A US small-town mayor sued the oil industry. Then Exxon went after him
Source: The Guardian
A US small-town mayor sued the oil industry. Then Exxon went after him
The mayor of Imperial Beach, California, says big oil wants him to drop the lawsuit demanding the industry pay for the climate crisis
Chris McGreal in Imperial Beach
Sat 16 Oct 2021 11.00 BST
Serge Dedina is a surfer, environmentalist and mayor of Imperial Beach, a small working-class city on the California coast.
He is also, if the fossil fuel industry is to be believed, at the heart of a conspiracy to shake down big oil for hundreds of millions of dollars.
ExxonMobil and its allies have accused Dedina of colluding with other public officials across California to extort money from the fossil-fuel industry. Lawyers even searched his phone and computer for evidence he plotted with officials from Santa Cruz, a city located nearly 500 miles north of Imperial Beach.
The problem is, Dedina had never heard of a Santa Cruz conspiracy. Few people had.
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The lawyers found no evidence to back up their claim. But that did not stop the industry from continuing to use its legal muscle to try to intimidate Dedina, who leads one of the poorest small cities in the region.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/16/imperial-beach-california-exxon-mobil-climate-crisis