1969).
183
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Global Mean CO
2
Mixing Ratios (ppm):
Observations, NASA GODDARD INSTITUTE FOR SPACE STUDIES,
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/ghgases/Fig1A.ext.txt (last visited June 20, 2023).
184
Elmer Robinson and R.C. Robbins, Sources, Abundance, and Fate of Gaseous Atmospheric
Pollutants Supplement, STANFORD RESEARCH INSTITUTE (Jun. 1969), http://chr.gov.ph/wp-
content/uploads/2019/11/Exhibit-3I-Sources-Abundance-and-Fate-of-Gaseous-Atmospheric-
Pollutants-Supplement.pdf (last visited June 20, 2023).
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ConocoPhillips, Motiva and Anadarko (or their predecessors in interest) in a 1972 status report.
185
284.
In clandestine fashion, the oil industry began to prepare for climate change. In 1973 and
1974, Exxon obtained a patent for a cargo ship capable of breaking sea ice and for an oil tanker
designed specifically for use in previously unreachable areas of the Arctic.
186
Chevron also
obtained a patent for a mobile arctic drilling platform designed to withstand significant interference
from lateral ice masses,
187
allowing for drilling in areas with increased ice flow movement due to
elevated temperature.
285.
Norske Shell, Royal Dutch Shell’s Norwegian subsidiary
188
factored rising sea levels into
plans for its “Troll A platform” to account for higher anticipated average sea levels and increased
storm intensity due to global warming over the platform’s 70-year operational life
189
at a cost of
185
Committee for Air and Water Conservation American Petroleum Institute, Environmental
Research, A Status Report, Committee for Air and Water Conservation, AMERICAN PETROLEUM
INSTITUTE (Jan.1972), https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED066339.pdf (last visited Nov 15, 2022).
186
ExxonMobil Research Engineering Co., Icebreaking cargo vessel, GOOGLE PATENTS (Apr. 17,
1973), https://patents.google.com/patent/US3727571A/en (last visited June 20, 2023);
ExxonMobil Research Engineering Co., Tanker vessel, GOOGLE PATENTS (Jul. 17, 1973), (last
visited June 20, 2023).
187
Chevron Research & Technology Co., Arctic offshore platform, GOOGLE PATENTS (Aug. 27,
1974) https://patents.google.com/patent/US3831385A/fi (last visited June 20, 2023).
188
N.Y. Times, Greenhouse Effect: Shell Anticipates A Sea Change, N.Y. TIMES (Dec. 20, 1989),
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/20/business/greenhouse-effect-shell-anticipates-a-sea-
change.html (last visited June 20, 2023).
189
Id.; Amy Lieberman and Susanne Rust, Big Oil braced for global warming while it fought
regulations, L. A. TIMES (Dec. 31, 2015), https://graphics.latimes.com/oil-operations/ (last visited
June 20, 2023).
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nearly $40 million.
286.
Exxon’s Henry Shaw stated in a memo to David Edward, Jr. in 1978, attached as Exhibit
2, that Exxon needed to understand the “CO
2
problem” and wanted to “assess the possible impact
of the greenhouse effect on Exxon business. Exxon must develop a credible scientific team that
can critically evaluate the information generated on the subject and be able to carry bad news, if
any, to the corporation.”
190
287.
From 1979 to 1982, the Exxon Research and Engineering (ER&E) Company pursued major
global warming-based projects.
191
Exxon’s described the projects thusly: “Establish a scientific
presence through research program in climate modeling; selective support of outside activities;
190
Henry Shaw, Memo from Henry Shaw to Edward David Jr., The “Greenhouse Effect,” EXXON
RESEARCH AND ENGINEERING COMPANY (Dec. 7, 1978),
https://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/1978-exxon-memo-on-programs-developed-to-
measure-co2-uptake-and-request-credible-scientific-team/ (last visited June 20, 2023).
191
G.H. Long, Atmospheric CO
2
Scoping Study, EXXON RESEARCH AND ENGINEERING COMPANY
(Feb. 5, 1981), https://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/1981-exxon-report-potential-climate-
change-research-programs/ (last visited June 20, 2023); A.M. Natkin, Memo Summarizing
Climate Modeling and CO2 Greenhouse Effect Research, EXXON RESEARCH AND ENGINEERING
COMPANY, (Sept. 2, 1982), https://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/1982-exxon-memo-
summarizing-climate-modeling-and-co2-greenhouse-effect-research/ (last visited June 20, 2023).
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maintain awareness of new scientific developments.”
192
288.
At a presentation for Exxon’s Corporation Management Committee in 1978, attached as
Exhibit 3, Exxon was warned that CO
2
concentrations were building in the Earth’s atmosphere at
an increasing rate, that CO
2
emissions attributable to fossil fuels were retained in the atmosphere,
and that CO
2
was contributing to global warming.
193
An Exxon executive expressed the concern
that humans have a “window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding
changes in energy strategies might become critical.”
194
That was 55 years ago.
289.
Steve Knisely was a summer intern at Exxon Research and Engineering in 1979 when
Exxon asked him to analyze how global warming might affect fuel use.
195
Knisley’s report,
attached as Exhibit 4, predicted that if nothing was done and that if fossil fuel use was not limited,
there would be noticeable temperature changes and 400 ppm of CO
2
in the atmosphere by 2010.
His prediction was remarkably accurate. There was 388.61 ppm carbon in the atmosphere on
192
A.J. Callegari, Corporate Research Program in Climate/CO
2
-Greenhouse, EXXON CORPORATE
RESEARCH PROGRAM (Feb. 2, 1984), https://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/1984-exxon-
report-on-climate-modeling-and-co2-effects/ (last visited June 20, 2023).
193
Id.
194
Id.
195
Lisa Song, Neal Banerjee and David Hasemyer, Exxon Confirmed Global Warming Consensus
in 1982 with In-House Climate Models, INSIDE CLIMATE NEWS (Sept. 22, 2015),
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22092015/exxon-confirmed-global-warming-consensus-in-
1982-with-in-house-climate-models/ (last visited June 20, 2023).
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January 16, 2010, per NASA data.
196
290.
Knisely even concluded that the fossil fuel industry might need to leave 80% of its
recoverable reserves in the ground to avoid doubling CO
2
concentrations.
197
291.
At this time, Exxon scientists expressed grave concern about the potential impacts of fossil
fuel-driven global warming and advocated internally for additional fossil fuel industry-generated
research considering the growing consensus that consumption of fossil fuel products was changing
the planet’s climate.
198
292.
Indeed, on November 19, 1979, Exxon’s Henry Shaw, the company’s lead climate
researcher at the time, wrote an inter-office memorandum concerning “Research in Atmospheric
Science”, attached as Exhibit 5, wherein he stated:
We should determine how Exxon can best participate in all these [atmospheric
science research] areas and influence possible legislation on environmental
controls. It is important to begin to anticipate the strong intervention of
environmental groups and be prepared to respond with reliable and credible data. It
behooves [Exxon] to start a very aggressive defensive program in the indicated
areas of atmospheric science and climate because there is a good probability that
legislation affecting our business will be passed. Clearly, it is in our interest for
196
NASA, Vital Signs, NASA GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE, https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-
signs/carbon-dioxide/ (last visited June 20, 2023).
197
See Exhibit 4.
198
Id.
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such legislation to be based on hard scientific data. The data obtained from research
on the global damage from pollution, e.g., from coal combustion, will give us the
needed focus for further research to avoid or control such pollutants.
199
293.
That same year, Exxon’s W.L. Ferrall summarized Exxon’s internal findings in a memo
concerning “Controlling Atmospheric CO
2
,” [Exhibit 4] concluding that:
a) the increase [in CO
2
concentration] is due to fossil fuel combustion,
b) increasing CO
2
concentration will cause a warming of the earth’s
surface.
c) present trend of fossil fuel consumption will cause dramatic
environmental effects before the year 2050.”
200
294.
Doubling of CO
2
concentration (using 1860 as a baseline), Ferrall predicted that “ocean
levels would rise four feet” and the “Arctic Ocean would be ice free for at least six months each
199
Henry Shaw, Memo to H.N. Weinberg about Research in Atmospheric Science, Inter-Office
Correspondence, EXXON CORP. (Nov. 19, 1979),
https://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/1979-exxon-memo-on-atmospheric-science-research-
to-influence-legislation/ (last visited June 20, 2023).
200
W.L. Ferrall, Memo to R.L. Hirsch Controlling Atmospheric CO
2
, EXXON RESEARCH AND
ENGINEERING COMPANY (Oct. 16, 1979). https://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/1979-exxon-
memo-on-potential-impact-of-fossil-fuel-combustion/ (last visited June 20, 2023).
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year, causing major shifts in weather patterns in the northern hemisphere.”
201
295.
The American Petroleum Institute and scientists from Exxon, Mobil, Amoco (now BP),
Phillips (now ConocoPhillips), Texaco (now, Shell, Sunoco, Sohio (now BP)) as well as Standard
Oil (now BP) and Gulf Oil (now Chevron), began the “CO
2
and Climate Task Force” to monitor
and to freely share industry knowledge on climate research between 1979 and 1983.
202
296.
In 1979, API sent its members a background memo related to API’s CO
2
and Climate Task
Force’s efforts, stating that CO
2
concentrations were rising steadily in the atmosphere, and
predicting when the first clear effects of climate change might be felt.
203
297.
In 1980, API’s CO
2
Task Force members discussed the oil industry’s responsibility to
reduce CO
2
emissions by changing refining processes and developing fuels that emit less CO
2
. The
minutes from the Task Force’s meeting on February 29, 1980 included a summary of a presentation
on “The CO
2
Problem,” which identified the “scientific consensus on the potential for large future
climatic response to increased CO
2
levels” as a reason for API members to have concern with the
201
Id.
202
Id.
203
Neela Banerjee, Exxon’s Oil Industry Peers Knew About Climate Dangers in the 1970s, Too,
INSIDE CLIMATE NEWS (Dec. 22, 2015), https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22122015/exxon-
mobil-oil-industry-peers-knew-about-climate-change-dangers-1970s-american-petroleum-
institute-api-shell-chevron-texaco/ (last visited June 20, 2023).
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“CO
2
problem” and informed attendees that there was “strong empirical evidence” that rise in CO
2
concentration was caused by anthropogenic release of CO
2
, mainly from fossil fuel combustion
(emphasis added).
204
Those minutes are attached as Exhibit 6.
298.
Dr. Laurman warned the Fossil Fuel Defendants that the amount of CO
2
in the atmosphere
could double by 2038, which he said would likely lead to a 2.5° C (4.5º F) rise in global average
temperature, resulting in “major economic consequences.” He then told the task force that climate
models predicted a 5°C (9º F) rise by 2067, with “globally catastrophic effects.”
205
A Texaco (now
Chevron) representative posited that the API CO
2
Task Force should develop ground rules for
energy release of fuels and the cleanup of fuels as they relate to CO
2
creation.
299.
In 1980, the API CO
2
Task Force also discussed a potential area for investigation:
alternative energy sources as a means of mitigating CO
2
emissions from Defendants’ fossil fuel
products. These efforts called for research and development to “Investigate the Market Penetration
Requirements of Introducing a New Energy Source into Worldwide Use.” Such investigation was
to include the technical implications of energy source changeover, research timing, and
requirements.
204
American Petroleum Institute, AQ-9 Task Force Meeting Minutes, attached as Exhibit 6. AQ-
9 refers to the “CO
2
and Climate” Task Force.
205
Id.
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300.
These Meeting Minutes from the February 29, 1980, meeting of the CO
2
and Climate Task
Force, reflected a dire prediction:
CLIMATE MODELING – CONCLUSIONS
• GLOBAL AVERAGED 2.5º C RISE EXPECTED BY 2038 AT A 3% p.a.
GROWTH RATE OF ATMOSPHERIC CO
2
CONCENTRATION
• LARGE ERROR IN THIS ESTIMATE - 1 IN 10 CHANCE OF THIS
CHANGE BY 2005
• NO REGIONAL CLIMATE CHANGE ESTIMATES YET POSSIBLE
• LIKELY IMPACTS:
1º C RISE (2005): BARELY NOTICEABLE
2.5º C RISE (2038): MAJOR ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES,
STRONG REGIONAL DEPENDENCE
5º C RISE (2067): GLOBALLY CATASTROPHIC EFFECTS
301.
The Climate Task Force estimated that the Earth would warm by 2.5° C by 2038. The
February 29, 1980, meeting of API’s CO
2
and Climate Task Force concluded with the following
warning:
CONCLUSIONS
AT A 3% PER ANNUM GROWTH RATE OF CO
2
, A 2.5ºC RISE BRINGS WORLD
ECONOMIC GROWTH TO A HALT IN ABOUT 2025.
206
302.
Exxon scientist Roger Cohen warned his colleagues in a 1981 internal memorandum,
attached as Exhibit 7, that “future developments in global data gathering and analysis, along with
206
Id. (emphasis added).
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advances in climate modeling, may provide strong evidence for a delayed CO
2
effect of a truly
substantial magnitude,” and that under certain circumstances it would be “very likely that we will
unambiguously recognize the threat by the year 2000.
207
Cohen previously expressed concern that
the memorandum mischaracterized potential effects of unabated CO
2
emissions from Defendants’
fossil fuel products: “[I]t is distinctly possible that the . . . [Exxon Planning Division’s] scenario
will produce effects which will indeed be catastrophic (at least for a substantial fraction of the
world’s population).”
208
303.
In 1981, Exxon’s Henry Shaw prepared a summary of Exxon’s current position on the
greenhouse effect, attached as Exhibit 8, for Edward David Jr., president of Exxon Research and
Engineering, stating in relevant part that: “Atmospheric CO
2
will double in 100 years if fossil fuels
grow at 1.4%”… there will be a “3° Celsius global average temperature rise and 10° Celsius at
poles if CO
2
doubles” and there will be “major shifts in rainfall/agriculture” and “polar ice may
melt.”
209
207
Roger W. Cohen, Exxon Memo to W. Glass about possible “catastrophic” effect of CO
2
, Inter-
Office Correspondence, EXXONMOBIL CORP. (Aug. 18, 1981),
https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2016/10/tp/exxon-appendix-memo-support.pdf (last
visited (last visited June 20, 2023).
208
Id.
209
Henry Shaw, Exxon Memo to E. E. David, Jr. about “CO
2
Position Statement, Inter-Office
Correspondence, EXXONMOBIL CORP. (May 15, 1981),
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO28/20190409/109294/HMTG-116-GO28-20190409-
SD007.pdf (last visited June 20, 2023).
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304.
In 1982, another report prepared for API by scientists at the Lamont-Doherty Geological
Observatory at Columbia University, attached as Exhibit 9, recognized that atmospheric CO
2
concentration had risen significantly compared to the beginning of the industrial revolution from
about 290 parts per million to about 340 parts per million in 1981 and acknowledged that despite
differences in climate modelers’ predictions, all models indicated a temperature increase caused
by anthropogenic CO
2
within a global mean range of 4º C (7.2° F).
305.
Roger W. Cohen of Exxon Memo, summarizing findings of research in climate modeling,
Exxon Research Engineering Co. dated Sept. 2, 1982, report advised that there was scientific
consensus that “a doubling of atmospheric CO
2
from pre-industrial revolution value would result
in an average global temperature rise of (3.0 ± 1.5)° C [5.4 ± 2.7° F].” It went further, warning that
“[s]uch a warming can have serious consequences for man’s comfort and survival since patterns
of aridity and rainfall can change, the height of the sea level can increase considerably, and the
world food supply can be affected.”
210
306.
