The cigarette analogy is a good one to a point although it is far easier suing a poisonous recreational product manufacturer than those creating products that billions of people currently depend on for food, shelter, clothing, medicine, transportation and energy etc.
There is no evidence that using oil for food, shelter or medicine causes climate change; there are alternatives to using oil for transportation and energy. Exxons lies are a big reason we're still dependent on oil for energy and they need to be held accountable. Let the litigation begin.
If Exxon had been honest 30 years ago we could have started working harder towards kicking this addiction earlier and the merits for any legal action would be extremely weak. The fact that they lied is ~99% of the case.
The overriding sad news is that whenever you have 7 billion people doing anything, burning oil, natural gas, raise livestock or even burning fire wood for heating and cooking, the side effects to the planet are undesirable. Heck, having 7 billion people brush their teeth, eliminate pharmaceutical laden urine or purchase\consume manufactured goods is detrimental.
There's a difference between 'undesirable' and 'catastrophic'. 7B people brushing their teeth isn't going to super charge a hurricane and cause >$200B in damage to the gulf coast or potential destroy the great barrier reef or increase the average number of days in WA >85F by 200%.......
There are also alternatives. Massive amounts of wind and solar might have 'side effects' but they're ~99% less than our addiction to fools fuel.
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