report<\/a> showed that oil giant ExxonMobil and its corporate predecessors have been identified by New York State government to be apparently responsible for an estimated 3,500 spills and leaks.\u00a0 Some of these spills were small, some staggeringly large.\u00a0 These spills and leaks occurred all over New York State; from Buffalo to Albany, from the Hudson Valley to the tip of Long Island.<\/p>\nAccording to extensive government and corporate documents obtained under the state\u2019s Freedom of Information Law, in many cases these spills have impacted the environment and in some cases, pose threats to the public\u2019s health.\u00a0 Most alarming is that in many instances these spills have not yet been cleaned up to state standards for decades.<\/p>\n
It’s not surprising that New York, which has been an industrial state for well over one hundred years, would have environmental pollution resulting from that legacy.\u00a0 What is surprising is that those spills have not yet been cleaned up.\u00a0 ExxonMobil is one of the most profitable companies in the world and has the resources to clean up its messes.<\/p>\n
So how is it that the oil, gas and coal lobbies can wreak havoc by warming the planet and despoiling the earth while the national government looks the other way\u2014or worse acts as industry handmaiden?\u00a0 The industry has tremendous political clout and is able to use its muscle to protect its corporate interests \u2013 even if that results in tremendous harm to the public interest.<\/p>\n
Without question, there is a significant difference in the policy orientation of the federal government, which has so far shown a fawning relationship to the industry, and New York government, which has been significantly tougher and in many ways enlightened when it comes to the future of energy production.<\/p>\n
But the fossil fuel industry is powerful.\u00a0 And the industry has been using its power to create an atmosphere of doubt around the science of climate change.\u00a0 It is their public relations and political campaigns that have allowed it to have a stranglehold over national policies.<\/p>\n
But those campaigns of deception are now under the scrutiny of the New York State Attorney General.\u00a0 In 2015 New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced an investigation into ExxonMobil over whether it misled investors and the public about the reality of climate change.\u00a0 His investigation came shortly after media reports revealed that, as early as the 1970s, top executives at ExxonMobil were well informed about the climate risks resulting from the use of their products based on their own research.\u00a0 Yet, instead of issuing warnings, the company reportedly spent decades investing in major disinformation campaigns to sow doubt about those risks and undermine the urgency of policy action.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s important that New Yorkers\u2019 back Schneiderman\u2019s efforts to find out the truth about ExxonMobil.\u00a0 He\u2019s got scientists in his corner: as part of the run up to Earth Day\u2019s \u201cMarch for Science\u201d events, over 100 scientists from across New York state sent a letter urging the New York Attorney General to pursue his investigation into ExxonMobil to \u201cthe fullest extent of the law.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earth Day was last week.\u00a0 The fairest assessment of the state of the environment is that the situation is alarmingly bad.\u00a0 But the problem is not a scientific one \u2013 it is one caused by the failures of policymaking.<\/p>\n
The public response has to be one of advocacy \u2013 demands that the federal government take actions to curb the burning of fossil fuels; demands that state government force the clean ups of all toxic hazards, including oil spills; and demands that corporate leaders be held accountable for their decisions that harm the public interest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Earth Day was last week.\u00a0 Earth Day is an annual event that started in 1970 and is an important opportunity for our society to examine how well we are protecting the environment.\u00a0 And this year\u2019s Earth Day occurred at a critical juncture: the planet is heating up as the result of human activities, most notably […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1872"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1874,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1872\/revisions\/1874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}