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“Exxon has run a scorched earth campaign to avoid answering our basic questions about the company’s awareness of climate change,” Healey told Salon in an emailed statement. “Massachusetts customers and investors deserve answers from Exxonabout what it has known about the impact of burning fossil fuels on its business and the planet, and whether it hid this information from the public.”

Attorneys general have been using a similar strategy against Scott Pruitt, Trump’s head of the Environmental Protection Agency, who has been notoriously secretive about his behavior, even installing a soundproof phone booth so he can talk to persons unknown without being overheard. But what he can’t do, said David Hayes, the executive director of the State Energy & Environmental Impact Center at NYU School of Law, is run away from scientific facts when he’s confronted with them in court……..

Litigation against tobacco companies in the ’90s successfully drew public attention not just to the science, but to the industry’s efforts to hide it. The result was a rapid drop-off in rates of young people beginning to smoke. That rate started to fall in the ’90s and has since hit an all-time low.

Pruitt’s efforts at a cover-up stink of desperation. He’s trying to push scientists off the EPA’s advisory boards, which of course has resulted in a lawsuit, backed by the Union of Concerned Scientists.  Working with Republican allies in Congress, he’s trying to limit the amount of scientific research the EPA is allowed to consider when crafting clean air regulations. Researchers are now afraid to use the phrase “climate change” when seeking government grants, for fear of triggering the censorious impulses of Pruitt and other Trump administration officials who are eager to keep the scientific truths from being known.

Trump officials and ExxonMobil executives wouldn’t be so afraid of the evidence on climate change unless they believed that truth still has the power to move the needle in both law and in public opinion. In the age of misinformation, it’s even more important to keep pushing to get the facts into the light. https://www.salon.com/2018/04/09/fighting-back-against-big-lies-on-climate-change-and-the-environment-and-winning/