Gore, Schneiderman tout effort by attorneys general to hold fossil fuel companies accountable

As former Vice President Al Gore sees it, major energy companies are following in the footsteps of Big Tobacco.

“From the time tobacco companies were first found out, as evidenced by the Surgeon General’s report of 1964, it took 40 years for them to be held to account under the law,” Gore said at a press conference in downtown Manhattan last month. “We do not have 40 years to continue suffering the consequences of the fraud allegedly being committed by the fossil fuel companies.”

Drawing comparisons to state officials’ work to ensure tobacco companies disclosed health risks, Gore joined attorneys general from New York and several other states as they announced they were exploring whether their individual investigations into fossil fuel companies could benefit from a collaborative approach.

Gore, a longtime environmental activist, said impasses in Congress have given greater importance to the work of the attorneys general. He stressed that a similar partnership succeeded in penalizing tobacco companies for publicizing information they knew to be inaccurate about the health risks of smoking or using other tobacco products.

The March 29 announcement came amid what New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman described as a day-long attorneys general conference on climate change. Schneiderman said the group was seeking to come up with “creative” ways to enforce rules being “flouted” by the fossil fuel industry and their allies.

Schneiderman noted that his office reached an agreement with the coal giant Peabody Energy Corporation after it inaccurately described financial risks associated with climate change in its statements. Under the arrangement, Peabody agreed to file revised shareholder disclosures with federal regulators.

Schneiderman’s office has also reportedly subpoenaed ExxonMobil to assess whether it accurately accounted for how climate change and government regulations would impact its finances and whether it publicized information that disregarded its own scientists’ climate change projections.

He noted that attorney general offices were making inquiries under the purview of various state consumer protection, securities fraud and pension fund laws, but they were examining whether their efforts may overlap.

“Every fossil fuel company has a responsibility to be honest with its investors and with the public about the financial and market risks posed by climate change – these are the cornerstones of our securities industry protection laws,” Schneiderman said. “In Washington, there are good people who want to do the right thing on climate change, but everyone from President Obama on down is under a relentless assault from well-funded, highly aggressive and morally vacant forces that are trying to block every step by the federal government to take meaningful action. So today we’re sending a message that at least some of us – actually, a lot of us – in state government are prepared to step into this battle with an unprecedented level of commitment and coordination.”

Suzanne McCarron, vice president of public and government affairs at ExxonMobil, said the allegations made by Schneiderman, Gore and others were politically motivated and based on “discredited reporting funded by activist organizations.”

McCarron said in a statement that the company was “assessing all legal options.”

“Contrary to activists’ claims, our company’s deliberations decades ago yielded no definitive conclusions,” McCarron said. “As our scientists determined at the time, many important questions about climate science remained unanswered, and more research was required. Accordingly, Exxon, and later ExxonMobil, continued research at leading universities, and also engaged in the public debate surrounding policy responses to the emerging science.”