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Calls for Big Oil to Cover LA Fire Damage as Chevron, Exxon Report Tens of Billions in 2024 Profits
"Megarich oil firms like Chevron and Exxon are knowingly driving and profiting from the climate crisis," said a Global Witness leader. "It's time they picked up the costs of repair."
Jan 31, 2025
As Chevron and ExxonMobil on Friday reported tens of billions in 2024 profits, campaigners intensified their demand for Big Oil to pay for the catastrophic levels of destruction caused by recent fires around Los Angeles, California, which were made more likely by the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.
"As LA residents reel from the damage done to their city, it's important we point out who has been driving the fossil fuel pollution that is turbo-charging climate disasters," said Lela Stanley, head of Fossil Fuel Investigations at Global Witness, in a statement. "Big Oil bosses have worked with their friends in politics to bake dirty fossil fuels into our energy systems, block climate action, and spread lies about climate change to divide and distract us."
"Instead of accounting for our safety or the health of the planet, megarich oil firms like Chevron and Exxon are knowingly driving and profiting from the climate crisis," she continued. "It's time they picked up the costs of repair."
Texas-based ExxonMobil's net income for last quarter was $7.6 billion, bringing its full-year total to $33.7 billion, the company said Friday. Chevron—which last August relocated its headquarters from San Ramon, California, to Houston—had profits of $3.2 billion during the fourth quarter and $17.7 billion throughout 2024, the hottest year on record.
"Just a quarter of these U.S. oil giants' annual profits could pay for $1 million payouts to each LA household that has lost a home."
Responding to the two companies' more than $51 billion in combined earnings, Stanley said that "just a quarter of these U.S. oil giants' annual profits could pay for $1 million payouts to each LA household that has lost a home. What's small change to Big Oil could have a transformative effect on ordinary people's lives."
Chevron earlier this month announced it would donate $1 million total to the American National Red Cross, California Fire Foundation, and Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce Small Business Disaster Recovery Fund to aid recovery from what could be the costliest fire disaster in U.S. history.
Global Witness highlighted the World Weather Attribution's
finding that global heating—primarily caused by humanity's continued extraction and use of fossil fuels—made the weather conditions that caused the Los Angeles fires 35% more probable.
"Despite alarm from climate scientists over global heating and a surge in fossil fuel-driven disasters," the organization noted, "Exxon and Chevron have continued to expand their oil production, with the firms producing +4% and +3% more in 2024 than they did in 2023, respectively."
Chevron, the group added, "has actively sought to avoid paying out in the wake of climate disasters like the LA wildfires, spending $30 million with the Western States Petroleum Association—one of the U.S.'s largest fossil fuel trade groups—lobbying against a polluters pay-style bill."
During California's last legislative session, lawmakers introduced, but did not pass, a "climate superfund bill" that would make polluters pay into a fund for disaster prevention and cleanup. The fires have sparked a fresh push for such legislation.
Californians are fleeing wildfires while Exxon & Chevron rake in $36B+ in profits. Polluters profit, taxpayers foot the bill. California can’t wait, we must pass a #ClimateSuperfund bill so companies driving the climate crisis pay for the damage 💰 #MakePollutersPay
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— Stop the Money Pipeline ( @stopmoneypipeline.bsky.social) January 11, 2025 at 3:43 PM
On Monday, California state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-11) introduced a bill that would allow homeowners, businesses, and insurance companies impacted by climate disasters to recover losses by taking legal action against oil and gas companies, which have not only fueled the global climate emergency but also spent decades misleading the public about the harms of their products.
There are also renewed calls for accountability via the courts. California is among the U.S. states and municipalities suing fossil fuel companies—including Chevron and Exxon—for their decades of deception. The Center for Climate Integrity said earlier this month that the latest fires "underscore the importance of California's effort to hold Big Oil accountable in court for its climate lies."
At least 29 deaths are
connected to this month's fires in the state. Attorney and Public Citizen Climate Program Accountability Project director Aaron Regunberg last year co-authored a legal memo about bringing criminal charges against fossil fuel companies. During a January 16 press conference, he said that "it's involuntary manslaughter to recklessly cause a death. Local prosecutors should consider whether Big Oil's conduct here amounts to violations of these kind of criminal laws."
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With 12 Days Left, Donziger Says Pardon From Biden Would Send Clear Message to Big Oil
"It would send a signal that President Biden, who claims to be a climate president and a rule of law president, can walk the walk, not just do the talk," said human rights attorney Steven Donziger.
Jan 08, 2025
With Joe Biden's White House term ending in less than two weeks, human rights attorney Steven Donziger on Tuesday urged the outgoing president to send a message to Chevron and other oil giants around the world by granting him a pardon.
"I think it would bring enormous recognition that this is just fundamentally wrong and a violation of the Constitution," Donziger said of a pardon in an interview with Amnesty International, one of many advocacy organizations backing his petition to the president. "But more importantly, it would send a signal that President Biden, who claims to be a climate president and a rule of law president, can walk the walk, not just do the talk. And it would be a really important opportunity for him to stand up for the principles that he purports."
Donziger faced a yearslong legal assault from Chevron after he helped win a $9.5 billion settlement against the company in 2011 over oil dumped on Indigenous lands in the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador.
Donziger has spent more than 1,000 days in prison or under house arrest since 2019, when he was charged with six counts of criminal contempt of court—charges for which he was found guilty in 2021 by Loretta Preska, a judge who has served on the advisory board of the Chevron-funded Federalist Society.
