Tiny Alaskan village sues energy companies for conspiring

[Blue_In_AK]

to cover up evidence of climate change.

From The Alaska Dispatch: http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/alaska-village-alleges-climate-change-cover-exxon-other-energy-companies

The battle between some of the world's most powerful energy companies and an Alaska village that's losing ground to climate change heads to federal appeals court on Monday.

Nine Kivalina residents, having survived the recent mega-storm that walloped western Alaska, will be at the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to watch their lawyers argue that ExxonMobil Corp., BP, ConocoPhillips and other corporate Goliaths owe the village at least $95 million in damages.

A key Kivalina argument charges that the energy companies are engaged in a conspiracy to cover up the link between their emissions and the earth's warming temperatures. A similar argument proved pivotal decades ago in helping smokers prevail in court against tobacco giants.

The Northwest Alaska village lost the first round of its lawsuit in 2009, when a U.S. District Court dismissed it, saying climate-change pollution needs to be regulated by Congress and the administration, not courts. The village lacked standing, the court said, because it could not show the companies' emissions caused the erosion threatening the village.

But Kivalina is optimistic this time around.

<snip>

Lest anyone blame the village for building here, it was a forced move by the federal government decades ago. Couldn't have those Natives living a traditional nomadic lifestyle out there. People needed a "permanent" residence, and this is what they were given.
http://www.nana.com/regional/about-us/overview-of-region/kivalina/

[xchrom]

1. Recommend

[hootinholler]

2. Thank you!

This will be a very interesting test.

[Blue_In_AK]

3. I think this paragraph at the second link

is very relevant. Even if the oil companies are exonerated in this, it would seem that the US government or SOMEBODY should pick up the tab for the move.

Kivalina was relocated to its current location in 1905 when the Bureau of Indian Affairs repeated the error of the Russian naval officer by mistaking a seasonal camp on the barrier reef for a year-round village. The BIA in short order built a school on the southern tip of the island and declared that any inhabitants of the barrier reef and surrounding region who did not enroll their children would be imprisoned. This order compelled the people of the original Kivalina as well as communities inland and north and south along the coast to migrate to the Kivalina created by the BIA.