Eskimos, whales, and luaus...Oh my!
You knew it was coming: global warming, the lawsuit.
Earlier this year, a gaggle of lawyers sued 24 energy companies and utilities, blaming them for coastal erosion in the tiny Eskimo village of Kivalina, Alaska. The suit makes two main points: First, that the fossil-fuel baddies "are responsible for a substantial portion of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that have caused global warming and Kivalina's special injuries." The suit also accuses ExxonMobil,
The story of Kivalina (population 400) will melt even the most glacial heart. A documentary video posted on the website of one of the plaintiffs' firms, Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, depicts a rustic village 70 miles north of the Arctic Circle, where plain-spoken, whale-killing natives are about to be washed away by the aforementioned corporate villains.
The Inupiat Eskimos are perfect, jury-worthy plaintiffs. They have occupied their tiny barrier reef, just a few feet above sea level, "since time immemorial," according to the lawsuit. They are poor. They live in harmony with nature, according to the documentary. (Pay no attention to those all-terrain vehicles zipping around town, and the kid flashing the gang sign.) And things are heating up. "It feels like Hawaii weather," Ray Hawley tells the videographer. I see that snow is forecast for the week following Memorial Day. I hope they don't cancel the luau.
Why didn't the crusading lawyers bring an action on behalf of the Bimini Yacht Club? If the ocean rises, think of all the money the yachties might have to spend on new docks! Maybe they can join the suit later. Right now it's all about impoverished Eskimos losing their patrimony to the fat capitalists in the oak-paneled boardrooms. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde's famous comment about the death of Little Nell, it's hard to hear this kind of fairy tale and not break out laughing.
No court in the land is going to let lawyers get rich off this kind of frivolity, I hear you thinking. Think again. Hagens Berman played a key role in the groundbreaking, multi-state litigation against the tobacco companies, and now they are going back for more. "It's the same game plan that brought down Big Tobacco," Stephan Faris writes in the current issue of The Atlantic.
Oh, that game plan. First quarter: Devise an outrageously false premise. With tobacco, it was the notion that the states were "owed" health care payments used to treat ill smokers, when in fact the state probably should have reimbursed Big Tobacco billions of dollars for killing off citizens well before they needed expensive geriatric treatment. The lawyers also argued that Americans were too stupid to comprehend the health warning labels plastered all over cigarette packs since 1966.
Second quarter: Find defendants that make Joseph Goebbels look like Mother Teresa. Preferably multibillion-dollar corporations. Because these lawyers don't want to end up like the hardscrabble husbandmen of Kivalina, flensing blubber off whales down by the seashore. When the dust settled on the tobacco litigation, some lawyers made over $5,000 an hour, and in one case, $200,000 an hour. In some states, including Massachusetts, the lawyers sued for more!
Third quarter: Be patient, and be persistent. Judges change, administrations change, public opinion changes.
Fourth quarter: Stay away from court! Some judges may be liberal, but they're not idiots. They know that utilities sold electricity to Americans because their customers wanted to jack up the AC. In fact, there isn't a utility in America that hasn't spent the past 20 years begging its customers to use less oil and gas. There is an inconvenient truth if I ever saw one.
Endgame: Settle. You - meaning the lawyers - will get rich. Throw in a few bones for the Eskimos. After all, they got you that new BMW.
Mr. Faris's assertion notwithstanding, this game plan did not bring down Big Tobacco. Check the stock tables for Altria and Reynolds American if you don't believe me. It won't bring down Big Energy, either. But it may bring down big bucks for the eco-ambulance chasers, and also provide an amusing sideshow for the public. Because who wants to look in the mirror, and see where the real cause of global warming lies?
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com.
