The stealth operative for big oil who’s out to derail America’s climate fight
In the spring of 2019, Phil Goldberg, a lawyer and hired gun for a front organisation serving some of America’s most powerful oil firms, spotted an opportunity to serve his masters.
The University of Hawaii was holding a conference about a wave of lawsuits against the oil industry, and Goldberg was alarmed the event failed to include representatives from the energy business. So the day before the symposium, he fired off an email to the university demanding that big oil be heard alongside its critics.
The event was to interrogate the oil industry’s decades-long cover-up involving the climate crisis. But a one-sided debate, Goldberg wrote, “does students and the general public a significant disservice”. He insisted the meeting be postponed.
Denise Antolini, associate dean at the university’s law school who organised the conference, said in her 23-year-career as a law professor, she had never received such demands.
“Your request to disrupt our public event was quite surprising, especially coming from far across the continent, from someone I’ve never heard of, on behalf of a private client with an apparently direct financial interest in chilling debate about climate litigation,” she replied.
The conference went ahead, but Goldberg chalked up his intervention as a win. He had managed to pressure Antolini into reciting his objections to the conference in her opening statement. He also convinced the university to post his blogs on its website alongside a letter published by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser denouncing the meeting for daring to suggest there was a solid legal case against the oil companies.
Goldberg is part of a network of enablers working to preserve big oil’s power and reputation as it faces a barrage of litigation. More
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