Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has listened to oil companies try to dodge responsibility for pollution and climate change by arguing there are a lot of potential polluters and who can say who'se really responsible?
So when he went after ExxonMobil Corp., the American Petroleum Institute, and three Koch Industries entities, he took a different tack. Armed with what he calls "strong consumer protection laws" in Minnesota, he charged them with fraud, failure to warn, and multiple separate violations of Minnesota statutes that prohibit consumer fraud, deceptive trade practices, and false advertising. In addition, (in a move reminscent of the historic lawsuit against tobacco companies in the mid-'90s) Ellison is asking for restitution for the harms Minnesotans have suffered, and for a corrective public education campaign on the issue of climate change, funded by the defendants.