Energy

AG Suggests Exxon Ads Should Contain Skull-And-Crossbone Climate Warnings

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One of the attorneys general probing Exxon Mobil suggested Thursday that the company’s ads should contain symbols warning people about the company’s effect on the climate.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey’s involvement in a years-long probe of Exxon’s climate is taking an interesting turn. She wants the company to slap placards on advertisements warning customers about Exxon’s supposed climate atrocities.

“If they’re doing sales and marketing in Massachusetts, and they know things that they should be telling people … then they’ve gotta make that part of their advertising,” her legal counsel said in oral arguments during a hearing determining if Exxon hid from public view knowledge about global warming.

“They can’t simply go around and say, ‘We’re selling you this terrific product,’ and keep to themselves what they know about the possible impacts of those products on global warming,” Healey’s counsel added. Her support for warnings on ads and pumps at Exxon s gas stations resemble the campaign to attach warnings to cigarette packs.

American tobacco companies are required, in some form, to place insignia on their cigarette packs warning customers about the health problems associated with smoking. A law passed in 2009 requires color graphics with supplemental text that depicts the negative consequences of smoking to cover nearly half of the front cover.

Five companies filed a lawsuit in 2011 against the FDA to reverse the new warning mandate. They claimed the requirement violates the companies’ free speech rights – Exxon and others make similar arguments about the probes leveled by Healey and her New York counterpart, Eric Schneiderman.

Republican attorney generals from Oklahoma, Utah and Texas filed an amicus brief in April castigating the Democrat-led probe and called it a violation of the First Amendment that constitutes an “unconstitutional abuse of investigative power.” They also claim it’s a ploy to generate support for various climate policies.

Schneiderman and Healey’s probes were based on reports from liberal-leaning media outlets InsideClimate News and Columbia University, that claim Exxon has known the risks of global warming for decades but kept such knowledge under wraps. The Democratic attorney generals also want warnings slapped on gas pumps.

The counsel said:

“So Exxon has an obligation – and all of this is assuming that what we think may have happened did happen, and there was an understanding about the impact on climate change – that Exxon would have a responsibility both at the national level and at the local level to implement information to the consumers so that they could understand when they purchase a tank of gas that this is gonna have an impact on global warming and maybe they should be thinking about buying a more fuel-efficient car, maybe they should be thinking about public transportation.”

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