California Attorney General Rob Bonta flew to New York for an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” last month to discuss his latest lawsuit challenging ExxonMobil’s recycling efforts but found himself on the defensive over his own contributions to climate change.
Bonta filed his lawsuit against ExxonMobil on Sept. 23 in San Francisco Superior Court, alleging that the energy company engaged in a campaign of public deception about the nation’s capacity and ability to recycle plastic waste. The company made misleading public statements and used slick marketing tactics promising recycling was the solution to plastic waste when in reality only a small percentage of the products were being recycled, according to the Attorney General’s Office.
ExxonMobil reported that its advanced recycling effectively breaks down materials such as plastics to a molecular level so that they can be turned into fuels, lubricants and consumer products. But during his CNBC appearance, Bonta argued that the company’s advanced recycling program was not true recycling since transportation fuel made from plastic waste gets emitted into the air as pollution.
“Squawk Box” co-anchor Becky Quick then interjected, “So your point is we shouldn’t have jet fuel?”
“You flew here though, right?” questioned co-anchor Joe Kernan.
“We travel,” Bonta replied.
The California Attorney General’s Office did not respond to requests for comment about Bonta’s CNBC appearance and whether he uses commercial or private air travel. Environmentalists and climate-change critics have come under criticism in the past for flying to various conferences and meetings to spread their messages. Such travel adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
ExxonMobil has argued that advanced recycling can help public agencies increase the percentage of plastic waste that is recycled, but Bonta’s lawsuit says that only about 5% of the nation’s plastic waste is now being recycled and that the recycling rate has never risen above 9%.
In its response to the California lawsuit, ExxonMobil contended that state officials have known for decades that their efforts to recycle plastics were not effective.
“They failed to act, and now they seek to blame others,” the company’s statement said. “Instead of suing us, they could have worked with us to fix the problem and keep plastic out of landfills. The first step would be to acknowledge that their counterparts across the U.S. know: Advanced recycling works.”
The company reported that to date, it has processed more than 60 million pounds of plastics into raw materials that can be reused. The new products being made from these raw materials include chip bags and artificial turf.
Last year, the Attorney General’s Office filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil and other energy companies, including Shell, Chevron and BP, alleging that the companies engaged in another decades-long deception campaign that downplayed climate change through the companies’ public statements and marketing efforts. Both that lawsuit and the one filed last month seek to disgorge energy company profits and apply civil penalties to reimburse California communities for the negative impact of their practices on the environment.
“For decades, ExxonMobil has been deceiving the public to convince us that plastic recycling could solve the plastic waste and pollution crisis when they clearly knew this wasn’t possible,” Bonta said in announcing the latest lawsuit. “ExxonMobil lied to further its record-breaking profits at the expense of our planet and possibly jeopardizing our health.”