Also, in 1982, Exxon’s Environmental Affairs Manager, M.B. Glaser, distributed a primer
210
American Petroleum Institute, Climate Models and CO
2
Warming: A Selective Review and
Summary, Lamont-DOHERTY GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATORY (COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY) (Mar. 1982),
https://insideclimatenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/API-1982-Climate-models-and-CO2-
warming.pdf (last visited June 20, 2023).
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on climate change, attached as Exhibit 10, to a “wide circulation [of] Exxon management….
intended to familiarize Exxon personnel with the subject.”
211
The primer also was “restricted to
Exxon personnel and not to be distributed externally.”
212
307.
Glaser submitted a chart to Exxon which reflected CO
2
in the atmosphere, and how the
temperature would increase by year:
213
211
M.B. Glaser, Exxon Memo to Management about “CO
2
‘Greenhouse’ Effect”, EXXON
RESEARCH AND ENGINEERING CO. (NOV. 12, 1982),
https://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/1982-memo-to-exxon-management-about-co2-
greenhouse-effect/ (last visited June 20, 2023).
212
Id.
213
Id. at 7.
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308.
Glaser’s primer collected science on climate change available at the time and confirmed
fossil fuel combustion as a primary anthropogenic contributor to global warming. The report
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estimated a CO
2
doubling around 2090 based on Exxon’s long-range modeled outlook.
309
Glaser warned that “there are some potentially catastrophic events that must be
considered,” including increased sea surface temperatures, and the loss of Antarctic ice sheets.
214
It noted that some scientific groups were concerned “that once the effects are measurable, they
might not be reversible.”
215
310.
During the time the Task Force was in effect, the development of shale oil was of
paramount concern to API. It was discussed that the production of oil shale may generate 3-5 times
more carbon emissions.
216
311.
Director of Exxon’s Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences Laboratory Roger Cohen
agreed and wrote that “the time required for doubling of atmospheric CO
2
depends on future world
consumption of fossil fuels.” Cohen concluded that Exxon’s own results were “consistent with the
published predictions of more complex climate models” and “in accord with the scientific
consensus on the effect of increased atmospheric CO
2
on climate.”
217
214
Id.
215
Id.
216
Id.
217
Cohen, supra, Footnote 207.
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312.
In October 1982, attended by members of API, Exxon Research and Engineering Company
president E.E. David delivered a speech titled: “Inventing the Future: Energy and the CO
2
‘Greenhouse Effect.’”
218
His remarks, attached as Exhibit 11, included the following statement:
“[F]ew people doubt that the world has entered an energy transition away from dependence upon
fossil fuels and toward some mix of renewable resources that will not pose problems of CO
2
accumulation.” He went on, discussing the human opportunity to address anthropogenic climate
change before the point of no return:
It is ironic that the biggest uncertainties about the CO
2
buildup are not
in predicting what the climate will do, but in predicting what people
will do. . .. [It] appears we still have time to generate the wealth and
knowledge we will need to invent the transition to a stable energy
system.
219
313.
Throughout the early 1980s, at Exxon’s direction, Exxon climate scientist Henry Shaw
forecasted emissions of CO
2
from fossil fuel use. Those estimates were incorporated into Exxon’s
21st century energy projections, attached as Exhibit 12, and were distributed among Exxon’s
various divisions.
218
Dr. E. E. David, Jr., Inventing the Future: Energy and the CO
2
Greenhouse Effect: Remarks at
the Fourth Annual Ewing Symposium, Tenafly, NJ, EXXON RESEARCH AND ENGINEERING
COMPANY, (Oct. 26, 1982), https://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/inventing-future-energy-
co2-greenhouse-effect/ (last visited June 20, 2023).
219
Id. (emphasis added).
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314.
Shaw’s conclusions included an expectation that atmospheric CO
2
concentrations would
double in 2090 per the Exxon model, with an attendant 2.3–5.6º F average global temperature
increase. Shaw compared his model results to those of the U.S. EPA, the National Academy of
Sciences, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, indicating that the Exxon model predicted
a longer delay than any of the other models, although its temperature increase prediction was in
the mid-range of the four projections.
220
315.
During the 1980s, these Defendants additionally formed their own research units focused
on climate modeling. The API, including the API CO
2
Task Force, provided a forum for Defendants
to share their research efforts and corroborate their findings related to anthropogenic greenhouse
gas emissions.
221
316.
James J. Nelson, the former director of the task force, was interviewed by Inside Climate
News’ Neela Banerjee and said that by 1983, the CO
2
and Climate Task Force was maneuvered by
API into lobbying against regulation. “They (API) were less interested in pushing the envelope of
220
Neela Banerjee, More Exxon Documents Show How Much It Knew About Climate 35 Years
Ago, INSIDE CLIMATE NEWS (Dec. 1, 2015),
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/01122015/documents-exxons-early-co2-position-senior-
executives-engage-and-warming-forecast (last visited June 20, 2023).
221
Banerjee, supra, Footnote 203.
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science and more interested in how to make it more advantageous politically or economically for
the oil industry.”
222
317.
By the early 1980s the Defendants had initiated a five-point plan in response to their unique
knowledge of the danger faced by the world’s population, as a result of the ever-increasing sale
and use of their products. First, hide or obfuscate the dangers of climate change; second, increase
supply and production; third, decrease prices; fourth, prevent non-carbon energy sources from
developing; and fifth, stop or deter regulation of the carbon industry.
318.
During this time, the Fossil Fuel Defendants’ statements express an understanding of their
obligation to consider and mitigate the externalities of unabated promotion, marketing, and sale of
their fossil fuel products, but they failed to do so, leaving our planet exposed to dangers.
319.
Fossil Fuel Defendants have long understood grim truths about the global harm caused by
their products and expressed them in insular circles before working to sow public doubt about their
veracity. For example, in 1988, Richard Tucker, then president of Mobil Oil, observed to industry
colleagues:
[H]umanity, which has created the industrial system that has
transformed civilizations, is also responsible for the environment, which
sometimes is at risk because of unintended consequences of
industrialization…. Maintaining the health of this life-support system is
222
Id.
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emerging as one of the highest priorities…. [W]e must all be
environmentalists. The environmental covenant requires action on many
fronts…the low-atmosphere ozone problem, the upper-atmosphere
ozone problem and the greenhouse effect, to name a few…. Our strategy
must be to reduce pollution before it is ever generated – to prevent
problems at the source. Prevention means engineering a new generation
of fuels, lubricants and chemical products…. Prevention means
designing catalysts and processes that minimize or eliminate the
production of unwanted byproducts…. Prevention on a global scale may
even require a dramatic reduction in our dependence on fossil fuels—
and a shift towards solar, hydrogen, and safe nuclear power. It may be
possible that—just possible—that the energy industry will transform
itself so completely that observers will declare it a new industry….
Brute force, low-tech responses and money alone won’t meet the
challenges we face in the energy industry.
223
320.
Also, in 1988, the Shell Greenhouse Effect Working Group issued a confidential internal
report, “The Greenhouse Effect,” attached as Exhibit 13, which acknowledged global warming’s
anthropogenic nature: “Man-made carbon dioxide released into and accumulated in the atmosphere
is believed to warm the earth through the so-called greenhouse effect.” The authors also noted the
burning of fossil fuel as a primary driver of CO
2
buildup and warned that ocean warming would
impact marine species populations and that “shifts in ranges and migration patterns could result in
local losses of food source revenues and could require [fishing] operations in other (more distant)
grounds.”
224
223
Richard E. Tucker, High Tech Frontiers in the Energy Industry: The Challenge Ahead, AICHE
NATIONAL MEETING (Nov. 30, 1988).
224
Shell Internationale Petroleum, Greenhouse Effect Working Group, The Greenhouse Effect,
SHELL INTERNATIONALE PETROLEUM (May 30, 1988) https://www.climatefiles.com/shell/1988-
shell-report-greenhouse/ (last visited June 20, 2023).
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321.
In addressing “Socio-economic implications” of climate change, the authors noted that,
“[w]hile the greenhouse effect is a global phenomenon, the consequences and many of the socio-
economic implications will be regional and local ….” The authors went on to address specific
impacts including “Changing air temperature.”
225
322.
Local temperature change, the report stated, may necessitate local adaptation of the
buildings in which people live and work, technologies for heating or cooling, energy sources for
heating and cooling, new food preparation technologies, new cultivation techniques, etc. All such
adaptations are costly, and some would drastically change the way people live and work.
226
323.
Given these and other socio-economic implications, the Shell Greenhouse Effect Working
Group advocated for a plan in which industry would work with governments to address the
problem:
With fossil fuel combustion being the major source of CO
2
in the atmosphere, a
forward looking approach by the energy industry is clearly desirable, seeking to
play its part with governments and others in the development of appropriate
measures to tackle the problem.
227
225
Id.
226
Id. at 27-28.
227
Id. at 1.
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324.
Like early warnings by Exxon scientists, the Shell report notes that “by the time the global
warming becomes detectable it could be too late to take effective countermeasures to reduce the
effects or even to stabilize the situation.” The authors mention the need to consider policy changes
on multiple occasions, noting that “the potential implications for the world are…so large that
policy options need to be considered much earlier” and that research should be “directed more to
the analysis of policy and energy options than to studies of what we will be facing exactly.”
228
325.
The Fossil Fuel Defendants Exxon, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Motiva, Valero, Total and
Anadarko (and their predecessors in interest) were at the forefront of carbon dioxide research for
much of the latter half of the 20th century. Collectively, they studied and developed cutting edge
and innovative technology, working with top researchers to produce exceptionally sophisticated
greenhouse gas studies and climate change models.
326.
The Fossil Fuel Defendants actively participated in committees, boards and groups for the
American Petroleum Institute, Western States Petroleum Association (and others) and received
numerous studies and updates from various committees regarding industry wide knowledge.
327.
The largest Fossil Fuel Defendants worked with McKinsey to create strategies that allowed
228
Id.
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for exponential increase in the use of their products, artificial creation of energy dependence, and
control climate messaging to create doubt.
328.
Defendants failed to act reasonably to mitigate or avoid the dire adverse impacts their
scientists carefully predicted. Defendants instead adopted the position, as described below, that the
absence of meaningful regulations on the consumption of their fossil fuel products was the
equivalent of a social license to continue the unfettered pursuit of profits from those products. This
position was an abdication of Defendants’ obligation to consumers and the public, including
Multnomah County, to act on their unique knowledge of the hazards of unabated production and
consumption of their fossil fuel products.
329.
By 1988, Defendants had amassed a compelling body of knowledge about the role of
anthropogenic greenhouse gases—specifically those emitted from the normal use of Defendants’
fossil fuel products—in causing global warming, increased mean surface temperature, heatwaves,
and the attendant consequences for human communities and the environment.
330.
The Fossil Fuel Defendants possessed actual knowledge that their products were causing
global climate change and predicted dire effects on the planet. The Fossil Fuel Defendants were
faced with the decision of whether to take steps to limit the damages their fossil fuel products were
causing and would continue to cause for virtually every area of the globe, including Multnomah
County.
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331.
It was also during this time that the Fossil Fuel Defendants were investing in offshore
platforms and needed to study climate change to protect their own assets from rising sea levels.
These investments included (among others), raising offshore oil platforms to protect against sea
level rise; reinforcing offshore oil platforms to withstand increased wave strength and storm
severity; and developing and patenting designs for equipment intended to extract crude oil and/or
natural gas in areas previously unreachable because of the presence of polar ice sheets.
229
The
Defendants understood that to effectuate their conspiracy and enterprise, they must find more oil
and gas, produce more, maintain low prices, and stifle the alternative energy source companies
and the governmental regulators.
332.
Ordinary care required Defendants to have taken any of several steps to mitigate the
damages caused by their fossil fuel products, and their own comments reveal an awareness of the
steps they were required to take.
333.
Ordinary care required Defendants to have made reasonable warnings to consumers, the
public, and regulators of the dangers known to them of the unabated consumption of their fossil
fuel products and were required to have taken reasonable steps to limit the potential greenhouse
229
Amy Lieberman and Suzanne Rust, Big Oil braced for global warming while it fought
regulations, L.A. TIMES (Dec. 31, 2015), https://graphics.latimes.com/oil-operations/ (last visited
June 20, 2023).
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gas emissions arising out of those products.
334.
The Defendants acted carelessly and recklessly, rather than reasonably or with ordinary
care. Instead of acting to limit the potential greenhouse gas emissions, they mobilized with the
coal and fossil fuel dependent industries to manufacture and spread propaganda and deception
about climate science, contrary to their own internal scientific conclusions, to ensure
unencumbered emissions and the sale of their products to consumers worldwide and in Multnomah
County.
335.
Exxon instructed Duane Levine, Exxon’s manager of science and strategy development, to
give a primer to the company’s board of directors on February 22, 1989, which is attached as
Exhibit 14.
336.
Levine told the board of directors what they already knew ten years prior: There was
general consensus among scientists that the burning of fossil fuels could raise global temperatures
significantly by the middle of the 21st century — between 2.7 and 8.1° F — causing glaciers to
melt and sea levels to rise.”
230
Speaking of impending regulation, Exxon’s LeVine warned
230
Katie Jennings, Dino Grandoni and Susanne Rust, How Exxon went from leader to skeptic on
climate change research, L. A. TIMES (Oct. 23, 2015), https://graphics.latimes.com/exxon-
research/ (last visited June 20, 2023).
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“arguments that we can’t tolerate delay and must act now can lead to irreversible and costly
Draconian steps.”
231
337.
Levine quoted from the 1983 “Changing Climate Report” from the Natural Research
Council.
232
338.
In a 1989 internal newsletter, attached as Exhibit 15, Exxon’s resident climate expert Brian
Flannery confirmed that regulatory efforts to reduce the risk of climate change, would “alter
profoundly the strategic direction of the energy industry.” And he warned that the impact on the
company from those efforts “will come sooner … than from climate change itself.”
233
339.
Reiterating the position taken a decade earlier, Joseph M. Carlson, Exxon Memo on “The
Greenhouse Effect” dated Aug. 3, 1988, attached as Exhibit 16, described the “Exxon Position,”
which included among others, two important tenets:
a) emphasize the uncertainty in scientific conclusions regarding the
potential enhanced Greenhouse Effect; and
b) resist the overstatement and sensationalization (sic) of potential
greenhouse effect which could lead to noneconomic development of
non-fossil fuel resources.
234
231
Jennings, supra, Footnote 230.
232
See, Exhibit 15.
233
Id.
234
Joseph M. Carlson, Exxon Memo on “The Greenhouse Effect”, EXXONMOBIL CORP. (Aug. 3,
1988).
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H. The Global Climate Coalition: The Propaganda Machine
340.
Though the Fossil Fuel Defendants are market competitors in some respects, they share a
common purpose to sell as many of their polluting products as possible and to deceive or
overwhelm those who may wish to modify that behavior. In furtherance of that shared objective,
the Fossil Fuel and Coal Defendants converged and formed the “Global Climate Coalition”
(“GCC”) to fund and coordinate a multi-year, multi-million-dollar, multi-organization
misinformation campaign designed explicitly to undermine climate science and further their
business interests.
341.
Multnomah County alleges a pattern of conduct that includes the Defendants’ conscious
efforts to hide behind third parties, touted as “green” or “pro-environment.” This practice is a form
of greenwashing, sometimes referred to as “green sheen.” Greenwashing is a public
relations spin to promote the public’s perception that an organization’s products, aims, or policies
are environmentally friendly.
235
Greenwashing was used when forming the Global Climate
Coalition and became a repetitive and effective scheme to deceive consumers.
https://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/566/#:~:text=In%20the%20document%2C%20Carlso
n%20states,can%20have%20disastrous%20environmental%20impacts (last visited June 20,
2023).
235
The Age of Persuasion, Season 5: It's Not Easy Being Green: Green Marketing, CBC RADIO
(Jan. 8, 2011).
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342.
