4 Senate Democrats call on Garland to sue fossil fuel industry

A group of senators affiliated with the progressive and climate-hawk wings of the Democratic party are calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland to sue fossil fuel companies for misleading the public on climate change.

In the letter, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) called on the Justice Department to take civil action over what they call a concerted effort to misinform about the relationship between fossil fuels and planetary warming.  

The senators cite communications as early as 1959 between physicist Edward Teller and the American Petroleum Institute (API) in which he warned of planetary warming from burning fossil fuels. In the 1970s, Shell and Exxon commissioned and conducted research that found a relationship between carbon emissions into the atmosphere and rising temperatures.

Since then, the senators wrote, the industry has embarked on a campaign to minimize the threat of climate change through the API, with an ultimate goal of making “recognition of the uncertainties … part of the ‘conventional wisdom,’” according to a 1998 API memo.

“The actions of ExxonMobil, Shell, and potentially other fossil fuel companies represent a clear violation of federal racketeering laws, truth in advertising laws, consumer protection laws, and potentially other laws, and the Department must act swiftly to hold them accountable for their unlawful actions,” the senators wrote. “The fossil fuel industry has had scientific evidence about the dangers of climate change and the role that burning fossil fuels play in increasing global temperatures for more than 50 years.”

As precedent, the senators cite both the 1990s lawsuits against the tobacco industry and the dozens of states and municipalities that have already filed similar lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry. They also point to the role of climate change in extreme weather and heat in recent years and 2023 in particular, as well as a Deloitte estimate that unchecked climate change could cost the country over $14.5 trillion by the end of the century. 

“The record of the past two decades demonstrates that the industry is achieving its goal of providing affordable, reliable American energy to U.S. consumers while substantially reducing emissions and our environmental footprint,” an API spokesperson told The Hill in a statement.

The Hill has reached out to ExxonMobil, Shell and the Justice Department for comment.

— Updated at 3:24 p.m.