New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, like his predecessors Andrew Cuomo and Eliot Spitzer, seems to think that his office gives him the power to investigate anything he damn well pleases.

He’s not wrong.

Schneiderman’s latest target is Exxon-Mobil. He is investigating the oil and gas giant. Schneiderman’s theory of the case is that Exxon knew climate change was real, bad, and would force Exxon to change its business significantly. This reality would hurt its stock prices, and so they didn’t tell anybody. Not only that, but Exxon actively funded groups whose goal was to deny the science on climate change.

The analogy being thrown around is to the Big Tobacco litigation. Only instead of telling smokers that cancer sticks were toasty, Exxon told humans that a toasty Earth wasn’t a problem that had anything to do with their activities. Really, the only thing that could make liberals happier with this investigation would include Elizabeth Warren riding through Exxon’s offices on a polar bear who was eating Sarah Palin.

A list of entities with the authority to prosecute Exxon for climate misdirection might start with “Jesus” and include “The Hague” or “The United Nations.” Certainly “S.H.I.E.L.D.” could weigh in on this. But you’d have to get pretty far down the list before Eric Schneiderman emerged as the last best hope for climate change accountability.

Schneiderman is investigating Exxon under the Martin Act. The act gives the NYAG ridiculous power to investigate securities “fraud.” It was used extensively by Eliot Spitzer, back when he was the self-styled Sheriff of Wall Street. The Martin Act was passed in 1921 and has not been limited in any meaningful way by the courts. If you do business in New York, the Martin Act means that the New York Attorney General can get all up in your business.

And Schneiderman intends to stick his regulatory foot right up Exxon’s backside. From the New York Times:

According to people with knowledge of the investigation, Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman issued a subpoena Wednesday evening to Exxon Mobil, demanding extensive financial records, emails and other documents.

The investigation focuses on whether statements the company made to investors about climate risks as recently as this year were consistent with the company’s own long-running scientific research.

The people said the inquiry would include a period of at least a decade during which Exxon Mobil funded outside groups that sought to undermine climate science, even as its in-house scientists were outlining the potential consequences — and uncertainties — to company executives.

What’s particularly fun about the Martin Act is that the government doesn’t even have to show scienter or intent. That means that Schneiderman doesn’t have to prove that Exxon knew what it was doing was wrong, or that it  intended to do anything wrong. Schneiderman just has to show that Exxon was “not honest” in some kind of nebulous way.

I love this law, it works on my kids all the time: “You didn’t eat that chicken nugget, you gave it to the dog. … I don’t want to hear that it dropped on the floor first, no more Mickey Mouse Clubhouse for you, we’re turning on the game.”

Exxon says that it funded “accepted” climate change research too, and that it stopped funding anti-climate change groups as the goals of those groups moved from policy positions to actual denial of accepted science. That’s kind of like a cheating husband who says “I slept with her, but I love you.” But whatever, I don’t think Exxon’s culpability in misleading the public about climate change is the real issue.

The issue is what, if any, harm Exxon or any other oil and gas company could have caused. With cigarettes you had actual victims. “I wouldn’t have smoked if I knew smoking was bad. But you told me it was okay and now I breathe through my neck.” That’s a definable harm that can be traced, more or less, directly to the scientific misinformation campaign of the tobacco companies.

Does anybody want to argue that the humans of Earth would have been using less gas all this time if they knew global warming was real? I know that climate change is real. I don’t get my science from the book according to Exxon… or the Bible. And yet, I still own a not-super-efficient automobile that I drive around because I don’t like taking public transit. Exxon hasn’t defrauded me out of squat, I’m just a gas guzzling prick.

Did they defraud their investors? Are there people out there who were going to be like, “Sell Exxon, in 100 years or so, we’re really going to be in the muck with this climate change stuff. Buy windmill stock.” And please bring me the politician who is going to say,  “I was relying on Exxon’s research when I voted — again, and again, and again — against sustainable energy policies,” so I can smack his lying ass upside the head.

I’m just saying: everybody smart already believes in climate change and everybody who doesn’t believe can make the internet say anything they want it to say, regardless of what Exxon tells people or not. Tobacco litigation did not decrease the smoking rates in this country. Taxes and regulations did. Taxes on the product and restrictions on where the product can be used.

Will Schneiderman’s investigation prompt lawmakers to tax gas and restrict emissions in a much more environmentally friendly way? I don’t know. The Martin Act is powerful, but it’s not magic.