The GCC was formed in 1989 as a public relations and international lobbyist group of
businesses that opposed action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and publicly challenged the
science behind global warming, even though the founders knew otherwise. The following is a list
of the founding members of the GCC on November 16, 1989:
236
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Global Climate Coalition, Global Climate Coalition Membership, GLOBAL CLIMATE
COALITION (Nov. 16, 1989), https://www.climatefiles.com/denial-groups/global-climate-
coalition-collection/1989-membership/ (last visited June 20, 2023).
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343.
The GCC, on behalf of Fossil Fuel Defendants and other fossil fuel companies, funded
advertising campaigns and distributed material to misinform the public about climate change, with
the specific purpose of preventing U.S. adoption of the Kyoto Protocol—an international treaty
that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific
consensus that global warming is occurring—despite the leading role that the U.S. had played in
the Protocol negotiations.
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344.
From the outset, the corporate interests that controlled the central components of the GCC
were fossil fuel producers, including coal mining interests and oil companies, and fossil fuel
dependent industries, including coal-burning utilities, railroads who moved coal, automobiles, and
chemical companies. Approximately 53% of membership in the GCC centered around fossil fuel
activities, namely coal, oil, and auto companies. These companies also represented approximately
38% of board membership.
238
The Defendants were integral to the foundation and purpose of the
GCC.
345.
The GCC was “reorganized” in 1992 by Phillips Petroleum (now ConocoPhillips), BHP
237
Id.
238
The Global Climate Coalition, Big Business Funds Climate Change Denial and Regulatory
Delay, CLIMATE INVESTIGATIONS CENTER (Mar. 25, 2019), https://climateinvestigations.org/wp-
content/uploads/2019/04/The-Global-Climate-Coalition-Denial-and-Delay.pdf (last visited June
20, 2023).
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(now BP), Ford, National Mining Association, Shell, Texaco (now Chevron), Exxon, Chrysler
(now FCA), General Motors, the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Petroleum
Institute (Oil Defendants), the National Coal Association (Coal Defendants), among many other
fossil fuel dependent companies.
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346.
The GCC, including its member corporations and member trade associations, represented
hundreds of thousands of businesses and was managed by Ruder Finn, a public relations firm.
240
347.
Despite an internal primer stating that various “contrarian theories”—i.e., climate change
skepticism—do not “offer convincing arguments against the conventional model of greenhouse
gas emission induced climate change,” GCC excluded this section from the public version of the
backgrounder (talking points) and instead funded efforts to promote those same contrarian
theories. It does so to this day.
241
239
Ian McGregor, Organizing to Influence the Global Politics of Climate Change, AUSTRALIAN
AND NEW ZEALAND ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT CONFERENCE (2008),
https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/bitstream/10453/11492/1/2008000811OK.pdf (last visited June 20,
2023).
240
Wendy E. Franz, Science, skeptics, and non-state actors in the greenhouse, BELFER CENTER FOR
SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS (Sept. 1998),
https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files/Science%20Skeptics%20and%20Non
-State%20Actors%20in%20the%20Greenhouse%20-%20E-98-18.pdf (last visited June 20, 2023).
241
Gregory J. Dana, Memo to AIAM Technical Committee Re: Global Climate Coalition (GCC)
– Primer on Climate Change Science – Final Draft, ASSOCIATION OF INTERNATIONAL AUTOMOBILE
MANUFACTURERS (Jan. 18, 1996),
https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/07/Climate-Deception-Dossier-7_GCC-
Climate-Primer.pdf (last visited June 20, 2023).
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348.
The GCC’s financial information is not publicly available, though some has been
uncovered by researchers. GCC’s advocacy activities including political lobbying, aggressive and
misleading promotion of promotion of climate change denialism, criticism of the processes of
international climate organizations, critiques of reliable but ominous climate models, and personal
attacks on scientists and environmentalists whose work confirms that GHGs are warming the
planet and thereby inducing devastating weather events.
349.
The effort included promoting their hazardous products through advertising campaigns and
the initiation and funding of climate change denialist organizations, designed to influence
consumers to continue using Defendants’ fossil fuel products regardless of those products’ damage
to communities and the environment.
350.
The Fossil Fuel Defendants took affirmative steps to conceal from the Multnomah County,
its residents, and the public, the foreseeable impacts of the use of their fossil fuel products on the
planet’s climate and associated harms to people and communities. Using the GCC, these
Defendants embarked on a public relations campaign and colluded with Peabody, among others,
to deceive the public about the science connecting global climate change to fossil fuel products
and greenhouse gas emissions, to influence public perception of the existence of anthropogenic
global warming. Under the guise of the GCC, the Fossil Fuel Defendants were able to collude with
other members to accomplish what it could not fully do on their own: discredit scientific consensus
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and foster deception. In doing so, they exponentially increased the sales of their products,
expanded consumer demand for them, and built an energy monopoly.
351.
A key strategy in Defendants’ efforts to discredit scientific consensus on climate change,
including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“IPCC”), a body of scientists from
every major country created by the United Nations, was to bankroll and hide behind scientists who,
although sometimes accredited, held fringe opinions that were even more suspect given the sources
of their research funding, which was not publicly disclosed and contrary to the insiders’ own
conclusions about their consumer products. These scientists obtained part or all their research
budget from Defendants directly or through Defendant-funded organizations like API,
242
but failed
to disclose their fossil fuel industry underwriters in violation of common law fraud and consumer
protections laws.
243
352.
In 1991, the Coal Defendants formed another greenwashed front group, Information
Council on the Environment (“ICE”), with the express purpose of deceiving the public about
242
Willie Soon & Sallie Baliunas, Proxy Climatic and Environmental Changes of the Past 1000
Years, 23 Climate Research at 88,105 (Jan. 31, 2003) https://www.jstor.org/stable/24868339 (last
visited June 20, 2023).
243
Smithsonian, Smithsonian Statement: Dr. Wei-Hock (Willie) Soon, LEGISTORM (Feb. 26, 2015).
https://www.legistorm.com/stormfeed/view_rss/529271/organization/36823/title/smithsonian-
statement-dr-wei-hock-willie-soon.html (last visited June 20, 2023).
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climate science. ICE was a U.S. organization created by the National Coal Association,
the Western Fuels Association, and Edison Electrical Institute. Defendant Peabody was a member.
353.
ICE launched a $500,000 advertising and public relations campaign to determine if their
deceptive “science approach sells”
244
and, in ICE’s words, “reposition global warming as theory
(not fact)” a framing that makes clear that by 1991 global warming was an accepted scientific fact,
and that the group’s objectives to “reposition global warming as a theory” were pure propaganda,
not based in science. Patrick Michaels, Robert Balling and Sherwood B. Idso all lent their names
in 1991 to its scientific advisory panel.
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354.
The Coal Defendants’ publicity plan called for placing these three scientists, along with
fellow climate change denier S. Fred Singer, in broadcast appearances, op-ed pages, and
newspaper interviews by its public relations firm.
246
355.
Another company was contracted to conduct opinion polls, which identified “older, less-
244
See May 7, 1991, correspondence from E. Erie to O. Mark DeMichele.
245
Kathy Mulvey & Seth Shulman, The Climate Deception Dossier Internal Fossil Fuel Industry
Memos Reveal Decades of Corporate Disinformation, UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS (July
2015), at 20, https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/07/The-Climate-Deception-
Dossiers.pdf (last visited June 20, 2023).
246
Matthew L. Wald, Pro-Coal Ad Campaign Disputes Warming Idea, N. Y. TIMES (Jul. 8, 1991),
https://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/08/business/pro-coal-ad-campaign-disputes-warming-
idea.html (last visited June 20, 2023).
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educated males from larger households who are not typically active information-seekers” and
“younger, lower-income women” as “good targets for radio advertisements” that would “directly
attack the proponents of global warming …. through comparison of global warming to historical
or mythical instances of gloom and doom.”
247
356.
ICE used print campaigns to influence public opinion. One such campaign showed a sailing
ship about to drop off the edge of a flat world into the jaws of a waiting dragon. The headline read:
“Some say the earth is warming. Some also said the earth was flat.” Another featured a cowering
chicken under the headline, “Who Told You the Earth Was Warming . . . Chicken Little?” Another
ad was targeted at Minneapolis readers and asked, “If the earth is getting warmer, why is
Minneapolis getting colder?”
357.
The images appearing below are some examples of ICE-funded print advertisements
challenging the validity of climate science and intended to obscure the scientific consensus on
anthropogenic climate change and reduce political inertia to address it.
248
247
Id.
248
Mulvey & Shulman, supra, Footnote 231.
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358.
The goals of ICE’s advertising campaign were to undermine the science, manufacture
deception and dupe public opinion regarding the realities global warming. A memo from Richard
Lawson, president of the National Coal Association, asked members to contribute to the ICE
campaign with the justification that policymakers are prepared to act on global warming, noting
that opinion polls revealed 60% of Americans believed global warming was a serious
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environmental problem and that “our industry cannot sit on the sidelines in this debate.”
249
The
ICE propaganda strategy is attached as Exhibit 17.
359.
In December 1992, the Global Climate Coalition’s Executive Director, John Shales, wrote
in a letter to The New York Times: “...there is considerable debate on whether or not man-made
greenhouse gases (produced primarily by burning fossil fuels) are triggering a dangerous ‘global
warming’ trend.” The letter in full:
To the Editor:
“Cheapest Protection of Nature May Lie In Taxes, Not Laws” (Science
Times, Nov. 24) echoes the theme that bad taxes become good taxes
(alias “green fees”) when they tax “bad” things. According to the article,
these include fossil fuels, traffic and household garbage.
While tax policy can affect behavior, misguided tax policy can dampen
economic prosperity in attempting to solve problems that might not exist
or that could be solved in less onerous ways. The World Resources
Institute study you cite asks Americans to pay higher energy prices to
prevent catastrophic global warming.
But there is considerable debate on whether or not man-made
greenhouse gases (produced primarily by burning fossil fuels) are
triggering a dangerous “global warming” trend. At an international
meeting of climate experts in 1990, an intergovernmental panel on
climate change concluded that "it is impossible to prove a cause-and-
effect relationship" between man-made emissions and global warming.
In the 1992 supplement to that report, the scientists stated, “It is still not
249
Naomi Oreskes, My Facts Are Better Than Your Facts: Spreading Good News about Global
Warming, in Peter Howlett et al., How Well Do Facts Travel? The Dissemination of Reliable
Knowledge, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS (2011), at 136–66,
https://doc.lagout.org/Others/Cambridge.University.Press-
How.Well.Do.Facts.Travel.2010.RETAiL.EBook.pdf (last visited June 19, 2023).
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possible to attribute with high confidence all, or even part of, the
observed global warming to the enhanced greenhouse effect.”
We know that climate change over the last 100 years is well within the
planet's natural variation (the global climate has never been “stable”). If
scientists don't agree that man-made global warming is a problem, does
the United States want to pay the costs incurred from an energy tax,
including a diminished competitive position with our trading partners?
A major Japanese Government agency has backed away from a carbon
tax because of its impact on industry. You cite a $5 trillion price tag in
the study.
The American business community has made significant improvements
in energy efficiency and now spends approximately $100 billion a year
complying with environmental regulations. These improvements have
resulted in a substantial reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
A green fee is a carbon tax, and a carbon tax is an energy tax. That
translates into higher prices, lost jobs, reduced paychecks and slower
growth.
250
360.
That year, in 1992, the GCC distributed a video entitled The Greening of Planet Earth,
251
to media, policy makers and its competitors, several Middle Eastern oil-producing countries, which
claimed that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide could boost crop yields and solve world
250
John Schlaes, What Global Warming?, N.Y. TIMES (Dec. 22, 1992),
https://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/22/opinion/l-what-global-warming-250692.html (last visited
June 20, 2023).
251
A sequel, entitled, The Greening of Planet Earth Continues, was released in 1998. The video
was narrated by Sherwood Idso. The Greening Earth Society, now defunct, was a public relations
organization which denied the effects of climate change and the impacts of increased levels of
carbon dioxide. The Society published the World Climate Report, a newsletter edited by Patrick
Michaels of the Cato Institute.
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hunger. These claims were inconsistent with climate models by the Fossil Fuel Defendants that
predicted global climatic catastrophe.
252
361.
Amidst this propaganda to muddy the waters of climate change facts, the United Nations
began preparation for the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Summit was a major,
newsworthy gathering of 172 world governments, of which 116 sent their heads of state. On May
9, 1992, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (“UNFCCC”) adopted an
international environmental treaty providing protocols for future negotiations aimed at
“stabiliz[ing] greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent
dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” The treaty was opened for
signature at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro on June 14, 1992.
362.
Candace Crandall of Science & Environmental Policy Project (“SEPP”) registered at the
IPPC’s Rio Earth Summit as a “publicist” for the “science team” while the GCC ran an industry-
wide collaborative delay and disinformation program to try to block decisions being taken at the
252
Amy Lieberman and Susanne Rust, Big Oil braced for global warming while it fought
regulations, L. A. TIMES (Dec. 31, 2015), https://graphics.latimes.com/oil-operations/ (last visited
June 19, 2023).
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Summit. These actions were coordinated by public relations giant Burson-Marsteller. The main
anti-IPPC operation in Rio at the 1992 Earth Summit was run by the Global Climate Coalition.
253
363.
These world events marked a shift in public discussion of climate change, and the initiation
of international efforts to curb anthropogenic greenhouse emissions—developments that had stark
implications for, and would have diminished the profitability of, Defendants’ fossil fuel products.
364.
The GCC’s indoctrination, which focused on concealing, discrediting, and/or
misrepresenting information that tended to support restricting consumption of (and thereby
decreasing demand for) Defendants’ fossil fuel products, enabled Defendants to accelerate their
business practice of exploiting fossil fuel reserves, and concurrently externalize the social and
environmental costs of their fossil fuel products.
365.
These activities stood in direct contradiction to the Fossil Fuel Defendants’ prior
recognition that the science of anthropogenic climate change was clear and that the greatest
uncertainties involved responsive human behavior, not scientific understanding of the issue.
366.
A 1994 Shell report titled “The Enhanced Greenhouse Effect: A Review of the Scientific
253
The Center for Media and Democracy, Candace C. Crandall, CENTER FOR MEDIA AND
DEMOCRACY (CMD) https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Candace_C._Crandall (last visited
June 19, 2023).
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Aspects”, attached as Exhibit 18, warned of the potentially dramatic economic effects of “ill-
advised policy measures” relating to climate change. While this 1994 report recognized the IPCC
conclusions as the mainstream view, the author emphasized scientific uncertainty and that the
“evolution of energy systems indicates that policies to curb greenhouse gas emissions beyond ‘no
regrets’ measures could be premature, divert resources from more pressing needs and further
distort markets.”
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367.
When the GCC became a standalone organization in 1995, independent from the National
Association of Manufacturers, the membership grew, adding at least eight new utilities and seven
new oil and coal corporations as members. At the same time, the budget tripled, with tax documents
showing three million dollars in corporate and trade association dues in tax years 1996 and 1997,
compared to one million dollars in dues from the years 1994 and 1995.
255
368.
In 1995, GCC assembled an advisory committee of scientific and technical experts to
compile an internal, 17-page report on climate science entitled Predicting Future Climate Change:
A Primer, attached as Exhibit 19, which stated: “The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and
254
P. Langcake, The Enhanced Greenhouse Effect: A review of the Scientific Aspects, ROYAL
DUTCH SHELL (Dec. 1994), https://www.climatefiles.com/shell/1994-shell-enhanced-greenhouse-
effect-review-scientific-aspects/ (last visited June 19, 2023).
255
Climate Investigations Center, Global Climate Coalition Documents: Big Business Funds
Climate Change Denial and Regulatory Delay, CLIMATE INVESTIGATIONS CENTER,
https://climateinvestigations.org/global-climate-coalition-documents/ (last visited June 19, 2023).
