Big Oil should pay for making life more expensive in Minnesota

This summer’s wildfire smoke keeping us inside and affecting our health is the latest reminder that climate change is increasingly impacting Minnesotans. We’ve also seen floods wash out communities, droughts imperil crops, and more frequent extreme weather and hail dent our roofs and cars and send our insurance rates skyrocketing. 

Helping communities rebuild and become more resilient in the face of all this comes with a significant price tag — one that too often falls on the backs of our state’s taxpayers. This financial burden is likely to get even worse as the Trump administration makes massive cuts to federal disaster relief programs and denies disaster aid to states with Democratic governors.

Meanwhile, the world’s largest fossil fuel corporations, which knew decades ago that their products would worsen extreme weather disasters, pay nothing while raking in hundreds of billions of dollars in profit every year. 

Everyday Minnesotans are paying for the consequences. How is that fair?

Related: What Big Oil knew, and when they knew it

Minnesota is one of a growing number of states currently trying to address this injustice by taking ExxonMobil and other major fossil fuel entities to court for their well-documented efforts to mislead the public about climate change and the monumental damage that deception has caused. Just like the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries, these companies profited handsomely from selling a product while lying to consumers about its harms, and their ill-gotten profits can — and should — be used to protect Americans from the consequences of their actions. 

Earlier this year, a state court upheld Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s lawsuit against Exxon, Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute, bringing Minnesota one step closer to putting these bad actors on trial for their deception. Similar lawsuits are also advancing in states like Colorado, Hawaii, Connecticut and Vermont.

But this pathway to justice is at risk. Right now the fossil fuel industry is lobbying Congress to secure legal immunity from any lawsuits that seek to hold it accountable for its actions. Republican attorneys general have echoed industry lobbyists in asking the Trump Administration to help build a “liability shield” for Big Oil, similar to the shameful one that gun manufacturers enjoy. Thank goodness this didn’t happen with Big Tobacco, when Minnesota received a $6.5B settlement in 1998, or with the pharmaceutical industry, where we’ve received $624 million of opioid-related settlements since 2021.

As part of their attacks on our nation’s Capitol, House Republicans are currently trying to block the District of Columbia from litigating its case against Big Oil companies for defrauding consumers. At every level, Big Oil’s political allies are trying to lock the courthouse doors for communities that are trying to hold these companies accountable.

The cost of climate change-driven extreme weather disasters now tops a trillion dollars a year nationwide. These lawsuits are one of the only avenues available to protect the public from having to shoulder that burden alone, by making the corporations most responsible for climate change pay for the financial consequences.

Big Oil spent decades lying to the public about the connections between fossil fuels and climate change, while taking home an estimated $3 billion in profit per day, for the last 50 years, according to a recent analysis. Some of that profit paid for lobbyists and public relations firms that worked to undermine the public’s trust in climate science and kill policy solutions that would have reduced our dependence on their dirty fossil fuels. Decades in which we could have been transitioning to cleaner energy were wasted due to their deception.

Now these companies want politicians to protect them from any accountability, so they can leave the rest of us to pay for the ever-worsening impacts of extreme weather. For the health of our communities and our constituents’ pocketbooks, it’s vital that all of Minnesota’s senators and house members be united in their opposition to Big Oil’s corrupt attempt to escape responsibility for its actions. 

No industry should be above the law, especially one that spent decades lying to the public. Say no to a legal shield for Big Oil.

Rep. Larry Kraft, DFL-St Louis Park, is vice chair of the House Energy Committee, co-chair of he Climate Action Caucus and assistant leader of the DFL House Caucus.

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