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KEITH ELLISON, MINNESOTA ATTORNEY GENERAL: What prompted them were indigenous communities telling me that their ricing is simply not something that they can sustain in a way that they have been — their people have done for ten thousands or more years, farmers talking about climate chaos in the fields. But what’s really fueling it, what’s really at the bottom is that these companies that we’re suing knew is early as 1979, probably before, that their product was causing global climate change. And then they set out to have a public disinformation campaign in which they lied about it. They had a campaign in which they said that there was no climate change, that people who claimed about it are Chicken Littles. And it was extensive, and it was broad-based, and it was effective. They created enough confusion so that we have been unable to take decisive action because of their very effective disinformation campaign. They lied to the public about their product. And now they have to compensate the public for that.
BIANNA GOLODRYGA: Well, let’s look at a specific exhibit from your lawsuit that you just mentioned right now. This is a memo from Exxon’s own engineering department acknowledging that carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is increasing, the increase is due to fossil fuel consumption, that’s their words, and increasing CO2 concentration will cause a warming of the Earth’s surface. Now, this memo was written in 1979, as you mentioned.
ELLISON: Right.
GOLODRYGA: But as you know as a lawyer, going into a lawsuit before a judge, before a jury, you need evidence. So, aside from this, in terms of the effects that this is having on the indigenous community, on the people in your community there in your state, what is the evidence that you are bringing in to this courtroom?
ELLISON: Well, the evidence is going to be witnesses who will talk about the effects on their livelihood due to global warming and the product, burning fossil fuels, that these dividends have produced, and then deceived the public about. But we will also have a number of scientists who we will bring forward proving that, yes, in fact, ExxonMobil and the rest of them were right about their analysis in ’79, and yet they continued to do the destructive thing and produced that destructive thing which has brought about the catastrophic problem that we’re all dealing with right now. I mean, the bottom line is that we will marshal a team that will prove everything from causation to damages and will tell a compelling personal story among a range of Minnesotans who have been damaged by the lies and the deception that they have brought forth.