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the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO
2
on climate is well
established and cannot be denied.”
369.
But that is not the message Defendants and their co-conspirators promoted to consumers,
investors, or the public. Even though these GCC members knew that their products caused
catastrophic effects, including extreme changes in heat, GCC disseminated climate denial claims
that relied largely on the World Climate Review and its successor, the World Climate Report, which
was edited by Patrick Michaels, funded by the Western Fuels Association
256
and promoted by
the Greening Earth Society, purportedly debunking the catastrophic effects of their products on
our atmosphere.
370.
The Greening Earth Society (“GEC”) was a public relations organization which promoted
a thesis that there was considerable scientific doubt about the effects of climate change and
increased atmospheric accumulation of carbon dioxide. The Western Fuels Association created the
GEC and shared office space with it. The GEC promoted the views of climate skeptics such as
Patrick Michaels, Fred Singer, and Richard Lindzen.
257
In 1996, the GEC published a report
256
Wendy E. Franz, Science, skeptics, and non-state actors in the greenhouse, BELFER CENTER FOR
SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS (Sept. 1998),
https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files/Science%20Skeptics%20and%20Non
-State%20Actors%20in%20the%20Greenhouse%20-%20E-98-18.pdf (last visited June 19, 2023).
257
David Levy and Sandra Rothenberg, Corporate Strategy and Climate Change: Heterogeneity
and Change in the Global Automobile Industry, BELFER CENTER FOR SCIENCE AND
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS (Sept. 30, 1999),
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titled “Changing Weather? Facts and Fallacies about Climate Change”, attached as Exhibit 20. The
GEC publicly opposed IPCC’s scientific consensus to further the business objectives of its fossil
fuel benefactors rather than for intellectually honest or science-based reasons.
371.
In July 1996, at a Washington, D.C. press conference on the eve of the second United
Nations Climate Change conference in Geneva, GEC’s executive director said, “The time for
decision is not yet now.”
258
372.
In 1996, Exxon released a publication, attached as Exhibit 21, titled “Global Warming:
Who’s Right? Facts about a debate that’s turned up more questions than answers.” Exxon CEO
Lee Raymond stated that “taking drastic action immediately is unnecessary since many scientists
agree there’s ample time to better understand the climate system.”
373.
In the publication, another article described the greenhouse effect as “unquestionably real
and definitely a good thing,” while ignoring the severe consequences that would result from the
influence of the increased CO
2
concentration on Earth’s climate. Exxon downplayed the
greenhouse effect as simply “what makes the earth’s atmosphere livable.”
https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/corporate-strategy-and-climate-change-heterogeneity-
and-change-global-automobile (last visited June 19, 2023).
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John H Cushman Jr., Report says global warming poses threat to public health. N. Y. TIMES,
(Jul. 8, 1996) https://www.nytimes.com/1996/07/08/world/report-says-global-warming-poses-
threat-to-public-health.html (last visited June 20, 2023).
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374.
In this 1996 publication, Exxon contradicted its own internal reports and peer reviewed
science, attributing the rise in temperature since the late 19th century to “natural fluctuations that
occur over long periods of time” rather than to the anthropogenic emissions that Exxon and other
scientists had confirmed were responsible. The article also falsely and cynically challenged the
accuracy of computer models that projected the future impacts of unabated fossil fuel product
consumption, including those developed by Exxon’s own employees for the company’s use.
375.
Exxon’s article contradicted the numerous reports circulated among Exxon’s staff, and by
the API, by stating that “the indications are that a warmer world would be far more benign than
many imagine . . . moderate warming would reduce mortality rates in the US, so a slightly warmer
climate would be more healthful.” Raymond concluded his preface by attacking advocates for
limiting the use of his company’s fossil fuel products as “drawing on bad science, faulty logic, or
unrealistic assumptions”—despite the important role that Exxon’s own scientists had played in
compiling those same scientific underpinnings.
259
376.
Joining with Exxon, API published a report in the 1996 titled “Reinventing Energy: Making
the Right Choices”, attached as Exhibit 22, warning against concern over CO
2
buildup and any
259
Exxon Corp., Global warming: who’s right? (1996), EXXON CORP,
https://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/global-warming-who-is-right-1996/ (last visited June
20, 2023).
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need to curb consumption or regulate the industry. The same API that less than 20 years earlier had
concluded that global warming from fossil fuel emissions could cause “globally catastrophic”
effects now wrote that “there is no persuasive basis for forcing Americans to dramatically change
their lifestyles to use less oil.” The authors discouraged the further development of certain
alternative energy sources, writing that “government agencies have advocated the increased use of
ethanol and the electric car, without the facts to support the assertion that either is superior to
existing fuels and technologies” and that “policies that mandate replacing oil with specific
alternative fuel technologies freeze progress at the current level of technology, and reduce the
chance that innovation will develop better solutions.” The report denies the human connection to
climate change, saying that no “scientific evidence exists that human activities are significantly
affecting sea levels, rainfall, surface temperatures or the intensity and frequency of storms,”
concluding that “facts don’t support the arguments for restraining oil use.”
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377.
Every Thursday from 1985 to 2000, Mobil bought a full-page in the New York Times and
used its ad space to publish what appeared to be scientific articles.
261
At the same time, in 1996,
Exxon, while publicly denying the threat of global warming, designed its drilling rigs off the Nova
260
American Petroleum Institute, Reinventing Energy, AMERICAN PETROLEUM INSTITUTE (1996)
https://www.climatefiles.com/trade-group/american-petroleum-institute/1996-reinventing-
energy/ (last visited June 20, 2023).
261
Connor Gibson, How Exxon Used the New York Times to Make You Question Climate
Science, ECOWATCH (Sept. 2, 2017) https://www.ecowatch.com/exxon-new-york-times-
2479595376.html (last visited June 20, 2023).
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Scotia coast to account for a 0.5-meter anthropogenic rise in sea levels that climate models
predicted would likely occur during the expected 25-year lifespan of the structures.
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378.
Mobil’s advertorials continued until 2000 and Exxon continued to publish multiple
‘Advertorials’, again, designed to ‘misinform’ the public:
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Amy Lieberman and Susanne Rust, Big Oil braced for global warming while it fought
regulations, L. A. TIMES (Dec. 31, 2015), https://graphics.latimes.com/oil-operations/ (last visited
June 20, 2023).
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NPR, Climate Change Is 'Greatest Challenge Humans Have Ever Faced,' Author Says, NPR
(Apr. 16, 2019 1:59 PM) https://www.npr.org/2019/04/16/713829853/climate-change-is-greatest-
challenge-humans-have-ever-faced-author-says (last visited June 20, 2023). Photo source: Inside
Climate News.
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379.
In 1997, Mobil paid for an ad/article published in the New York Times proclaiming:
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Let’s face it: The science of climate change is too uncertain to mandate
a plan of action that could plunge economies into turmoil…We still
don’t know what role man-made greenhouse gases might play in
warming the planet.
264
380.
In a speech presented at the World Petroleum Congress in Beijing in 1997 at which many
of the Fossil Fuel Defendants were present, Exxon CEO Lee Raymond reiterated these views. This
time, he presented a false dichotomy between stable energy markets and abatement of the
marketing, promotion, and sale of fossil fuel products known to Defendants to be hazardous. He
stated:
Some people who argue that we should drastically curtail our use of
fossil fuels for environmental reasons…my belief [is] that such
proposals are neither prudent nor practical. With no readily available
economic alternatives on the horizon, fossil fuels will continue to supply
most of the worlds and this region’s energy for the foreseeable future...
Governments also need to provide a stable investment climate…They
should avoid the temptation to intervene in energy markets in ways that
give advantage to one competitor over another or one fuel over another.
We also have to keep in mind that most of the greenhouse effects comes
from natural sources.…Leaping to radically cut this tiny sliver of the
greenhouse pie on the premise that it will affect climate defies common
sense and lacks foundation in our current understanding of the climate
system. Let’s agree there’s a lot we really don’t know about how climate
will change in the 21st century and beyond.…It is highly unlikely that
the temperature in the middle of the next century will be significantly
affected whether policies are enacted now or 20 years from now. It’s bad
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Dino Grandoni, ExxonMobil asked people to ‘read the documents’ it produced on climate
change. So, these Harvard researchers did. THE WASHINGTON POST (Aug. 24, 2017)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/08/24/exxonmobil-asked-people-to-
read-the-documents-it-produced-on-climate-change-so-these-harvard-researchers-did (last
visited June 20, 2023).
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public policy to impose very costly regulations and restrictions when
their need has yet to be proven.
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381.
In 1997, the GCC launched an advertising campaign in the US against
any agreement aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions internationally. This was run through
an organization called the Global Climate Information Project (“GCIP”), which was sponsored by
the GCC and the American Association of Automobile Manufacturers, among others. The GCIP
was represented by Shandwick Public Affairs, the second-largest PR firm in the United States.
266
382.
The GCIP’s ads were produced by Goddard Claussen/First Tuesday, a California-based PR
firm, which falsely claimed “It’s Not Global and It Won't Work.” Among other things, the ads
indicated that “Americans will pay the price ... 50¢ more for every gallon of gasoline,” even though
there was no proposal for such a tax. There was no treaty at that point, and no government
265
Lee R. Raymond, Energy – Key to growth and a better environment for Asia-Pacific nations,
WORLD PETROLEUM CONGRESS (Oct. 13, 1997), https://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/1997-
exxon-lee-raymond-speech-at-world-petroleum-congress/ (last visited June 20, 2023).
266
Shandwick Public Affairs is a division of Weber Shandwick Worldwide (WSW) was, in 2004,
the world's largest public relations company. A subsidiary of the Interpublic Group, it was formed
as the product of the mergers of Weber Public Relations and Shandwick Worldwide in late 2000.
In 2001, Weber Shandwick merged with BSMG to become the largest PR operation in the world.
Other Shandwick clients include Browning-Ferris Industries, Central Maine Power, Georgia-
Pacific Corp., Monsanto Chemical Co., New York State Electric and Gas Co., Ciba-Geigy, Ford
Motor Company, Hydro-Quebec, Pfizer, and Procter & Gamble. SourceWatch, Weber Shandwick,
THE CENTER FOR MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY,
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Weber_Shandwick (last visited June 20, 2023).
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proposals, then or now, that have suggested a “50 cent gallon gas tax.” The ads are attached hereto
as Exhibit 23.
383.
In August 1997, a few months before the Kyoto Conference on Climate Change, the GCC
helped launch a massive advertising campaign designed to prevent the United States from
endorsing any meaningful agreement to reduce global carbon emissions. This group, including in
its ranks these Defendants, some of the world’s most powerful corporations and trade associations
involved with fossil fuels, concentrated its efforts on a series of television ads that attempted to
confuse and frighten Americans.
384.
In the 1990s, Defendant Koch began funding Climate Denial Groups including those
named herein. By estimates, Koch spent $145,556,729 from 1997 to 2018 on directed campaigns
to spread doubt and continue to amass profits.
267
385.
Mobil’s 1997 advertorial below
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argued that economic analysis of emissions restrictions
was faulty and inconclusive and therefore a justification for delaying action on climate change.
267
Greenpeace, Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine,
https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/fighting-climate-chaos/climate-deniers/koch-industries/ (last
visited on June 19, 2023).
268
Mobil, When Facts Don’t Square with the Theory, Throw Out the Facts, N.Y. TIMES, (Aug. 14,
1997) at A31, https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/705550-mob-nyt-1997-aug-14-
whenfactsdontsquare.html? (last visited June 19, 2023).
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386.
An example of one of Mobil’s advertisements in the New York Times, published on
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November 7, 1997, is reproduced below:
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387.
The GCC had an active subcommittee named the “Global Climate Coalition Science and
Technology Assessment Committee” (STAC). In 1996, members of this subcommittee on science
and technology were represented by Ford, Exxon, API, the NMA, BHP, and many others.
388.
At STAC’s June 20, 1996 meeting, which was held at the API headquarters, notes were
prepared and distributed by the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers (AIAM),
released talking points from Bronson Gardner to Jim Pinto and distributed to the STAC committee
for addressing whether 1995 was “really that much hotter than normal or whether the data was
‘blown out of proportion’” giving STAC and the GCC talking points for downplaying record
setting temperatures.
269
389.
In 1997 alone, the GCC spent $13 million opposing the Kyoto Protocol.
270
1. The GCSCT Action Plan--Double Down on Deception
390.
Members of the GCC created a task force which met at a “workshop” held at the API
269
Howard J. Feldman, 1996 GCC STAC June Meeting Minutes, GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE
COALITION (Jun. 20, 1996), https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5689156-AIAM-
051229.html (last visited June 20, 2023).
270
Maggie Farley, Showdown at Global Warming Summit, L. A. TIMES (Dec. 7, 1997),
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-dec-07-mn-61743-story.html (last visited June
20, 2023).
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headquarters in late March of 1998.
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A memorandum titled the “Global Climate Science
Communication Team Action Plan” (“GCSCT” Action Plan) and written by API’s Joe Walker
memorializing the workshop’s goals, strategies and tactics was emailed to the GCSCT team
members on April 3, 1998, and is attached hereto as Exhibit 24.
391.
The email from Joe Walker with the GCSCT Action Plan which detailed a scheme on how
the GCC would achieve “Victory” by duping consumers through front groups, promoters, and
media strategists:
271
The e-mail is undated but refers to a workshop that occurred the Friday before. As the
attachment is dated April 3, 1998.
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392.
The cover page of the GCSCT Action Plan, setting forth its goals, current reality, and when
“victory” would be achieved, is infamously known as the “Victory Memo:”
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393.
The GCSCT Action Plan named the following members, a who’s who of fossil fuel industry
insiders and advocates, as having contributed to the Plan’s development: John Adams, John Adams
Associates; Candace Crandall, Science and Environmental Policy Project;
272
David Rothbard,
Committee for A Constructive Tomorrow; Jeffrey Salmon, The Marshall Institute;
273
Lee Garrigan,
Environmental Issues Council;
274
Lynn Bouchey and Myron Ebell, Frontiers of Freedom;
275
Peter
272
Candace Crandall was the wife of S. Fred Singer and registered for the Rio conference as a
“publicist” for a science team at the Rio Conference where GCC participated in 1992.
273
Also known as “The George C. Marshall Institute” (GMI) is a "non-profit" organization
funded by the profits from oil and gas interests and co-founded by Frederick Seitz in 1984. It has
received substantial funding from Exxon's Exxon Education Foundation. SourceWatch, George
C. Marshall Institute, THE CENTER FOR MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY,
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/George_C._Marshall_Institute (last visited June 20,
2023).
274
The Environmental Issues Council (EIC) was established in 1993 by a number of leading U.S.
industry trade associations to serve as a "new ally against ill-conceived environmental
regulation."
SourceWatch, Environmental Issues Council, THE CENTER FOR MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY,
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Environmental_Issues_Council (last visited June 20,
2023). Environmental Issues Council website no longer active. The EIC included membership of
the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) "has represented independent oil and
natural gas producers for three-quarters of a century.”
United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Oil and Gas, Resources, UNITED STATES
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (EPA)
https://archive.epa.gov/sectors/web/html/oilandgas.html#:~:text=IPAA%20is%20a%20national
%20trade,three%2Dquarters%20of%20a%20century (last visited June 20, 2023).
275
According to a 2003 New York Times report, Frontiers of Freedom, which has about a
$700,000 annual budget, received $230,000 from Exxon in 2002, up from $40,000 in 2001,
according to Exxon documents. George Landrith, Frontiers of Freedom’s President told the New
York Times "They've determined that we are effective at what we do" and that Exxon essentially
took the attitude, "We like to make it possible to do more of that."
