New York City filed a lawsuit Thursday against oil majors ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell and BP, accusing them of “cheating” consumers into “Exaggerating their investments in clean energies”.
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The 97-page complaint blames them too “To amplify the benefits for the climate” products related to natural gas, biofuels or hydrogen. She also accuses companies, as well as the powerful professional federation of the API sector, of “Misrepresent” the climatic impacts of fossil fuels. Fighting climate change also means “Attacking some of the biggest polluting companies for false advertising and greenwashing”, justified the mayor of the city, Bill de Blasio, in a press release. The complaint was filed on the opening day of the virtual climate summit hosted by US President Joe Biden.
“Impairs the ability of consumers to make informed decisions”
“When oil companies present their products with words like ‘greener’ or ‘cleaner’, while failing to disclose the real effects of those products, it hurts consumers’ ability to make informed decisions.”, said Lorelei Salas, of the city’s consumer and worker protection department. This is not the first time that New York has taken on the oil industry giants.
The town hall lodged a complaint in January 2018 against BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell for their responsibilities in climate change, a complaint dismissed on appeal in early April. New York City also lost a lawsuit against ExxonMobil at the end of 2019, which it accused of having misled investors by wrongly claiming to fully integrate the risks of tightening laws on greenhouse gas emissions in its projections. long term.
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