California state officials filed a lawsuit against one of the world’s top oil giants yesterday, accusing Exxon Mobil of driving global pollution by running a “decades-long campaign of deception” that dramatically overstated the effectiveness of plastic recycling.

The suit seeks “multiple billions of dollars” in civil damages from Exxon Mobil—a main producer of the petrochemicals used to make single-use plastics—California Attorney General Rob Bonta said.

In response, an Exxon spokesperson said California “failed to act” on fixing the state’s recycling management, and “now they seek to blame others.” The spokesperson also said, “Instead of suing us, they could have worked with us to fix the problem and keep plastic out of landfills.”

It’s billed as first US effort to nail plastics for alleged trickery

Following an investigation into Exxon’s practices that took more than two years, Bonta alleges that the half-a-trillion-dollar company knowingly promoted the false promise that anything with the symbol would be recycled if tossed properly, even though it knew this wasn’t possible. Only 5% of US plastic waste is actually recycled, per the environmental advocacy group Beyond Plastics.

The lawsuit alleges:

• Exxon knew in the 1970s that recycling was too expensive to scale and that plastic waste would pile up, but it boosted petrochemical production anyway and continued to peddle recycling as a solution. That got everyone to buy more single-use plastic.
• Exxon has strongly lobbied state and local officials in California (and elsewhere) against restricting or banning plastic production.
• Currently, Exxon’s “advanced recycling” program is a “public relations stunt” that only recycles 8% of its plastic waste into new products. The rest is mostly turned into fuel.

Piggybacking off that…four environmental groups sued Exxon Mobil yesterday for allegedly breaking California’s nuisance and unfair competition laws (violations also asserted in Bonta’s case).

Environmental lawsuits . California already sued Exxon and four other big oil companies last year for allegedly spreading climate change denialism. More than two dozen states and local governments are pursuing similar lawsuits.—ML

Israeli strikes on Hezbollah kill hundreds in Lebanon. At least 490 people were killed, including 35 children, and 1,600 people were injured in Israeli airstrikes targeting the Iran-backed militant group, which has been shelling northern Israel amid Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza. A spokesperson for Israel’s military said it had hit 1,300 Hezbollah targets in what news outlets described as the deadliest day in Lebanon since Israel’s 2006 war with the group. Israel has escalated its assaults on Hezbollah over the last week, including coordinated attacks using the group’s pagers and walkie-talkies, but Hezbollah has vowed to keep attacking, as concerns about a regional war grow.

Would-be Trump assassin detailed plans in a letter, prosecutors say. The man accused of trying to shoot former President Donald Trump on a Florida golf course, Ryan Wesley Routh, wrote a letter explaining his plans in the event of a failure, prosecutors said in a recent court filing. The letter, addressed to “The World,” said, “This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump” and offered $150,000 “to whomever can complete the job.” Prosecutors previously said that Routh, who was arrested and charged with two firearm crimes, may have been waiting near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club for 12 hours before being discovered. Yesterday, a judge ruled Routh should be held without bail pending his trial.

Boeing offers 30% raise in attempt to end strike. With 30,000 factory workers on strike and 737 production halted for a second week, the embattled aviation company offered to hike wages for union members higher than the original 25% increase over four years they voted to reject. Boeing gave the union until Friday to ratify the improved contract, which also offered a bigger ratification bonus and larger contributions to employee 401(k) plans. The International Association of Machinists, which negotiated the earlier deal that its members rejected, didn’t immediately weigh in on what Boeing called its “best and final” offer.—AR

Americans won’t be able to use the foreign-hackers-tampered-with-my-car excuse when pulled over for speeding. The US plans to ban cars with Chinese software on national security grounds, the Biden administration announced yesterday.

The Commerce Department said that the proposed rule—which would all but guarantee that Chinese auto brands will never become household names in the US—would be for safety reasons rather than economic competition. Officials believe the Chinese government could use smart cars to track Americans’ movement or cause road mayhem through cyber sabotage.

Do not enter, Chinese cars

The proposed rule applies to all vehicles on public roads, including trucks and buses, that are connected to the internet or navigation systems—i.e., most modern cars and all autonomous vehicles. The measure would also outlaw cars with Russian software, as well as hardware parts from China or Russia.

• While Chinese vehicles are currently even rarer than clean bathrooms on American roads, the software ban is future-looking and would go into effect for 2027 models.
• The hardware parts, used by some non-Chinese car brands, will be prohibited starting with 2030 models.

On the economic front…the US recently quadrupled tariffs on Chinese EVs to 100% in order to protect American automakers from what US officials claim are unfairly subsidized cars.—SK

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If you can’t live like an industry titan, you can at least live where the industry titans used to work. Goldman Sachs’s old headquarters in NYC, now an apartment building, opened its leasing office yesterday, welcoming its first tenants to the light-filled rental units.

Silverstein Properties and Metro Loft bought the office tower last year and expect all 571 units to be complete by the middle of 2025, according to Bloomberg. Studio apartments are priced at $4,000 a month, with three-bedrooms at $10,000. The former bank headquarters at 55 Broad Street is the latest converted property in New York City as savvy developers look to use old, vacant buildings in a work-from-home world that’s left many offices and downtowns shuttered.

Why convert? To save money. Metro Loft CEO Nathan Berman estimates that when finished, the property conversion will cost roughly 60% of a wholly new apartment building. It also skirts the arduous permitting process required for new construction.

In New York, it’s gaining steam. A recent study found that office-to-residential conversion deals accounted for half of all development sales in Manhattan for the first half of this year.

Still, not all developers are cuckoo for converted real estate. It can be a headache—some buildings are easier to convert than others—and the pressures of dealing with zoning and regulations often make it difficult to secure financing.—CC

Attention, Kmart shoppers: Your days of strolling through wide aisles in a cavernous warehouse full of discounted goods are numbered. The retail chain is reportedly slated to close its last full-size US store, a location in Bridgehampton, NY, on Oct. 20. That’ll leave a smaller store in Miami and outposts in Guam and the US Virgin Islands…which is a whole lot less than the chain had when it scooped up Sears in an $11 billion dollar merger in 2005 that it hoped would help it compete against other big-box chains like Walmart. At the time, Kmart had ~1,400 stores, while Sears had almost 900. But the competition just kept coming (the rise of Amazon didn’t help), and the combined company filed for bankruptcy in 2018, emerging with just 425 Kmart and Sears stores, a number that has since dwindled.—AR