Will the legal strategy that brought down Big Tobacco work against Big Oil?

[kristopher]

Conspiracy Theory


During the tobacco wars of the 1990s, attorneys Steve Susman and Steve Berman stood on opposite sides of the courtroom. Berman represented 13 states in what was then seen as a quixotic attempt to recover smoking-related medical costs, and conceived the strategy that would break the tobacco industry’s back: an emphasis on charges of conspiracy to deceive the public about the dangers of cigarettes. Susman had turned down offers to represent Massachusetts and Texas against the cigarette makers; instead he defended Philip Morris—until 1998, when the industry settled for more than $200 billion, the biggest civil settlement ever. Now, a decade later, the two lawyers find themselves on the same side of the aisle, working on a case that seems just as improbable as the ones that brought down Big Tobacco ever did—and with implications that could be at least as far-reaching.

The Eskimo village of Kivalina sits on the tip of an eight-mile barrier reef on the west coast of Alaska. Fierce storms are ripping apart the shores. Residents report sinkholes in nearby riverbanks. Despite emergency erosion-control efforts, the crumbling coast threatens the village’s school and electric plant. In 2006, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers concluded that Kivalina would be uninhabitable in as little as 10 years, and that relocating its approximately 400 residents would cost at least $95 million. Global climate change, the Corps report said, had shortened the season during which the sea was frozen, leaving the community more vulnerable to winter storms.

As scientific evidence accumulates on the destructive impact of carbon-dioxide emissions, a handful of lawyers are beginning to bring suits against the major contributors to climate change. Their arguments, so far, have not been well received...

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/conspiracy

[Doug.Goodall]

1. I wish the attorneys that beat big oil would apply their efforts to the Gun Pushers selling handguns

But I assume there is more money to be extracted from the oil companies that from the gun industry. People see the pollution from automobiles and power plants every day, while gun deaths are regulated to the back pages of the new papers.

[kristopher]

2. You're on the wrong forum

[Doug.Goodall]

7. What part of "more money to be extracted from the oil companies " did you not read

Or perhaps kristopher did not bother to read the post at all and just lashed out at the new comer to kristopher's forum.

There are problems in this country, and the world, that need addressing. Big Oil gets the big attention because they have deep pockets and we see the results of their greed in our air everyday. Guns are also a problem, but the results are down the list from global warming and don't make the top of the list of problems to address first.

If kristopher doesn't like my posting in the Environment/Energy forum, kristopher can put me on ignore. If kristopher thinks I am intentionally disrupting kristopher's forum, kristopher can alert the mods

Have a nice day

[GliderGuider]

9. The problem is that handguns are a uniquely American problem. Global warming is, well, global.

And it kills a lot more people per year than Yankee handguns. Solve the big problems first.

[Doug.Goodall]

11. Did you read the article?

The topic of discussion is legal strategies that can be employed against corporations that do not have the best interests of the public in mind when they market their products. The event of interest occurred in Kivalina, Alaska. The initial lawsuits over global warming have been brought in California, Mississippi, and New York. These lawsuits were based on America case law spanning 40 years of American court proceedings against predominately American tobacco corporations. The current list of target corporations have names like:

American Electric Power
BP America
Chevron
ConocoPhillips
Duke Energy
ExxonMobil
Peabody Energy
Southern Company

In order to gain control of global warming through the courts, it is in our best interest to explore all avenues. The avenues addressed in the quoted article are all in American courts against American companies. In addition to the approach used in the tobacco wars, there were some effective lawsuits brought against the gun industry in America. The lawsuits against the gun industry were so effective, the Republicans and the Bush administration passed a law to prevent more of the same.

Global warming is , well, global, but the article is about legal proceeding in America.

And by the way GliderGuider, those Yankee handguns would not be ones like Glocks, whose corporate headquarters is in that Yankee state of Austria, or Beretta whose headquarters is in that Yankee state of Italy, or Walther whose headquarters is in that Yankee state of Germany. Not to leave out my redneck brothers south of the Mason – Dixon Line, don’t forget Taurus, whose head quarters is in the state of Brazil.

[tom_paine]

3. I honestly believe we have passed a tipping point in our Empire, the legal strategy

employed against Big Tobacco would NOT work today.

The propaganda is too powerful, too calibrated to the weaknesses of the human mind.

Hell, I was simply staggered at the amount of prescient, relevant information modern psychology can tell us about ourselves (and the people who wish to mass manipulate us for their own purposes) even in a low-level corporate training seminar.

Ever hear of the DISC method? I sat through a two-day seminar on it. Of course, it was all geared to the "helpful" side of things as in, here's how you communicate with the different archetypes, here's what motivates them, etc. etc.

Astonishing how powerful and refined modern psychology is and, by necessity it's hidden cohort of propaganda, advertising, and public relations, which together form the very powerful Science of Lying and Manipulation.

Hell, after seven years of watching it in action,I now know that it is possible to calibrate a Really Big Lie like the Bushies tell so frequently, and do so in such a way that even though it all adds up to a BIG LIE, there is no one obvious lie among the components. All the mini-lies and half-truths have plausible deniability built right in.