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Cleary, Americans for Tax Reform;
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Randy Randol, Exxon Corp.; Robert Gehri, The Southern
Company;
277
Sharon Kneiss, Chevron Corp.; Steve Milloy, The Advancement of Sound Science
Coalition;
278
and Joseph Walker, American Petroleum Institute.
394.
Defendants borrowed propagandist strategies right out of the playbook of prior denialist
campaigns. This team mirrored a front group created by the tobacco industry, known as “The
Advancement of Sound Science Coalition,” whose purpose was to mislead consumers that
cigarette smoke was not carcinogenic.
Jennifer Lee, Exxon Backs Groups That Question Global Warming, THE NEW YORK TIMES (May
28, 2003), https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/28/business/exxon-backs-groups-that-question-
global-warming.html (last visited June 20, 2023).
276
ATR is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (“ALEC”).
Noble Ellington, National Chairman Of ALEC Responds To Report, Interview with Terry Gross
in Fresh Air, NPR (Jul. 21, 2011), https://www.npr.org/2011/07/21/138575665/national-
chairman-of-alec-responds-to-report
(last visited June 20, 2023).
277
Southern Company has been a corporate funder of the American Legislative Exchange
Council (ALEC) Clearinghouse on Environmental Advocacy and Research, project of the
Environmental Working Group. Information of the American Legislative Exchange Council
archived organizational profile by Wayback Machine, (Dec. 2, 2000).
278
The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (“TASSC”) is a now-defunct, industry-funded
PR front group run by the APCO Worldwide public relations firm. It worked to hang the label of
"junk science" on environmentalists and health activists. TASSC was created in 1993 as a front
for Philip Morris which was attempting to discredit ETS (Environmental Tobacco Smoke)
research as a long-term cause of increased cancer and heart problems in the community --
especially among office workers and children living with smoking parents. APCO billed the
tobacco company $25,000 a month to run the operation. Chevron, Exxon and GM were all
funders of TASSC which promoted climate change denial. Bob Burton and Sheldon Rampton,
Thinking Globally, Acting Vocally: The International Conspiracy to Overheat the Earth, PR
WAT CH (1997) https://www.prwatch.org/files/pdfs/prwatch/prwv4n4.pdf (last visited June 20,
2023).
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395.
The GCSCT’s membership included Steve Milloy (a key player on the tobacco industry’s
front group) for Exxon. Between 2000 and 2004, Exxon donated $110,000 to Milloy’s efforts and
another organization, the Free Enterprise Education Institute, and $50,000 to the Free Enterprise
Action Institute, both registered to Milloy’s home address.
279
396.
The GCSCT Action Plan set out its goals: sow confusion for consumers, make global
warming into a “non-issue,” defeat the Kyoto Protocol, and ensure “there are no further initiatives
to thwart the threat of climate change.”
280
2. Climate Science Messaging without Scientists or Science
397.
There were no scientists on the “Global Climate Science Communications Team.”
(GCSCT). The GCSCT Action Plan’s purpose was clear---keep consumers buying their products
and further industry objectives by directing the future of US global climate change policy.
279
Seth Shulman et al. Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air: How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco’s Tactics
to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science, UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS, (Jan. 2007),
at 19,
https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2019-09/exxon_report.pdf (last visited Nov. 15, 2022).
280
Joe Walker, Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan, GLOBAL CLIMATE SCIENCE
COMMUNICATIONS TEAM (GCSCT) (Apr. 3, 1998), https://insideclimatenews.org/wp-
content/uploads/2015/12/Global-Climate-Science-Communications-Plan-1998.pdf (last visited
Nov 15, 2022).
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398.
The GCSCT Action Plan allocated an initial budget of $7.9 million, most of which would
fund efforts to inject fake science and bold-faced lies into the global climate debate.
281
From 1998
to 2008, Exxon alone invested more than $20 million to think tanks that dedicated a large amount
of effort to undermining the scientific consensus on climate change in fulfillment of the purpose
of the GCSCT Action Plan.
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399.
Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, authors of Merchants of Doubt, similarly note:
In 2005…Chris Mooney documented how in just a few years Exxon
Mobil had channeled more than $8 million to forty different
organizations that challenged the scientific evidence of global warming.
The organizations did not just include probusiness and conservative
think tanks, but also “quasi-journalistic outlets like
TechCentralStation.com (a website providing ‘news, analysis, research,
and commentary’ that received $95,000 from ExxonMobil in 2003), a
FoxNews.com columnist, and even religious and civil rights groups”.
Mooney also noted how former ExxonMobil chairman and CEO Lee
Raymond served as vice-chairman of the board of trustees for the
American Enterprise Institute, which received $960,000 in funding from
ExxonMobil, and how in 2002, ExxonMobil explicitly earmarked
$60,000 for “legal activities” by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Mooney described what happened when scientists released the
comprehensive Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, which concluded
that the Arctic was warming at twice the rate of the rest of the
world…The report was blasted in a column by Steve Milloy, now
281
Id.
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Global Climate Science Communications Team, Global Climate Science Communications
Action Plan, GLOBAL CLIMATE SCIENCE COMMUNICATIONS TEAM,
https://insideclimatenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Global-Climate-Science-
Communications-Plan-1998.pdf (last visited June 20, 2023).
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working as a columnist for FoxNews.com and serving as an adjunct
scholar at the Cato Institute, which received $75,000 from
ExxonMobil….Milloy had received money from ExxonMobil: $40,000
to The Advancement of Sound Science Center and $50,000 to the Free
Enterprise Action Institute–both of which are registered to Milloy’s
home address.
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400.
GCC members, through its GCSCT Action Plan, doubled down on disseminating these
contrarian theories, particularly through ghostwriters, front groups and think tanks. It needed to
flood the public with false science, media blitzes, advertorials, and doubt. The multi-million-dollar,
multi-year proposed budget included public outreach and the dissemination of educational
materials to schools to begin to erect a barrier against further efforts to impose Kyoto-like measures
in the future.
284
401.
Imperial Oil (now Exxon) CEO Robert Peterson also falsely denied the established
connection between Defendants’ fossil fuel products and ACC in the Summer 1998 Imperial Oil
Review, attached as Exhibit 25, “A Cleaner Canada”:
[Climate change] has absolutely nothing to do with pollution and air
quality. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but an essential ingredient of
life on this planet…. [T]he question of whether or not the trapping of
‘greenhouse’ gases will result in the planet’s getting warmer…has no
connection whatsoever with our day-to-day weather. There is absolutely
no agreement among climatologists on whether or not the planet is
283
Naomi Oreskes & Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured
the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, BLOOMSBURY PRESS (2010), at 246-
247.
284
Global Climate Science Communications Team, supra, Footnote 280.
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getting warmer, or, if it is, on whether the warming is the result of man-
made factors or natural variations in the climate…. I feel very safe in
saying that the view that burning fossil fuels will result in global climate
change remains an unproved hypothesis.
285
402.
In the early 1990s, both API and Exxon funded and promoted the work of Fred Seitz,
286
Fred Singer, and Singer’s Science and Environmental Policy Project
287
(“SEPP”). Singer’s wife,
Candace Crandall, the Executive Director at SEPP, registered at the Rio conference as a ‘publicist’
for a “science team” in 1992.
288
Neither Seitz nor Singer was trained in climate science, but both
had previously been hired by industry, including tobacco companies, to create doubt in the public
mind—again, where there should have been none.
289
285
Robert Peterson, A Cleaner Canada, IMPERIAL OIL REVIEW (1998),
https://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/imperial-oil/1998-imperial-oil-article-a-cleaner-
canada-by-robert-peterson/ (last viewed June 20, 2023).
286
George C. Marshall Institute, Recent Founders, GEORGE C. MARSHALL INSTITUTE,
http://web.archive.org/web/20000823170917/www.marshall.org/funders.htm (last visited June
20, 2023).
287
Exxon Education Foundation, Corporate Giving Source: Dimensions, EXXONMOBIL (1997);
ExxonMobil, Foundation Form 990, DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY INTERNAL REVENUE
SERVICE (IRS) (2000), https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1019871-2000-exxonmobil-
foundation-form-990 (last visited June 20, 2023).
288
The Center for Media and Democracy, Candace C. Crandall, CENTER FOR MEDIA AND
DEMOCRACY (CMD) https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Candace_C._Crandall (last visited
June 20, 2023).
289
D. Hevesi, Frederick Seitz, 96, Dies; Physicist Who Led Skeptics of Global Warming, THE
NEW YORK TIMES (Mar. 03, 2008),
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/us/06seitz.html#:~:text=Frederick%20Seitz%2C%20a%20
renowned%20physicist,confirmed%20by%20his%20son%2C%20Joachim (last visited June 20,
2023).
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403.
The GCSCT Action Plan went into high gear. Taking money from the GCC and its
members, Seitz, Singer, and SEPP were used to attack climate science, and specifically the IPCC
conclusions and process. In 1998, Seitz helped organize and distribute the “The Global Warming
Petition Project” (also known as the “Oregon Petition”). Launched from Oregon, the Oregon
Petition was created to misinform and deceive the public about the scientific results and the
consensus of climate change, urging the United States government to reject the global
warming Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and similar policies.
290
404.
The petition, attached as Exhibit 26, was formatted to appear sanctioned by the National
Academy of Scientists and sent to thousands of American scientists. Supposedly signed by 17,000
“scientists,” the petition claimed to find “no convincing scientific evidence that human release of
greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the
Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” The list of signatories was filled not
with 17,000 actual scientists, but fictitious names, deceased persons, and celebrities.
291
290
Sander van der Linden et al., Inoculating the Public against Misinformation about Climate
Change, GLOBAL CHALLENGES (2017),
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/gch2.201600008 (last visited June 20, 2023).
291
Michael E. Mann. The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars. Columbia University Press (2012),
at 66.
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405.
The petition:
292
406.
The petition was organized and circulated by Arthur B. Robinson, president of the Oregon
Institute of Science and Medicine (described as “a small independent research group”) in 1998,
and again in 2007.
293
407.
Frederick Seitz, then chairman of the George C. Marshall Institute, wrote a supporting
cover letter, attached as Exhibit 27, signed as “Past President National Academy of Sciences USA,
292
Global Warming Petition Project website, http://www.petitionproject.org/ (last visited Nov. 14,
2022). Note: on June 20, 2023, the website claims that 31,487 American scientists have signed this
petition, including 9,029 with PhDs.
293
Devin Henry, Climate change petition pits scientists against each other, THE MINNESOTA DAILY
(May 28, 2008), https://mndaily.com/222080/news/world/climate-change-petition-pits-scientists-
against-each-other/ (last visited June 20, 2023).
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President Emeritus Rockefeller University.”
294
The National Academy held a press conference to
disclaim the mailing and distance itself from its former president.
295
Between 1998 and 2008, the
George C. Marshall Institute received a total of $715,000 in funding from ExxonMobil alone.
296
408.
The petition also included a 12 page “review article” with information about global
warming. The article, attached as Exhibit 28, is titled “Environmental Effects of Increased
Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide” by Arthur B. Robinson, Noah E. Robinson, Sallie
Baliunas, and Willie Soon.
297
3. Fossil Fuel Defendants Attempt To Sanitize Carbon Front Groups
From Their Image
409.
Despite the success that Fossil Fuel Defendants accomplished through their front groups,
publicly they attempted to distance themselves from the deception, and that facade was also
deceptive.
294
Gary J. Weisel, Skeptics, Naysayers, Anomalies, and Controversies in Eds. Brian C. Black et
al., Climate Change: An Encyclopedia of Science and History, ABC-CLIO (2013) at 1241.
295
Id.
296
Ed Pilkington, Palin fought safeguards for polar bears with studies by climate change sceptics,
THE GUARDIAN (Sep. 30, 2018),
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/sep/30/uselections2008.sarahpalin1#:~:text=The%20R
epublican%20Sarah%20Palin%20and,species%2C%20the%20Guardian%20can%20disclose
(last visited June 20, 2023).
297
W. Soon, S. L. Baliunas, A. B. Robinson & Z. W. Robinson (Oct. 26, 1999). Environmental
Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, CLIMATE RESEARCH,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260851815_Environmental_Effects_of_Increased_Atm
ospheric_Carbon_Dioxide (last visited June 20, 2023).
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410.
John Browne, Chairman of British Petroleum, in a speech at Stanford University on May
19, 1997, announced that “the time to consider the policy dimensions of climate change is not
when the link between greenhouse gases and climate change is conclusively proven, but when the
possibility cannot be discounted and is taken seriously by the society of which we are part. We in
BP have reached that point.” BP itself withdrew from the GCC, but stayed as a member of API,
which is a member of GCC. Shell also formally withdrew, but its trade groups did not.
411.
In February 1999, Atlantic Richfield Company, then a division of BP, CEO Michael Bowlin
acknowledged in a speech he delivered at an energy industry conference, “We’ve embarked on the
beginning of the Last Days of the Age of Oil.”
298
Bowlin discussed the need to convert our carbon-
based energy economy into a hydrogen-based energy economy. However, BP maintained
membership and private participation with the GCC through its trade association, API.
412.
The companies who publicly left GCC then formed the Pew Center for Environmental
Change (“C2ES”) and appointed a “Business Environmental Leadership Council” (“BELC”) in
1998 with the following statement: “We accept the views of most scientists that enough is known
298
Id.
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about the science and environmental impacts of climate change for us to take actions to address its
consequences.”
299
413.
But they did not. Publicly, the companies left GCC and formed the BELC to address the
growing public outrage for blatantly funding climate denial and hid behind their trade associations
to continue to profit. This two-faced position would dominate for decades, all to the detriment of
Multnomah County, Oregon residents, and consumers.
414.
While the GCC members formed the new Pew Center to appease the public, the companies
met privately and formed the “Global Climate Science Communications Team” (GCSCT), setting
out their marketing battle plan to undermine the science they knew was accurate regarding climate
change.
415.
In 2000, the GCC announced that it was restructuring as an association of trade associations
and would henceforth only include trade associations in its membership. The companies, which
had abandoned the GCC, as one journalist noted, like “rats leaving a sinking ship,” and adopted
scientific consensus on climate change through the Pew Center were still represented by their trade
associations in the GCC, which funded climate denial of that scientific consensus.
299
Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, Business Environmental Leadership Council, CENTER
FOR CLIMATE AND ENERGY SOLUTIONS, www.c2es.org/our-work/belc/ (last visited June 20, 2023).
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416.
In 1998, API distributed a roadmap memo after the “Victory” memo, (Exhibit 24), outlining
the fossil fuel industry’s plan to use scientists as spokespersons for the industry’s views.
417.
The GCSCT Action Memo outlined five distinct hierarchal levels:
a) Global Climate Coalition: a group of trade associations representing
the Defendants and many others.
b) Organizers of the GCSCT: GCC members API (Shell, Chevron, BP,
ConocoPhillips, Motiva, and Anadarko), Exxon, with CEI (Koch),
CFACT, Lynn Bouchey, Myron Ebell, SEPP, and others.
c) Funders: National Mining Association (Peabody) API (Shell, Chevron,
BP, ConocoPhillips, Motiva, Anadarko and others), Business Round
Table (all Defendants), Independent Petroleum Association of America
and Edison Electric Institute (EEI).
d) Allocators: ALEC (Koch), CEI (Koch), CFACT (Koch), Frontiers of
Freedom, and The Marshall Institute.
e) Promoters: Heartland Institute, CFACT (Koch), ALEC (Koch),
Frontiers of Freedom, the (George) Marshall Institute, SEPP, CO
2
, CEI
(Koch), Myron Ebell, Marc Morano, Lord Christopher Monckton,
Sherwood Idso, ICE, Fred Singer, Willie Soon, among many others.
418.
