California Attorney General Rob Bonta and a coalition of environmental nonprofits sued Exxon Mobil on Monday morning alleging the gas giant enacted a “decades-long campaign of deception” that fueled a global plastic pollution crisis.
The lawsuits will seek civil damages from ExxonMobil for environmental destruction, public health harms, and an end to its “deceptive practices” that they argue have led to plastic being found from the depths of the ocean to the peak of Mt. Everest.
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“ExxonMobil lied to further its record-breaking profits at the expense of our planet and possibly jeopardizing our health,” Bonta said in a statement. “Today’s lawsuit shows the fullest picture to date of ExxonMobil’s decades-long deception.”
ExxonMobil is one of the oldest and largest gas and plastics companies in the world with a market cap of $512 billion. The company has been the focus on numerous lawsuits for environmental harms in recent decades. Past lawsuits include the Valdez oil spill off the coast of Alaska, climate change denial, and lying about the carcinogenic properties of benzene.
The converging lawsuits against ExxonMobil will attempt to prove the corporation systematically led the public to believe that plastic waste is safely disposable through recycling and failed to share information about toxic “forever” chemicals and plastics’ lasting environmental harms. If successful, the lawsuits would compel ExxonMobil to end its “deceptive” practices and could secure hundreds of millions to support climate change solutions.
This is a developing story and will be updated.