Activist groups at the heart of the climate litigation campaign have launched a new video featuring Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison promoting the climate lawsuit he filed this summer. The video was sponsored and created by the YEARS Project and Fossil Free Media and is being touted online by the ExxonKnews newsletter, demonstrating that the litigation campaign remains highly coordinated and politically motivated.
In the video, Ellison said he has high hopes that the Minnesota lawsuit filed against ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute will “set a precedent for the entire nation” and he regurgitated (frequently-debunked) “Exxon Knew” talking points about how oil companies “needed to stop lying to us” about what they knew when about the science of climate change.
Activist Groups Behind Video Are Players in Climate Litigation Campaign
The video shows that there continues to be ongoing coordination between Ellison’s government-funded office and the major environmental groups that are driving the climate litigation campaign. The slick production job came courtesy of Fossil Free Media and the YEARS Project, both of which are targeting energy companies over climate change. For example, Fossil Free Media is a nonprofit communications group founded earlier this year by 350.org co-founder Jamie Henn to advocate against fossil fuel development. 350.org has been a longtime supporter of these climate lawsuits. Henn, and fellow 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben, were present at a 2016 activist meeting that discussed strategies to “delegitimize” ExxonMobil.
Read the full blog at EIDClimate.org.
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