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Comment by sampo | Hacker News Reader

> Most of the lawsuits assert that oil companies should help pay the escalating costs being imposed on the public by climate-fueled extreme weather because they knew the risks their products posed but worked to publicly question climate science and stymie efforts to curb emissions.

"They knew the risks"

Everybody knew the risks. Climate science has been researched at universities and published openly.

If politicians have failed to regulate, and consumers have enjoyed the benefits of (relatively) cheap fuel and energy, why would the fossil energy companies be singled out as the culprits? People wanted the high material standard of living that comes from (relatively) abundant available energy, cheaper and plentiful food that comes from abundant nitrogen fertilizers (made from natural gas). We were all part of this.

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The difference is that exxon knew the risks but spent time and effort to sow doubt. This is exactly like how tobacco companies tried to muddy the waters on health effects of tobacco use. The oil companies could have acknowledged the problems of burning fossil fuel but it took them almost 20 years to even admit climate change is real

If people were happy to accept the risks then why obfuscate the risks?

The word "risk" implies there's a chance the water won't heat up when you put the pot on the stove. It absolutely will, it is, and we all knew it would.

The average American does not know it would. Over 70% of them reject the assertion that climate change is caused more by humans than just natural processes by themselves.

The question is: why?

If the answer is, even in part, "because of a propaganda campaign to convince them of this," then the people who have mounted the campaign deserve blame.

Indeed. Rampant innumeracy doesn’t help either :-(

We all had every opportunity to know about climate change, many rejected those opportunities. Even those who know full well the reality of climate change and acknowledge it are still giving tens of thousands of dollars a year to fossil fuel companies and not losing too much sleep at night over it.

Propaganda only works when you're telling people what they want to hear, and nobody wants to hear about climate change. For everything that we stand for and believe in to hold merit climate change needs to be a farce.

I want to say we can't have it both ways, but actually we can. It just means our grandchildren can't have it any way.

> Over 70% of them reject the assertion that climate change is caused more by humans than just natural processes by themselves.

Every poll I’ve seen has that at around 25-35%.

Why shouldn’t a company be responsible for the pollution and health impacts their products have?

It’s so basic

The way you are thinking about this makes me think the eventual solution will be a black box label on the gas pump that says “Studies have shown that burning gasoline increases the risk of climate-change related weather events”

You want alcohol companies pay hospital bills now? I don't mind, but that's an uphill battle.

Isn't that in parts why alcohol and tobacco are taxed at higher rates? That's a thing in many countries at least

Ideally yes, and as another commenter pointed out they do. Moreover, they can’t lie and say alcohol is good for you. In fact they can’t say much at all, their advertising avenues are very limited. It’s even worse for tobacco.

They got in this mess not because they made bad products that kill people. That’s actually fine, no politician in the US cares about that. No, they got into this mess because they spend decades covering up the truth and trying to convince consumers “see, it’s not that bad!”

Now that’s a problem. If the product just killed people we could sit around and play the “free will” game. “Well you see consumers can choose to kill themselves!” But that game goes out the window when we pollute free will with deception.

What free will actually looks like is a price that reflects the actual cost of the product, as well as labels that make it clear “this will kill you”. Turns out, when we do that, a lot less people choose to consume the product.

> lawsuits assert that oil companies should help pay the escalating costs being imposed on the public by climate-fueled extreme weather because they knew the risks their products posed

How would one even begin to adjudicate that? How do you determine which storm or what portion of a storm was caused by climate change, and how do you determine what portion of climate change was caused by Exxon’s CO2 emissions or whatever?

Same reason we go after drug dealers but not drug users, and pimps but not prostitutes. We want the consequences to fall on the entity making the most money, or more cynically , the least sympathetic entity.

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