I watch it, I understand how it works, and still I stand amazed at the sheer power of it. The nuclear bomb of the mind for tyrants to use on their populations, and they do.

But I digress. My whole point was the amazing success of the Big Tobacco propaganda that kept that doubt in the public's mind ("doubt is our product" as one of Big Tobacco's leaked memos truthfully stated) for 40 long years after medical science had established the link between cigarettes and cancer is now five times as powerful, five times as well-calibrated and structured ("spun", if you will, though I believe that is like using the word firecracker to describe a hydrogen bomb), and with no real Free Press in this country that means no one to even debunk the lies except the usual handful of lefty web sites that no one beyond the chorus being preached to buys, and it doesn't matter how ironclad the facts are, as we have all seen.

These days, even scientific truth is like blowing a kazoo in a crowd of blaring corporate tubas. No one can hear you no matter how loud you are.

This is a bit scattershot but my overall point is not: Not only can't (at least under current conditions of our Empire, which is something that cannot be changed by a mere election, though certainly that would help) that strategy pursued against Big Tobacco during the height of the Old American Republic couldn't work against Big Tobacco today.

Too many Bushie "judges" who aren't judges at all, but criminally complicit like Scalia and Cheney duck hunting, but on a massive scale. A pathetic Corporatized Toady media who undoubtedly would pull out all the stops which we have come to recognize so well to discredit the story and keep it from as many eyes as possible while still flashing it quickly to provide the Plausible Deniability ("what do you mean, we ran the story...once at 3 a.m on our Wyoming affiliate") we have also come to know so well. Or publishing a patently false story designed to smear the critics, blaring it 24/7 for a month, then waiting and whispering the retraction so no one hears it.

Don't get me wrong. The work that is being done in the area mentioned in you linked article is heroic, if tragic. Like being an advocate for Jews in 1936 Germany. Heroic, but mostly futile in terms of the larger society and tragic in it's doomed nobility, for every one saved, a hundred thousand die, metaphorically-speaking.

The one saved...that's the heroic part. The hundred thousands who died for every one saved, that's the tragic part.

Sorry. I hate to be a pessimist, a "can't do" kind of guy, but reality is reality. I didn't make the reality, I just live in it.

I applaud all who are trying to get this done, who are bringing the issue to the floor and forcing Big Oil to open their files (trying to anyway). But judging by the massive success of the Cigarette manufacturers in selling doubt, EVEN during the time when American Liberty and Checks & Balances were stronger (maybe strongest), makes me think that no such similar success is possible today.

Not that I would advocate people stop trying. Like all the rest of it, I will continue to hope and pray that I am wrong about this.

[kristopher]

4. I can understand your pessimism, however...

The people pursuing this strategy have a well thought out strategy that is oriented around a very narrow legal question; it doesn't require of the judge belief in anything except the evidence that such a conspiracy exists, is operable, and is intended to deliberately deceive the public.

I've recently been wading through a lot of the evidence available on the topic, and I have to say that it is not only very reliable but extremely clear. I think they have a better than 50/50 shot, personally.

[tom_paine]

5. Well you know alot more about the specifics of this topic than I.

I therefore, and rather hopefully, defer to your judgement. For all our sakes, I hope it turns out on the good side of that 50/50 shot.

The American People could use a win in our fight against tyranny, especially because it's been lose lose lose for seven years. Even when we won in 2006, we lost because not much has changed and the Bush Juggernaut of Tyranny is rolling onward, barely deterred (although, since we cannot peer in alternate quantum eigenstates/realities, if such exist, we cannot know for sure what if any the difference would be had the Bushies more fully stolen 2006).

It might not be a direct defeat for the Bushies, but it would represent a significant piercing of the Bushie Lie Machine in such a way as to get people thinking.

I will admit this: These days, hope is as sweet as water to a person dying of thirst in the desert. And so I galdly drink.

May it be so. May the lid be blown of this odious Bushie Lie, and in doing so, may it wake the American People to the rest of it, before it's too late.

And I'll drink to that.

:beer:

[ben_meyers]

6. Big Tobacco is gone?

No wonder I don't see any cigarettes for sale anywhere.

[GliderGuider]

8. Well, cigarettes are much more expensive than they used to be.

Perhaps an effort like this could help drive American gasoline prices to parity with European prices within the next few years. The sooner that happens, the better, but I expect there are people who live 30 miles from their work that will object to this tactic.

[kristopher]

10. I think the benefit would be to counter the propaganda

That propaganda is designed explicitly to diminish the perception of risk. With increased accurate awareness of risk comes modified willingness to pursue solutions. With willingness to pursue solutions comes options for solutions. For example, a majority of people start to support passing legislation that strongly diverts money to renewables instead of fossil fuels.

How many people smoke now versus the day those tobacco execs went in front of congress and lied their arses off?

Edited to add this link as demonstration of what values could be affected: http://www.minnpost.com/stories/2008/06/13/2215/eco-friendly_wind_powers_growth_to_deliver_less-popular_side_effect

[kgrandia]

12. Now we're talking!!

Where can I send my check?