The GCSCT Action Memo stresses how the Defendants individually and collectively have
utilized propaganda to combat the perception and reality that pollution from their fossil fuel
products is destructive to our planet and those who live on it.
419.
Defendants have funded and continue to fund dozens of think tanks, front groups, and dark
money foundations as the GCC marketers, pushing climate change denial. These include the
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Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heartland Institute, Frontiers for Freedom, Committee for a
Constructive Tomorrow, and the Heritage Foundation.
420.
From 1998 to 2014, Exxon alone spent almost $31 million funding numerous organizations
to undermine the scientific consensus that Defendants’ fossil fuel products were causing climate
change.
300
Several Defendants have been linked to other groups that undermine the scientific basis
linking Defendants’ fossil fuel products to climate change, including the Frontiers of Freedom
Institute and the George C. Marshall Institute.
4. Fossil Fuel Defendants Use Advertorials to Sow Public Doubt Through
Deception
421.
Researchers who scoured through advertorials and published internal documents of
ExxonMobil concluded that “in essence, these public statements reflect only the ‘doubt’ side of
ExxonMobil’s mixed internal dialogue.”
301
Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes’ “Assessing
ExxonMobil’s climate change communications (1977–2014)”, attached as Exhibit 29, concluded
300
Union of Concerned Scientists, ExxonMobil Foundation & Corporate Giving to Climate
Change Denier & Obstructionist Organizations, UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS,
https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/07/ExxonMobil-Climate-Denial-Funding-
1998-2014.pdf (last visited June 20, 2023).
301
Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes, Assessing ExxonMobil’s climate change
communications (1977–2014), Environ. Res. Lett., (2017),
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa815f (last visited June 20, 2023).
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that Exxon’s peer-reviewed literature overwhelmingly acknowledges anthropogenic global
warming as real, and human caused.
422.
Exxon’s non-peer reviewed documents, including industry targeted speeches, reports, and
company pamphlets, contain more references designed to misinform. The predominant stance
taken in ExxonMobil’s propaganda, however, according to the researchers is ‘Doubt’. According
to the researchers, of the 72% of climate change advertorials by Exxon that took a position, 81%
of those take the position of ‘Doubt’, with the remainder split between ‘Acknowledge’ (11.5%)
and ‘Acknowledge and Doubt’ (7.5%).
423.
Roughly 80% of Exxon’s external communications designed to hit big audiences—its
consumers—emphasized uncertainty, while more than 80% of internal and scientific
communications designed to be seen by no one other than internal communications or a very small
number of academic audiences agree with the real scientific consensus that fossil fuels caused
climate change and that it was very dangerous.
424.
The Researchers concluded:
Available documents show a discrepancy between what ExxonMobil’s
scientists and executives discussed about climate change privately and
in academic circles and what it presented to the general public. The
company’s peer-reviewed, non-peer-reviewed, and internal
communications consistently tracked evolving climate science: broadly
acknowledging that AGW is real, human-caused, serious, and solvable,
while identifying reasonable uncertainties that most climate scientists
readily acknowledged at that time. In contrast, ExxonMobil’s
advertorials in the NYT overwhelmingly emphasized only the
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uncertainties, promoting a narrative inconsistent with the views of most
climate scientists, including ExxonMobil’s own. This is characteristic
of what Freudenberg et al term the Scientific Certainty
Argumentation Method (SCAM)—a tactic for undermining public
understanding of scientific knowledge.
302
Likewise, the company’s
peer-reviewed, non-peer-reviewed, and internal documents
acknowledge the risks of stranded assets, whereas their advertorials do
not. In light of these findings, we judge that ExxonMobil’s AGW
communications were misleading; we are not in a position to judge
whether they violated any laws.
303
5. The False “Scientists” Sowed Doubt as Defendants Intended.
425.
The creation of this false sense of disagreement in the scientific community is a direct
contradiction of the consensus that the industry’s own scientists, experts, and managers had
previously acknowledged. The GCSCT Action Memo’s entire purpose, however, was to create
disagreement where there should be none.
426.
The National Coal Association 1991 ICE campaign noted that opinion polls revealed 60%
of Americans believed global warming was a serious environmental problem and that “our industry
302
William R. Freudenburg, Robert Gramling and Debra J. Davidson, Scientific Certainty
Argumentation Methods (SCAMs): Science and the Politics of Soubt, SOCIOLOGICAL INQUIRY
(2008), https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1475-682X.2008.00219.x (last visited
Nov. 15, 2022); Robert N. Proctor and Londa Schiebinger, Agnotology—The Making and
Unmaking of Ignorance, STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS (2008).
303
Supran & Oreskes, supra, Footnote 301.
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cannot sit on the sidelines in this debate.”
304
The GCSCT 1998 Action Memo mentions how public
opinion can be swayed with fake science:
Charlton Research’s survey of 1,100 “informed Americans” suggests
that while Americans currently perceive climate change to be a great
threat, public opinion is open to change on climate science. When
informed that “some scientists believe there is not enough evidence to
suggest that [what is called global climate change] is a long-term change
due to human behavior and activities,” 58 percent of those surveyed said
they were more likely to oppose the Kyoto treaty. Moreover, half the
respondents harbored doubts about climate science.”
305
427.
Defendants’ propaganda has been successful. A 2007 Yale University-Gallup poll found
that while 71% of Americans personally believed global warming was happening, only 48%
believed that there was a consensus among the scientific community, and 40% believed there was
a lot of disagreement among scientists over whether global warming was occurring.
306
304
Naomi Oreskes, My Facts Are Better Than Your Facts: Spreading Good News about Global
Warming, in Peter Howlett et al., How Well Do Facts Travel? The Dissemination of Reliable
Knowledge, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS (2011), at 136–66,
https://doc.lagout.org/Others/Cambridge.University.Press-
How.Well.Do.Facts.Travel.2010.RETAiL.EBook.pdf (last visited Nov. 15, 2022).
305
Joe Walker, Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan, GLOBAL CLIMATE
SCIENCE COMMUNICATIONS TEAM (GCSCT) (Apr. 3, 1998), at 2,
https://insideclimatenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Global-Climate-Science-
Communications-Plan-1998.pdf (last visited June 20, 2023).
306
American Opinions on Global Warming: A Yale/Gallup/Clearvision Poll, YALE PROGRAM ON
CLIMATE CHANGE COMMUNICATION (July 31, 2007),
https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/american-opinions-on-global-warming/ (last
visited June 20, 2023).
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428.
The purpose of undermining public opinion was mercantile: to continue to sell enormous
amounts fossil fuel for astronomical profits products, irrespective of the extreme weather changes
those products cause by their use, and the GCC and its members were—and are—successful in
fulfilling that objective.
429.
IPCC published its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007, in which it concluded that “there is
very high confidence that the net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of
warming.”
307
The IPCC defined “very high confidence” as at least a 9 out of 10 chance.
308
Despite
these findings, and the fact that the Fossil Fuel Defendants understood that causal relationship
decades earlier, the Defendants continued to market their products by funding climate change
denialism and undermining scientific consensus to keep consumer demand high.
430.
Exxon acknowledged its own previous success in sowing uncertainty—when there should
have been none—and slowing mitigation through funding of climate denial groups. In its 2007
Corporate Citizenship Report, Exxon declared: “In 2008, we will discontinue contributions to
several public policy research groups whose position on climate change could divert attention from
307
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Summary for Policymakers in Climate A
report of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS (2007), at 3,
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ar4-wg1-spm-1.pdf (last visited June 18, 2023).
308
Id.
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the important discussion on how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in
an environmentally responsible manner.”
309
Despite this pronouncement, Exxon continued to
support several such groups after the report’s publication.
6. Western States Petroleum Association—A Front Group with An
Oregonian Audience
431.
The GCSCT Action Plan mentions developing and utilizing grass root organizations three
times (pages 4, 5 and 7) in a PowerPoint presentation leaked in November of 2014 from the
Western States Petroleum Association (“WSPA”),
310
the top lobbyist for the oil industry in the
western United States (including Oregon) and the oldest petroleum trade association in the country.
The WPSA “activates” and funds front groups that are designed to change public opinion on
climate change.
311
309
ExxonMobil, 2007 Corporate Citizenship Report, EXXONMOBIL (Dec. 31, 2007),
https://grist.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/community_ccr_2007.pdf (last visited June 20,
2023).
310
Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) is a non-profit trade association that
represents companies that account for the bulk of petroleum exploration, production, refining,
transportation and marketing in the six western states of Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada,
Oregon, and Washington. Founded in 1907, WSPA is the oldest petroleum trade association in
the United States of America. WSPA's headquarters are located in Sacramento, California.
Additional WSPA locations include offices in Torrance; Santa Barbara; Bakersfield; Scottsdale,
Arizona; and Olympia, Washington.
Western States Petroleum Association, About, WESTERN STATES PETROLEUM ASSOCIATION,
https://www.wspa.org/about/ (last visited June 20, 2023).
311
Bloomberg, Leaked: The Oil Lobby's Conspiracy to Kill Off California's Climate Law.
BLOOMBERG (Nov. 25, 2014), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-11-25/leaked-the-
oil-lobbys-conspiracy-to-kill-off-californias-climate-law?leadSource=uverify%20wall (last
visited June 20, 2023).
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432.
The WPSA front groups, with names like the “Oregonians For Sound Fuel Policy” and
“Fed Up At The Pump,” appeared to be grassroots groups representing consumer interests, but
were really part of WSPA’s multimillion dollar public relations campaign to further the oil
industry’s propaganda machine.
312
433.
The slide below identifies groups that were “activated” by the WSPA. Many of the names
are clearly “greenwashed” to hide the group’s and WPSA’s real purpose of working against climate
policy. The actions of some of these groups were conducted in, or directed to, Multnomah County.
312
Matt Connolly, California’s Friendly Neighborhood Citizens Groups Are Really Just Big Oil
in Disguise, MIC (Nov. 26, 2014) https://www.mic.com/articles/105196/california-s-friendly-
neighborhood-citizens-groups-are-really-just-big-oil-in-disguise (last visited June 20, 2023).
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434.
This leaked presentation from WSPA revealed a stealth campaign to change public opinion
and keep the consumers lulled into purchasing their products.
435.
Most of the publications questioning climate change came not from scientific journals, but
from industry-funded think tanks masquerading as scientific. A study by Professors Peter Jacques
and Mark Freeman, political scientists at University of Central Florida, found that 92.2% of the
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skepticism literature was published by GCC-funded think tanks or authors affiliated with those
think tanks.
313
436.
Even though Exxon was aware as early as 1979 that fossil fuels affected climate change
and that its fossil fuels posed an existential threat to the future, Exxon continued funding front
groups, providing over $2 million in funding from 1998 to 2005.
314
437.
The GCSCT also funded Willie Soon, another lead climate skeptic.
315
Soon co-authored
the article which accompanied the Oregon Petition, supra ¶ 406. Most infamously, Soon wrote one
of the few denialist articles to be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
316
But that article
quickly turned into a scandal where the editorial staff quit. Despite this, Soon earned a “Courage
in Defense of Science Award” from The Heartland Institute.
317
313
James Hoggan & Richard Littlemore, Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global
Warming, on 81 (2009).
314
Seth Shulman et al. Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air: How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco’s Tactics
to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science, UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS, (Jan. 2007),
https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2019-09/exxon_report.pdf (last visited June 20, 2023).
315
Note-many of the articles authored by Lord Monckton cited by the Heartland Institute are co-
authored with Willie Soon.
316
Justin Gillis and John Schwartz, Deeper Ties to Corporate Cash for Doubtful Climate
Researcher, N.Y. TIMES (Feb. 21, 2015), https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/us/ties-to-
corporate-cash-for-climate-change-researcher-Wei-Hock-Soon.html (last visited June 20, 2023).
317
Heartland holds climate conferences and publishes literature that has the “veneer of scientific
credibility.” John Abrahams, Fossil fuel funded report denies the expert global warming
consensus, The Guardian (Feb. 22, 2016), https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-
consensus-97-per-cent/2016/feb/22/fossil-fuel-funded-report-denies-the-expert-global-warming-
consensus (last visited June 20, 2023); For its International Conference on Climate Change, the
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438.
From 2005 to 2015, Soon received $1.2 million from the fossil fuel industry (including
Exxon Mobil, the API, and others)
318
439.
Soon’s peer reviewed article, published in Climate Research in 2003, concluded that “the
20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last
millennium.” The paper was immediately debunked in a publication by 13 climate scientists, who
pointed out that Soon’s data measured changes in moisture, not changes in temperature, and
confused regional changes in temperature with global changes.
440.
Following the 2003 publication, nearly half of Climate Research’s editorial board resigned
in protest, citing the failure of the journal’s peer review process to catch these glaring errors.
Furthermore, the journal’s parent company stated that Climate Research “should have been more
careful and insisted on solid evidence and cautious formulations before publication.”
319
Heartland Institute offers to pay $1,000 to any scientist willing to help generate international media
attention for the proposition that rapid warming is not supported by sound science. James Hoggan
& Richard Littlemore, Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming, on 81 (2009).
318
Gillis et al., supra, Footnote 316.
319
Richard Monastersky, Storm Brews Over Global Warming. THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER
EDUCATION (Sep. 2003),
https://www.chronicle.com/article/storm-brews-over-global-warming/ (last visited Nov. 14,
2022).
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441.
It was also subsequently discovered that Soon’s research budget for the article was funded
by the API, which Soon did not disclose in his paper.
320
442.
Soon has also advanced the claim that polar bears do better in a warmer climate. In 1998,
Soon argued that “For polar bears…you do want to watch out for ice. Too much ice is really bad
for polar bears…I would suggest that the current [ice] condition today is nowhere optimal for the
polar bear, which means it can grow a little bit warmer.”
321
In reality, global warming melts sea
ice, which threatens the polar bears’ survival by reducing their food supplies and forcing them to
swim longer distances.
443.
The Heartland Institute promotes Willie Soon on its current website, claiming Soon’s bio
and account of his work “debunks lies of the generously funded environmental left’s attacks on an
honest climate scientist.”
322
444.
Soon, who is a part-time employee at the Smithsonian Institution, had failed to disclose his
320
Suzanne Goldenberg, Work of prominent climate change denier was funded by energy industry,
THE GUARDIAN, (Feb. 21, 2015) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/21/climate-
change-denier-willie-soon-funded-energy-industry (last visited Nov. 14, 2022).
321
Skeptical Science, How will global warming affect polar bears?, SKEPTICAL SCIENCE,
http://bit.ly/1UhCSHn (last visited Nov. 14, 2022).
322
As of May 21, 2019.
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oil industry funding in 11 papers since 2008, which violated the disclosure rules of at least 8 of the
journals. Correspondence between Soon and his corporate funders, obtained by the NY Times,
shows that Soon described his scientific papers as ‘deliverables,’ a project management term
denoting services delivered on a specific timeline in exchange for funding.
323
445.
Articles by Soon, and others appear on Heartland Institute’s “Policybot” promoting climate
change denial.
446.
Heartland holds climate conferences and publishes literature that has the “veneer of
scientific credibility.”
324
For its International Conference on Climate Change, the Heartland
Institute offers to pay $1,000 to any scientist willing to help generate international media attention
for the proposition that rapid warming is not supported by sound science.
325
447.
Heartland also sponsored a “petition-style attack” on the consensus viewpoint that fossil
fuels cause global warming.
326
Heartland published a ‘report’ on its website titled, “500 Scientists
323
Gillis et al., supra, Footnote 316.
324
John Abrahams, Fossil fuel funded report denies the expert global warming consensus, The
Guardian (Feb. 22, 2016), https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-
cent/2016/feb/22/fossil-fuel-funded-report-denies-the-expert-global-warming-consensus (last
visited Nov. 14, 2022).