The United Nations condemned Donziger's prosecution and prolonged detention as violations of international law.
Donziger, who walked free in 2022, has said he is "the only person in U.S. history to be privately prosecuted by a corporation."
"More specifically," he wrote in a blog post last year, "the government (via a pro-corporate judge) gave a giant oil company (Chevron) the power to prosecute and lock up its leading critic."
In his interview with Amnesty volunteer Elizabeth Haight, Donziger argued that "there was no basis to charge me with contempt, either civil or criminal."
"But even if there was, this was handled in an extremely irregular, and I would argue, questionable, if not outright corrupt, way," he continued. "In my case, the prosecutor looked at the evidence and refused to take the case forward. That should have been the end of it. Instead, this judge appointed a private corporate law firm to step into the shoes of the U.S. government and prosecute me directly."
Donziger said that while "the case in Ecuador does not depend on me getting a pardon... a pardon would make it clear, or even more clear, to any judge in any country who might consider enforcing the judgment against Chevron, that Chevron's entire theory that somehow they were the ones victimized by the people of Ecuador rather than the other way around, is a completely false and manufactured narrative."
With time running out, Donziger urged people to sign his petition to the Biden White House calling for a pardon—a demand backed by dozens of U.S. lawmakers.
"Sign the petition to the White House, donate—as I can't work and am reliant on the goodwill of people all over the world to help pay my legal fees and keep me and this work moving—and call the White House at +1-202-456-1111," Donziger said. "What that means is, when the operator at the White House answers, you simply say, 'I'm calling to urge President Biden to pardon Steven Donziger, this is a grave injustice, this is a stain on the reputation of our country, and it must be corrected.'"
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34 US Lawmakers Urge Biden to Pardon Steven Donziger
"We are deeply concerned about the chilling effect this case will have on all advocates working on behalf of other frontline communities, victims of human rights violations, and those seeking environmental justice."
Dec 11, 2024
More than 30 Democratic members of Congress on Wednesday called on outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden to pardon environmental and human rights lawyer Steven Donziger, who endured nearly 1,000 days in prison and house arrest after successfully representing Ecuadoreans harmed by Big Oil's pollution of the Amazon rainforest.
In a
letter to Biden led by Rep. Jim McGovern, (D-Mass.), 33 House and Senate Democrats plus Independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont noted the "troubling legal irregularities" in Donziger's case, which have been "criticized as unconstitutional or illegal by three federal judges, 68 Nobel laureates, and five high-level jurists from the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of the United Nations."
Donziger represented a group of Ecuadorean farmers and Indigenous people in a 1990s lawsuit against Texaco—which was later acquired by Chevron—over the oil company's deliberate dumping of billions of gallons of carcinogenic waste into the Amazon. He played a key role in winning a $9.5 billion settlement against Chevron in Ecuadorian courts.
However, Chevron fought Donziger in the U.S. court system, and when the attorney refused to disclose privileged client information to the company, federal District Judge Lewis Kaplan—who was invested in Chevron—held him in misdemeanor contempt of court. Loretta Preska, Kaplan's handpicked judge to preside over Donziger's contempt trial, is affiliated with the Chevron-funded Federalist Society.
Donziger's case drew worldwide attention and solidarity, with human rights experts and free speech groups joining progressive U.S. lawmakers in demanding his release. He was released in April 2022 after 993 days in prison and house arrest.
"Donziger is the only lawyer in U.S. history to be subject to any period of detention on a misdemeanor contempt of court charge," the 34 lawmakers wrote. "We believe that the legal case against Mr. Donziger, as well as the excessively harsh nature of the punishment against him, are directly tied to his prior work against Chevron. We do not make this accusation lightly or without evidentiary support."
The legislators warned:
Notwithstanding the personal hardship, this unprecedented legal process has imposed on Mr. Donziger and his family, we are deeply concerned about the chilling effect this case will have on all advocates working on behalf of other frontline communities, victims of human rights violations, and those seeking environmental justice. Those who try to help vulnerable communities will feel as though tactics of intimidation—at the hands of powerful corporate interests, and, most troublingly, the U.S. courts—can succeed in stifling robust legal representation when it is needed most. This is a dangerous signal to send.
"Pardoning Mr. Donziger," the lawmakers added, "would send a powerful message to the world that billion-dollar corporations cannot act with impunity against lawyers and their clients who defend the public interest."
The lawmakers join more than 100 environmental and human rights groups that have urged Biden to pardon Donziger.
In an April opinion piece published by Common Dreams, Donziger contended that "I need this pardon because I am the only person in U.S. history to be privately prosecuted by a corporation."
"More specifically, the government (via a pro-corporate judge) gave a giant oil company (Chevron) the power to prosecute and lock up its leading critic," he continued. "As a result of this unprecedented and frightening private prosecution, I still cannot travel out of the country and I have been prohibited from meeting with clients I have represented for over three decades. Nor can I practice law, maintain a bank account, or earn a livelihood."
"No matter where one stands on the political spectrum," Donziger added, "we should all be able to agree that what happened to me should not happen to anybody in any country that adheres to the rule of law."
The appeal for a Donziger pardon comes amid a
wave of eleventh-hour pleas from lawmakers for Biden to grant clemency to figures ranging from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden to Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier—often described as the nation's longest-jailed political prisoner—and federal death row inmates including Billie Jerome Allen, who advocates say was wrongly convicted of murder.
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