Demonizing and Prosecuting Fossil Fuels Companies: Misguided and Pernicious

Commentary

One of the more lamentable aspects of the climate alarmist movement is the demonization and persecution of fossil fuel producers.

In what might be called “climate lawfare,” the pending legal case Leon v. Exxon Mobil has plaintiffs seeking monetary damages from a fossil fuel giant for the “wrongful death” of one Juliana “Julie” Leon, who died from heatstroke in 2021 “after driving almost 100 miles without air conditioning on a day when temperatures hit … 108 degrees.”

Another recent incident involves a group of young Americans who have petitioned the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to, in some unspecified way, “hold the U.S. accountable.” They accuse the United States of “violating international human rights laws by backing fossil fuel production despite the [alleged] accelerating climate crisis.”

In the Leon case, plaintiffs’ attorneys will find it difficult to convict ExxonMobil for poor Ms. Leon’s death. Whether she chose not to turn on the air conditioner in her car or whether that unit was inoperative, neither circumstance can be blamed on oil companies. This lawsuit boils down to an attempt to punish oil companies because a record-high temperature occurred in Washington State on the date of Ms. Leon’s demise.

For starters, local weather is not climate. Also, there have been warmer periods in Earth’s past before the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the oil and gas industry (e.g., medieval, Roman, and Minoan warm periods) when CO2 concentrations were lower. Also, if CO2 were the indisputable cause of record-high temperatures, then there should be more record highs now than earlier in our country’s history; yet the historical temperature records show that there were far more record-high temperatures when the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was much lower. (See graph)

Further, it is impossible to quantify how much, if any, of the overall slight rise in global temperatures over the past century has been because of the greenhouse effect (in which, by the way, water vapor is far, far more impactful than CO2). If increases of CO2 in the atmosphere make temperatures rise, why, even though the concentration of CO2 was rising rapidly then, was the period from the 1940s to the late 1970s so cold that scientists in the ’70s were predicting a new ice age? How can any scientist prove beyond doubt that all of the modest global warming since the end of the Little Ice Age in the 19th century has been because of the greenhouse effect, and none by changes in albedo (cloud cover), solar activity, shifting ocean currents, volcanic and tectonic activity, etc.?

Even if one assumed, for the sake of argument, that the entire temperature increase of the past half-century was because of CO2, scientists don’t agree about what percentage of CO2 was emitted into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels and what percentage came from natural causes. And since more fossil fuels have been burned outside the United States and came from fuel produced by non-U.S. companies, the share of CO2 emissions resulting from American consumption of fossil fuels would account for only a tiny fraction of a degree of the warming.

Even the very premise that a warmer climate is a more dangerous climate is refuted by evidence. In fact, survey after survey documents that far more humans die from cold than from heat. These figures strongly suggest that a warmer planet would, on a net basis, save lives. Indeed, datasets show that the U.S. death rate from climate-related phenomena has plunged by more than 90 percent in the past century.

And considering that today’s modestly warming climate has resulted in longer growing seasons and increased CO2 has produced increases in agricultural productivity, the evidence leads to the conclusion that the use of fossil fuels is beneficent, not deleterious.

As for the petition to the IACHR to censure the U.S. government for not halting the domestic production of fossil fuels, the case of the young Americans behind the petition is even more tenuous. They have wisely opted not to litigate this issue in a court of law, for unlike the Leon case, in which a family suffered the loss of one of their members, the plaintiffs have suffered no specific loss.

Moreover, their strategy is distinctly undemocratic: They are asking the seven commissioners of the IACHR (none of whom is a U.S. citizen and none of whom was popularly elected) to usurp a fundamental precept of our republican form of government—namely, that our elected representatives should debate and legislate the rules by which we live. If fossil fuel production in the United States is to be restricted by law, then the proper venue in which to make such a determination is the U.S. Congress, not the IACHR.

In both of these cases, to argue that fossil fuel production must be reduced or banned rests on dubious assumptions and arbitrary beliefs. The following questions are unanswerable, and therefore provide no factual basis for prosecuting fossil fuels producers: What is the “right” temperature? What is the “right” concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere? What percentage of the modest warming of the past two centuries is attributable to the greenhouse effect as opposed to other factors such as those mentioned?

There is a more important point about the domestic production and consumption of fossil fuels that is routinely overlooked by those who are targeting fossil fuels for elimination—i.e., the manifold benefits of fossil fuels for the human race. In addition to amplifying our economy’s wealth-generating capabilities, greatly increasing human mobility, and powering the myriad electric gizmos that enhance our prosperity, fossil fuels have been humanity’s most effective tool for shielding us from the uncomfortable and dangerous temperatures that weather (i.e., short-term climatic phenomena) persists in challenging us with. Heat generated by fossil fuels has made life in Minnesota, Michigan, and Maine far more tolerable and less dangerous than it otherwise would be. Fossil fuel-powered air conditioning has been both a lifesaver and a great enhancer of the quality of life in Arizona, Texas, Florida, and other warmer states.

The fact is that hundreds of millions, if not billions, of human lives have been saved, prolonged, and made more livable by the burning of fossil fuels. Let us not forget, either, that when fossil fuels are used to power our electric grid, the resulting reliability and steadiness of the grid makes costly and potentially deadly brownouts and blackouts far less likely than is the case when intermittent, fluctuating sources of energy such as wind and solar are used.

The bottom line is that, while every temperature-related death, including Julie Leon’s, is tragic, we need to remember that millions of Americans have been spared such a fate by the availability of air conditioning—a lifesaving amenity powered over the years primarily by fossil fuels. On a net basis, fossil fuels have abundantly blessed humankind. The producers of those fuels deserve our gratitude, not our censure or condemnation.

It makes no sense, logically or morally, to demonize, denounce, and seek to hurt our benefactors. And if those who mistakenly believe that fossil fuels pose a mortal danger to life on Earth really want to deprive the rest of us of the manifold benefits of fossil fuels, they owe it to us to go through the democratic process. That would give each of us a chance to vote on the question, which would be so much fairer than trying to get some solitary judge or a few unelected bureaucrats to impose such a harmful restriction on the rest of us.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.