325
Hoggan & Littlemore, supra, Footnote 313 at 86.
326
Id. at 94.
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Whose Research Contradicts Man-Made Global Warming Scares.”
327
The “report” listed all five
hundred scientists as “coauthors”, implying that “each of the five hundred had a hand in [the]
report or, at the very least, signed off on its conclusions.”
328
448.
Immediately after the report’s release, the scientists listed on the report began protesting.
“I am horrified to find my name on such a list. I have spent the last 20 years arguing the opposite,”
wrote David Sugden, a professor of geography at the University of Edinburgh.
329
“I don’t believe
any of my work can be used to support any of the statements listed in the article,” said Robert
Whittaker, a professor of biogeography at the University of Oxford.
330
And Gregory Cutter, a
professor of ocean and atmospheric sciences at Old Dominion University wrote, “I have NO doubts
… the recent changes in global climate ARE man-induced. I insist that you immediately remove
my name from this list ….”
331
449.
To support its denialism methods, Heartland received nearly a million dollars from Exxon
and $13.5 million in dark money contributions from Donors Trust, a known front group for oil
money.
327
Id.
328
Id.
329
Id.
330
Id.
331
Id.
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450.
In a December 2019 expose of Heartland’s dark money funding from Donors Trust to
undermine scientific consensus on climate change, Heartland’s chief strategist, James Taylor, told
undercover reporters that Donors Trust is now directing between two thirds and three quarters of
its budget to Heartland to support its climate-skeptical positions and claims that this is his personal
doing.
332
451.
On March 19, 2020, Heartland announced it was launching a new website, Climate at a
Glance” to “prepare you for climate crisis claims” and hired a 19-year-old German woman named
Naomi Seibt to serve as the face of a new campaign for what Heartland calls “climate alarmism.”
333
7. In Pursuit of Profits: The Enterprise Targets School Children
452.
The GCSCT recognized that the tide might turn against fossil fuels unless they could reach
the next generation and it needed to deceive schoolteachers and students about climate science.
453.
So, under the guise of “present[ing] a credible, balanced picture of climate science,” they
332
Katarina Huth, The Heartland Lobby, CORRECTIVE (Feb. 11, 2020),
https://correctiv.org/en/top-stories-en/2020/02/11/the-heartland-lobby/
(last visited June 20, 2023).
333
Nicholas Kusnetz, Heartland Launches Website of Contrarian Climate Science Amid Struggles
with Funding and Controversy, INSIDE CLIMATE NEWS (Mar. 13, 2020),
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13032020/heartland-instutute-climate-change-skeptic/ (last
visited June 20, 2023).
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opted to push out materials for teachers and their students that directly countered the scientific
evidence. At this point, Children will be the most affected by climate change, having to endure
more years of weather extremes and dire effects caused by the Defendants’ deception through these
front groups.
454.
Page 7 of the GCSCT Action Plan targeted children, tomorrow’s consumers:
• Organize under the GCSDC a "Science Education Task Group" that will
serve as the point of outreach, to the National Science Teachers
Association (NSTA) and other influential science education
organizations. Work with NSTA to develop school materials that present
a credible, balanced picture of climate science for use in classrooms
nationwide.
• Distribute educational materials directly to schools and through
grassroots organizations of climate science partners (companies,
organizations that participate in this effort).
455.
This insidious directive has been implemented in lockstep. On March 27, 2017, the
Heartland Institute mailed a book titled “Why Scientists Disagree about Global Warming: The
NIPCC Report on Scientific Consensus”, in addition to a DVD and letter to over 200,000 teachers,
attached as Exhibit 30.
456.
The material would be sent to an additional 25,000 teachers every two weeks, until every
public-school science teacher in the nation has a copy, Heartland president and CEO Joseph Bast
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said in an interview to PBS in 2017.
334
Heartland claims on its website, that it reached over 300,000
K-12 science teachers.
457.
The campaign elicited immediate derision from the National Center for Science Education
(NCSE), a nonprofit in Oakland, California that monitors climate change education in
classrooms.
335
“It’s not science, but it’s dressed up to look like science,” said NCSE executive
director Ann Reid. “It’s clearly intended to confuse teachers.”
336
8. Oregon and the Heartland Institute
458.
The Defendants’ deception campaign was vigorously executed in Oregon and targeted to
mislead the Plaintiff and its residents.
459.
Gordon Fulks is a prolific climate denier and is a policy advisor to the Heartland Institute,
which as described above, provides a medium through which Defendants have propagated false
and misleading denials and downplays of the causal relationship between carbon pollution and
extreme climate change. At the behest of benefactors that included Fossil Fuel Defendants, Fulks
has published editorials in the Oregonian that deny the existence of any scientific consensus that
334
Katie Worth, Climate Change Skeptic Group Seeks to Influence 200,000 Teachers, PBS (Mar.
28, 2017), https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/climate-change-skeptic-group-seeks-to-
influence-200000-teachers/ (last visited June 20, 2023).
335
Id.
336
Id.
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carbon pollution causes warming of the planet.
337
He writes, “The many objections from real
scientists will be countered with fictitious claims of ‘consensus.’ (Should that, too, be questioned
— based on studies that show widely divergent scientific opinions — the political formula calls
for stonewalling.) Never mind that science proceeds from openly discussed logic and evidence.
The scientifically illiterate will not understand and can be easily fooled with unsupportable claims
that each succeeding year is the ‘warmest ever.’”
460.
In another piece in the Oregonian, Fulks dismissed scientific support for anthropogenic
climate change as a “storm of alarmism” based on faulty science. “The problems with classical
greenhouse gas theory escape those who view science as politics (consensus) or as religion
(belief),” he wrote.
338
461.
Thus, in these and other ways, Defendants’ deception was directly targeted at the Plaintiff
and its inhabitants. These lies created enough doubt as to whether extreme weather events from
anthropogenic climate change could harm those in the County, and thereby left the community and
337
Fulks, G. J., Kitzhaber is allowing climate malpractice: Guest opinion, The Oregonian,
https://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/2015/01/kitzhaber_is_allowing_climate.html (last visited
June 20, 2023).
338
Fulks, G. J., “The Changing Climate of Climate Change,” The Oregonian, January 19,
2013. Archive.ph URL: https://archive.ph/wip/70ONn (last visited June 20, 2023).
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its leadership unprepared for extreme heat events that Defendants’ products and deception then
caused.
462.
Had the Defendants exercised ordinary care rather than a plan to deceive the Plaintiff and
the public while simultaneously causing extreme harm to the Plaintiff and to the planet, they would
have taken several steps that they refused to take. These measures include, not exhaustively,
a) Public and full-throated endorsement of the scientific validity of the
existence of anthropogenic climate change and the catastrophic harm it
can cause. The Defendants unequivocal, forward-facing acceptance of
that information would have altered the debate from whether to combat
global warming to how to combat it; and avoided much of the public
confusion that has ensued over the last several decades.
b) Forthrightly communicating with Defendants’ shareholders, consumers,
banks, insurers, the public, regulators, and the Plaintiff that the problem
to be mitigated is the accumulation of excessive amounts of GHGs in
the atmosphere from the use of Defendants’ products, rather than
“alarmist” concerns about it.
c) Refraining from affirmative efforts, whether directly, through
coalitions, or through front groups, to distort public debate, and to cause
many consumers and business and political leaders to think the relevant
science was far less certain that it was.
d) Sharing their internal scientific research with the public, and with other
scientists and business leaders, to increase public understanding of the
scientific underpinnings of climate change and its relation to
Defendants’ fossil fuel products.
e) Supporting and encouraging policies to avoid dangerous climate change
and demonstrating responsible corporate leadership in addressing the
challenges of transitioning to a low carbon economy.
f) Prioritizing alternative sources of energy through sustained investment
and research on renewable energy sources to replace dependence on
Defendants’ hazardous fossil fuel products.
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g) Adopting their shareholders’ concerns about Defendants’ need to protect
their businesses from the inevitable consequences of profiting from their
fossil fuel products. Over the period of 1990–2015, Defendants’
shareholders proposed hundreds of resolutions to change Defendants’
policies and business practices regarding climate change. These
included increasing renewable energy investment, cutting emissions,
and performing carbon risk assessments, among others.
463.
Instead, the Defendants knowingly created a public nuisance that caused negative public
health impacts in the County, and in many regions across the globe, which each Defendant treated
as public relations problem to be spun rather than an existential human threat to be solved. In so
doing, they caused catastrophic harm to Plaintiff that will continue and grow worse. As the
frequency and intensity of extreme heat events and wildfires in Multnomah County will increase,
so too will the harms inflicted upon the County.
IV. DAMAGES
464.
As a sovereign entity, the County is charged with protecting the health, security, and
welfare of its residents. It operates as a steward that safeguards the fabric of the community, its
ecosystems and way of life, including those for future generations. In its exercise of its police
powers, the County is empowered to take actions to prevent the pollution of the County’s property
and resources, to prevent and abate nuisances, and to prevent and abate hazards to public health,
safety, welfare, and the environment.
465.
The Country provides services that are essential to the health, safety, and welfare of its
residents, including, not exhaustively: emergency planning, early warning and disaster
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management; health care, police and fire protection; flood controls; maintenance of bridges, and
protection of public outdoor space.
466.
Populations, property, and transportation infrastructure within the County have been and
will continue to be damaged by Defendants’ misconduct. The County has taken steps to prepare,
mitigate, repair, and adapt to the hazards facing its residents, public property, and infrastructure,
and will and must continue to do so, as ACC continues to increase the frequency and severity of
extreme heat events, wildfires, drought, storms, and other hazards threatening the public’s physical
and mental health.
467.
Because of Defendants’ carbon pollution and misconduct, ACC has and will continue to
impact the County’s ability, without the infusion of substantial resources, to deliver services
including health care, social services, climate resiliency and sustainability programs, and disaster
relief, especially for its most vulnerable residents.
A. Damage: Substantial Cost Incurred to Respond to Extreme Heat Events
468.
The County incurred the following costs in responding to the 2021 heat dome and 2022
heatwave:
a) The County established numerous emergency shelters to provide relief
to thousands of heat-stressed residents, including the supply of portable
air conditioning units, fans and fresh water, as well as staffing to provide
social services and medical care.
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b) The County responded to hundreds of heat-related illness or urgent care
visits, in addition to a drastic increase in heat related hospitalizations
over previous years.
c) The County Coroner determined that the 2021 heat dome was
responsible for 69 heat related deaths in the County, which the coroner
ruled were caused by hyperthermia. In 2022, five residents perished
from extreme heat.
339
B. Damage: Added Costs to Protect Residents and Property from Wildfires And
Smoke
469.
In September of 2020, the County experienced a spike in medical visits for respiratory
issues caused by poor air quality because of ACC-related wildfire smoke. Asthma-related health
related visits in Multnomah County increased by nearly one-third in the four weeks during and
after wildfires in 2020.
470.
In 2022, the County responded to thousands of urgent care clinic visits as a result of poor
air quality arising from waves of wildfire smoke.
471.
The number of wildfire smoke related healthcare visits and hospitalizations has continued
339
The United States EPA has quantified the value of a human life at $10.05 million for the social
cost of a life taken prematurely because of GHG driven climate change. According to that metric,
the societal cost of the combined loss of the 69 lives in 2021 and 5 lives in 2022 because of
extreme heat is $743,700,000. See EPA Draft of Report on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases:
Estimates Incorporating Recent Scientific Advances (September
2022). https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2022-11/epa_scghg_report_draft_0.pdf (last
visited June 20, 2023).
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to increase along with the frequency and severity of wildfires since 2020.
472.
The County expects increased costs from increased wildfire risk due to climate change.
The County’s response, prevention, mitigation and/or recovery costs are increasing and will
continue to increase.
C. Damage: Substantial Costs Incurred For Public Health Emergency Response
and Preparedness
473.
The County has invested substantial sums to prepare for severe public health emergencies
from extreme heat and wildfires, including protocols for bolstering the County’s Emergency
Response Plan and for training and testing health care professionals.
474.
The County has invested substantial sums in developing and strengthening emergency
plans that increase preparedness within the county and the region, ensure that critical operations
will continue during an emergency, and provide for staff training, workshops and disaster plan
management and coordination.
475.
The County has invested substantial sums to coordinate disaster preparedness activities
within the county, including training, exercise and equipment procurement, and collaboration with
cities, special districts, and non-governmental organizations. During ACC related disasters, the
Emergency Management program activates an emergency command center to facilitate the
appropriate response using the staff and resources available.
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476.
The County has incurred substantial costs in leasing, staffing, and operating an emergency
supply depot designed specifically to store disaster relief materials and vehicles for use in climate
related disasters such as heat domes, this was not needed before 2021.
477.
The County has invested substantial sums to fund programs to identify and eliminate
environmental hazards that contribute to racial and ethnic disparities.
478.
The County has incurred substantial costs in recruiting and retaining a Climate Resilience
Coordinator, whose job is to coordinate policy interventions with other city, county and state
agencies relating to climate change risks. The job description includes updating wildfire mitigation
zones, weatherization of low-income dwellings, development of best practices for public buildings
to mitigate extreme heat and smoke conditions, develop strategies to reduce heat islands and
develop partnerships with under-resourced East County cities.
479.
The County has incurred substantial costs in funding initiatives in the East County to
support community climate resiliency efforts which investigate needed upgrades in services and
physical infrastructure to safely and timely respond to ACC-related disasters. Significant funds
have been spent to monitor and assess the services and infrastructure that underserved and
marginalized communities need to enhance the community’s tolerance for natural disasters.
480.
The County has incurred substantial costs in funding the purchase and installation of 1,000
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portable air conditioners and 10,000 emergency cooling kits, intended for at risk households. The
County has created and funded a Cooling Support Program for the purpose of providing air
conditioners and other life sustaining materials to low-income residents.
481.
The County has incurred substantial costs in providing emergency shelters, assistance and
street outreach for vulnerable homeless youth, veterans, and families during extreme weather
events.
482.
The County has incurred substantial costs to fund, recruit, hire and train an Emergency
Analyst to support the County’s shelter and disaster resource center functions. The Emergency
Analyst works within the Department of County Human Services and works with County Health
Department and focuses on the implementation of the County’s post 2021 heat dome employee
incentive program to develop a robust pool of staff and volunteers who will be available to staff
and service emergency shelters during and after ACC-related disasters.
483.
The County has incurred substantial costs to fund outreach efforts to reduce the burden on
limited emergency response capacity during an extreme emergency by collaborating with local
businesses, non-governmental organizations, faith-based groups and volunteer groups, as well as
community members, to encourage resilience and create a coordinated disaster response.
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D. Damage: Substantial Costs Incurred in Monitoring, Educating and Mitigating
ACC Impacts
484.
The County has incurred substantial costs in creating, staffing, supplying, and operating
the Multnomah County Office of Sustainability, which was established in 2010 in response to the
escalating climate emergency for the purpose of studying, planning, implementing and
coordinating the County’s growing need for modernized social, environmental, and economic
policies and programs. The mission of the Office of Sustainability is to grow and nourish a county
that is equitable, livable, healthy, resilient, and low carbon.
485.
The County has incurred substantial costs in staffing and equipping a program that provides
low-income households with energy efficient heat pumps to replace wood burning stoves. Heat
pumps provide cooling during heat events and reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well as
particulate emissions from the burning of wood. The program continues the Wood Stove
Replacement Program which, in the interest of improving air quality and public health, exchanges
wood stoves for new energy efficient furnaces or heat pumps.
486.
The county has incurred substantial costs and will continue to do so to assess the need for
expansion of County services in low-income East County neighborhoods and build satellite county
facilities with culturally specific social services that meet the growing needs of East side
communities as ACC-driven extreme weather events escalate.
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487.
