Climate Change Blame Game: Corporate Pushback On Boulder Lawsuit

BOULDER, CO - If you burn fossil fuels in your car or home, you are just as responsible for climate change as the companies who extracted them. At least, that's the line taken by ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy in a response to the April lawsuit brought against them by the City of Boulder, Boulder County, and San Miguel County. The lawsuit then accused the petroleum producers of "reckless actions and damages" in contributing to climate change, but the companies have pushed back with a September 10 court filing saying that it wasn't their fault, reported the Daily Camera Tuesday.

In their filing, Exxon and Suncor explain that in attributing global greenhouse gas increases to the burning of fossil fuels, the governments "implicate not only themselves, but every single person or entity on the planet that has ever contributed to greenhouse gas emissions." By that logic, the list of contributors includes "emitters and consumers of fossil fuels, producers of electricity, governments and government entities, manufacturers and businesses."

When it was filed, Boulder's lawsuit was called the first of its kind by a state in the interior of the country - California and New York had already seen similar efforts. It claimed that "by hiding what they knew about, and affirmatively misrepresenting the dangers of unabated fossil fuel use, the defendants protected fossil fuel demand, and obstructed the changes needed to prevent or at least minimize the impacts of climate change." The Colorado governments sought an unspecified sum to compensate them for the effects they had suffered as a result.

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