Judge William Alsup in San Francisco is presiding over a case in which
California cities are suing the big oil companies over the
climate-related disasters they’re experiencing; Judge Alsup asked for a
“tutorial” session in which experts for both sides would be asked to
explain the underlying science, something he’s done in earlier cases
that turned on technical questions, including a DACA case and a case on
lidar and self-driving cars.
The Verge sent Sarah Jeong, a cyberlawyer/journalist (previously) and science reporter Rachel Becker to the courtroom, and their writeup of the hearing is nothing short of brilliant.
The plaintiffs sent a string of eminent climate scientists, while
Chevron sent an eminent litigator, Theodore Boutrous, who had really
crammed on the 2013 IPCC report, but who knew nothing about climate
science in the past five years and wasn’t able to answer any of the
judge’s questions. Judge Alsup had clearly been doing a lot of homework
on climate change, and is also refreshingly – even puckishly – willing
to ask questions about anything that crosses his mind, without worrying
about sounding dumb.
Speaking for Chevron, Boutrous concedes that everything in the IPCC is
correct, that climate change is real, and that humans caused it. But
Boutrous carefully parses out why none of that means that the oil
companies did anything wrong, drawing heavily on the denial and doubt
playbook created by Big Tobacco during the fight to establish a link
between smoking and cancer.
Jeong and Becker really capture the flavor of the exchange – and the
potential tactical blunder from Chevron is refusing to pony up their own
experts. They also note that a bunch of anti-climate-science shills
asked for leave to file as amici or to testify, seemingly without luck.