The County has incurred substantial costs and will continue to do so to design, staff, equip
and operate Environmental Health Community Programs, the purpose of which is to identify and
mitigate ACC-driven environmental health hazards that contribute to racial and ethnic inequities.
The program allocates staffing and material resources to lower income communities who are
disproportionately impacted by ACC. Expenditures include monitoring and assessing ACC health
and environmental impacts.
488.
The County has incurred substantial costs in assessing damage to County-owned property
and infrastructure for the purpose of “climatizing” air filtration, air conditioning and other systems
and components with repairs, replacements, and upgrades to protect the health and safety
employees and visitors. The County has incurred substantial costs in modernizing, weatherizing,
repairing and upgrading Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning systems to maintain compliance
with indoor air quality systems and Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Administration
standards.
489.
The County has incurred substantial costs in creating, staffing, equipping, and operating a
Climate Justice Program, the goal of which is to collaborate with frontline communities and
resiliency experts to develop a new climate action community justice framework that continues
and builds upon the results of the 2015 Climate Action Plan.
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E. Damage: Substantial Costs Incurred In Preparing for and Responding to
Extreme Heat and Wildfire Events
490.
In addition to the costs to repair and maintain climate change-damaged County owned
property, bridges, public buildings, and in addition to the costs of providing healthcare, shelters,
custodial care and autopsies for the climate casualties, the County has incurred additional
substantial costs because of the extreme heat events, wildfires and drought described herein, which
include:
a) Costs of increased electrical power and potable water consumption;
b) Costs from the loss of productivity from county employees and
contractors who were unable to work outside because of hazardous
temperatures and /or air quality;
c) Costs of training first responders;
d) Costs associated with employing and dispatching public safety officers,
911 operators, and first responders;
e) Costs for providing mental-health services, treatment, counseling, and
rehabilitation services;
f) Loss of tax revenue;
g) Loss of tourism revenue;
h) Losses from diminished property values;
i) Losses from damaged or destroyed natural resources, including trees,
wildlife, and marine life, crops, and vegetation;
j) Losses from increased heat-related mental illness, increased violence,
increased property crimes and increased utilization of county health
services and the criminal justice system;
k) Costs of increased property, casualty and disaster risk insurance costs;
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l) Costs of implementing nature-based climate solutions, e.g.,
reforestation and drought tolerant, native plant landscaping;
m) Loss of enjoyment and use of a habitable climate;
n) Costs of treating people with ACC-related ground level ozone
impairment and harmful exposure to allergens, salmonella and other
infectious pathogens;
o) The increased costs of maintaining the County’s infrastructure, such as
its bridges over the Willamette River the lifelines between the west and
east sides of the city and County;
p) The costs of population displacement and migration of climate refugees
from southern states or nations.
491.
The actual damages incurred by the County, because of Defendant’s misconduct which
substantially contributed to and caused the extreme heat, wildfire and other disasters described
herein exceed $50,000,000.
F. The County will Incur Substantial Costs to Prepare for, Prevent, Mitigate, and
Abate the Climate Change Nuisance
492.
The costs of studying, consulting with experts, preparing for, mitigating, adapting to, and
abating the ongoing nuisance caused by Defendants will be enormous. The programs and
adaptation measures that County has undertaken, as described herein, are only the beginning of an
adequate response to dealing with increased risks from ACC. These costs are occurring now and
being borne by taxpayers to protect the safety, health, and lives of residents, and the County’s
property and infrastructure. The costs will continue to grow for decades to come as the climate
calamity worsens without drastic reductions in GHG emissions.
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493.
The costs will include, not exhaustively:
a) The costs to monitor and assess climate change impacts and devise
remedial actions;
b) The costs to prepare for, adapt to and abate the health impacts on the
County for the increased frequency and duration of extreme heat events,
wildfires and wildfire-generated smoke, droughts, storms and other
disasters caused by Defendants’ misconduct;
c) The costs to protect, upgrade, weatherize and fortify transportation
systems and structures, levees, roads, utility networks, sewage and
potable water systems, school buildings, railways, and bridges;
d) The costs of creating wildfire defensive spaces and home hardening to
reduce the risk of wildfire destruction;
e) The costs to expand health emergency and clinical care services and
shelters;
f) The costs to design, purchase, install and operate air conditioning and
air filtration systems and weatherize at-risk buildings and residences;
g) The costs for the county to draw down atmospheric carbon by planting
more trees and biomass, expanding open spaces, protecting slopes and
riverbanks from erosion, preserving forests, expanding the tree canopy
in dense urban areas to mitigate heat islands, and converting to carbon
neutral energy systems.
494.
All Defendants acted individually and in concert with other Defendants and propagandists
for the purpose of deceiving Plaintiff and its citizens as to how the manufacture, distribution, sale,
and use of its fossil fuel products would affect the atmosphere and change the County’s weather
from mild and predictable to extreme, erratic, destructive, and deadly.
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495.
As a result of each Defendant’s misconduct alleged herein, Plaintiff has suffered extreme
and destructive heat events, degraded air quality from wildfire, increased medical costs for fire
and heat-related services, increased burden on the County infrastructure, drought, loss of
agricultural production, loss of snowpack and water resources, causing economic damages
exceeding $50,000,000.
496.
As a result of each Defendant's misconduct alleged herein, Plaintiff will incur future
economic damages from reoccurring extreme and destructive heat events, degraded air quality
from wildfire, increased medical costs for fire and heat-related services, increased burden on the
County infrastructure, drought, loss of agricultural production, loss of snowpack and water
resources, in the amount of no less than $1.5 Billion.
V. FIRST CLAIM FOR RELIEF: INTENTIONAL AND NEGLIGENT CREATION
OF PUBLIC NUISANCE
497.
Plaintiff realleges and reaffirms the allegations set forth in paragraphs 1-496 as if fully
restated in this count.
498.
Defendants’ actions were intentional, reckless, deceitful, or negligent as detailed
throughout this Complaint.
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499.
Plaintiffs and its citizens have possessory interests in the lands of Multnomah County.
Plaintiff and its citizens have a right to enjoy those lands and the air above same.
500.
Defendants’ intentional and negligent acts in production, promotion, refining, marketing,
consulting, and sales of fossil fuel-based consumer products in Multnomah County and elsewhere
have caused the losses, death, and destruction of County property, lands, and resources resulting
from the extreme weather event known as the 2021 heat dome resulting wildfires, and their
aftermath. Defendants created a public nuisance that is unreasonable, harmful, and disruptive to
health, safety, the County’s fiscal health, and general welfare of Multnomah County.
501.
Defendants knew or should have known that their deliberate, reckless, and deceitful
promotion of fossil fuels that emit GHGs would lead to extreme heat events that cause a public
nuisance that is harmful to health, obstructs free use of the County lands and property and will
require enormous financial resources to abate.
502.
Extreme weather events caused by Defendants GHG emissions activity are an unreasonable
interference with a public right common to the public, including public health, the right to
enjoyment of life and property, and excessive expenditure of taxpayer resources. Extreme heat in
a moderate climate causes unreasonable interference with each of these rights common to the
public.
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503.
The harms and future risks imposed upon Plaintiff and its inhabitants from climate shift
and extreme heat events in the County that Defendants caused far outweigh any social utility that
Defendants create through their fossil fuel business activities when coupled with the Defendants’
deception of the damage that is wrought therefrom.
504.
Multnomah County has suffered harm and will continue to suffer harm that is different
from the type of harm suffered by the general public, including damage to County resources, and
expenditures of treasury funds to protect the health and welfare of its citizens and ecosystem.
505.
Each Defendant’s conduct was a cause of the harm to Multnomah County.
506.
Defendants’ conduct was malicious, wanton, and willful.
507.
Multnomah County seeks abatement of the extreme weather events through a provision of
resources necessary to adequately prepare the County and its citizens for a new normal—heat
domes, blocking events, periods of high heat and/or wildfire so severe that they kill and sicken
inhabitants, destroy property, and weaken--sometimes cripple--critical infrastructure.
508.
Adequate abatement will require, not exhaustively, renovating buildings to withstand
extreme heat, fitting cooling units into buildings, providing cooling units in the community,
providing additional cooling shelters for heat emergencies, installing air filtration systems,
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planting of greenspaces to reduce temperature in heat islands, reroofing buildings with materials
that better manage heat, repave roads and fortify bridges.
VI. SECOND CLAIM FOR RELIEF: NEGLIGENCE
509.
Plaintiff realleges and reaffirms each and every allegation set forth in all the preceding
paragraphs as if fully restated in this count.
510.
Fossil Fuel and Coal Defendants knew or should have known of effects the GHG emissions
from the intended use of their products would have on the atmosphere, including the likelihood of
extreme weather events like the 2021 PNW heat dome.
511.
Defendants were negligent in the following respects:
a) They continued to extract, process and sell fossil fuel products which
they knew or should have known would cause injury to Plaintiff and
others;
b) They failed to warn Plaintiff and others of the foreseeable consequences
of using their fossil fuel products;
c) They concealed from the public and government regulators their
knowledge and research concerning the effects of the extraction,
refining and use of their products;
d) They suppressed and failed to develop or encourage development by
others of alternative means of producing renewable energy systems and
sources.
e) They developed, designed, tested, inspected, distributed, labeled and
marketed their fossil fuel products and advertised their business
practices to their shareholders in a manner designed to conceal,
downplay and obfuscate the long-term effects of the widespread use of
their products.
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512.
Plaintiff’s injuries were the foreseeable results of Defendants’ negligence.
VII. THIRD CLAIM FOR RELIEF: FRAUD AND DECEIT
513.
Plaintiff realleges and reaffirms each and every allegation set forth in all the preceding
paragraphs as if fully restated in this count.
514.
Fossil Fuel Defendants and Coal Defendants, jointly through the Trade Group Defendants
and Other Defendants (McKinsey) engaged in fraud, deceit, or intentional misrepresentation.
515.
From 1969 to present, Defendants, individually and through both legitimate and
illegitimate means, engaged in a nationwide—including in Oregon—marketing campaign and civil
conspiracy with the purpose and intent to make material representations that were false.
Defendants made these representations knowing they were false.
516.
Defendants intended that Multnomah County, its citizens and persons across the country
relied on their misrepresentations and excessively purchase, use, and consume their products.
517.
Multnomah County, and its citizens did justifiably rely on Defendants decades-long
assertions that burning their fossil fuel products would not cause climate change and would not
increase the probability and severity of extreme weather events.
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518.
Multnomah County and its residents’ reliance on Defendants’ misrepresentations,
fraudulent statements, and deceptive statements led to Multnomah County being unprepared for
the 2021 heat dome, suffering the loss of property, infrastructure, financial resources, lives, and
health.
519.
Multnomah County is entitled to its past damages and future damages due to the fraud and
deceits committed by Defendants. The Fossil Fuel Defendants and Coal Defendants knew that
their acts, omissions, fraud and deceit would preclude Multnomah County and its citizens from
adequately preparing for the regional climate shift that has occurred due to Fossil Fuel Defendants
and Coal Defendants GHG emissions. The regional climate shift includes but is not limited to,
extreme heat events with greater frequency and intensity, extended drought conditions that lead to
greater intensity and longer wildfires resulting in smoke penetration pollution in Multnomah
County. These extreme weather events have heat smothered the County and caused millions of
dollars in damages. Fossil Fuel Defendants and Coal Defendants fraudulently concealed their
knowledge that the continued and increased use of their products would cause climate shifts
resulting in extreme heat waves and heat domes of greater than 40° F over the mean temperature.
VIII. FOURTH CLAIM FOR RELIEF: TRESPASS
520.
Plaintiff realleges and reaffirms each and every allegation set forth in all the preceding
paragraphs as if fully restated in this count.
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521.
Plaintiff is the owner, in lawful possession, of real property and has sovereign
responsibilities for Multnomah County.
522.
Defendants have engaged in intentional conduct that has caused and contributed to climate
change, thus causing airborne particulate from extreme wildfires to enter Plaintiffs’ property.
523.
Defendants have engaged in intentional conduct that has caused and contributed to climate
change, resulting in a radical shift in climate patterns that has caused waters, from extreme rain
events and excessive snowpack melting, to enter Plaintiff’s property.
524.
Multnomah County has not granted permission to Defendants to damage its property nor
enter nor intrude upon it with fire, smoke, water, or intense heat created by Defendant’s
misconduct.
525.
Defendants knew that the use of their products would both cause climate change—extreme
weather events, more intense fires causing smoke intrusion—and cause these invasions of
Plaintiff’s property and that they lacked permission for these invasions but intruded anyway.
526.
These invasions are now occurring and will continue to occur causing harm to the County.
Defendants’ trespasses are the cause of injury and losses to the County.
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527.
The County’s real property has been and continues to be damaged by these intrusions.
IX. RELIEF REQUESTED
WHEREFORE, Plaintiff prays for a judgment and an order against each Defendant as follows:
a) That the acts alleged herein be adjudged and decreed to be unlawful and
that the Court enter a judgment declaring them to be so;
b) Finding Defendants, and each of them, liable for causing, creating,
assisting in the creation of, contributing to, and/or maintaining a public
nuisance;
c) Compensatory award for past damages in the amount of $50,000,000
according to proof, of the costs of actions Multnomah County has
already taken, expenditures made, and losses incurred to protect the
public health, safety, and property of the County and its residents from
extreme heat weather events and wildfire smoke;
d) The entry of an order that will abate the nuisance by the establishment
of an abatement fund remedy to be paid for by the Defendants in the
amount of at least $50 Billion for the costs of studying and planning on
a countywide scale for the renovations, replacements, retrofits and
revised programs that are reasonably necessary to reduce the ongoing
harms caused by the Defendants, the implementation of which
will reasonably prepare the County and its residents for foreseeable
negative impacts arising from the increased frequency and severity of
extreme heat, wildfire, drought and other ACC-related consequences.
The planning, approval and implementation will take considerable time,
staffing and resources, during which time the nuisance is expected to
continue to worsen, even if carbon emissions worldwide ceased
altogether, as the current hazardous levels of GHG in the atmosphere
will remain aloft for decades where said pollution will continue to
cause extreme events, absent massive but untested and unproven
technological carbon capture programs. The abatement funds will be
necessary to essentially “weatherize” the County to prepare for and
safeguard against the continued infliction of harms from ACC-driven
extreme weather events, for which Defendants are liable;
e) Compensatory award for future damages in the amount of no less than
$1.5 Billion, according to proof, for the damages Defendants will cause
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to Plaintiff before an abatement plan to reduce or prevent future harms
can be implemented;
f) Awarding attorneys’ fees as permitted by law;
g) Awarding costs and expenses as permitted by law;
h) Awarding pre-judgment and post-judgment interest as permitted by law;
and
i) Awarding such additional relief as may be just and proper.
Dated this 22nd day of June, 2023.
THOMAS, COON, NEWTON & FROST
/s/ Raymond F. Thomas
Raymond F. Thomas, OSB No. 794160
James S. Coon, OSB No. 771450
Christopher A. Thomas, OSB No. 124759
and
SIMON GREENSTONE PANATIER, P.C.
/s/ Jeffrey B. Simon
Jeffrey B. Simon (pro hac vice pending)
David C. Greenstone (pro hac vice pending)
Shreedhar R. Patel (pro hac vice pending)
JoDee Neil (pro hac vice pending)
1201 Elm Street, Suite 3400
Dallas, Texas 75270
Telephone: 214-276-7680
Facsimile: 214-276-7699
and
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WORTHINGTON & CARON, P.C.
/s/ Roger G. Worthington
Roger G. Worthington (pro hac vice pending)
John M. Caron (pro hac vice pending)
273 W. 7th Street
San Pedro, CA 90731
Telephone: 310-221-8090
Facsimile: 310-221-8095
Attorneys for Plaintiff Multnomah County
