On Wednesday, New York City announced that it would sue the five oil majors—ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell and BP—over their role in fueling climate change.
Also, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said that the city’s $189 billion pension fund would divest itself of fossil fuels, although such a move would need to be approved by the funds’ trustees. “This is a tragedy that was wrought by the fossil-fuel companies,” de Blasio said at a news conference. “We are going after those who have profited. And what a horrible, disgusting way to profit.” The proposal would withdraw the $5 billion it has in fossil fuel investments.
The lawsuit seeks compensation for the cost that the city would incur to insulate itself from the effects of climate change, which would include a long list of actions, such as upgrading sewer and water infrastructure, coastal defenses, seawalls, and a variety of public health measures. “In this litigation, the City seeks to shift the costs of protecting the City from climate change impacts back onto the companies that have done nearly all they could to create this existential threat,” the complaint from NYC said.
The oil majors largely dismissed the suit. Chevron said the compliant was “factually and legally meritless,” according to the WSJ. The other oil majors intimated similar messages, while also acknowledging that there needs to be some sort of large-scale effort to address climate change, although they were vague on what that actually meant in practice.
“Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a global issue and requires global participation and action,” Exxon Mobil spokesman Scott Silvestri said. “Lawsuits of this kind -- filed by trial attorneys against an industry that provides products we all rely upon to power the economy and enable our domestic life -- simply do not do that." Related: Grading 2017 Oil Price Predictions
That remains to be seen, but the lawsuit does face long odds. The cities of San Francisco and Oakland previously sued fossil fuel companies for damages related to their role in climate change.
As Bloomberg notes, the lawsuit in New York hinges on the concepts of “public nuisance” and “private nuisance,” well-worn legal concepts that have yet to be applied to a problem as complex as climate change. “There isn’t anything you can point to and say, ‘This is exactly like that case,’" Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, said in a Bloomberg interview. “This is new.”
Other lawsuits in the past were unsuccessful. Several years ago a group of states sued using federal public nuisance laws targeting power plants, but the Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that enforcement for greenhouse gases was left to the EPA, preventing states from bringing suits.
But the latest effort from New York City alleges that the oil companies have violated state law. Part of the allegations stem from decades of knowledge and scientific research on behalf of the oil industry into climate change. The claim is that ExxonMobil and its peers had a sophisticated understanding of climate change but denied it to the public. This echoes a separate investigation by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman into ExxonMobil.
“Defendants are also responsible for leading the public relations strategy for the entire fossil fuel industry, downplaying the risks of climate change and promoting fossil fuel use despite the risks,” the complaint said. In this sense, the suit has parallels to the tobacco industry, which mislead the public about health risks of smoking.
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The divestment of the city’s pension fund will take time, comptroller Scott Stringer said. “We’re setting a formal goal to divest from fossil fuels,” he said, before adding that any decision would take time and would need to be viewed through a “lens of sound fiscal stewardship.”
Critics of the fossil fuel divestment movement typically point out that such actions have little to no impact on company share prices. Even if stock prices took a hit, that would merely create a buying opportunity for other investors.
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But that ignores the larger significance of the proliferating number of commitments from public and private institutions to fossil fuel divestment. The more major institutions line up against oil companies, the more it mars their images and the more pressure it builds for the policy and regulatory measures that would ultimately force the oil industry to keep reserves in the ground. It remains to be seen if such a campaign will bear any fruit, but getting New York City on board is one of the most significant actions to date.
By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com
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You are probably aware that Exxon has (already) countered claims by Bay Area governments in California that many of them made NO MENTION of climate risks when issuing bonds to investors in recent years. Securities fraud, perhaps? Can't have it both ways. As for New York and MANY areas along the east coast, I have a suggestion for a more introspective approach. When you build your cities (basically) at sea level and wipe out most of your natural wetland protections, why should you (now) be surprised that any material change in that sea level will have a significant impact? In a phrase, looks like "SOUR GRAPES" to this humble reader...
As for the location of cities, I hope you're not suggesting that settlers hundreds of years ago should have known about the potential effects of climate change due to fossil fuel use. That would be ludicrous.
Which is why we should never "assume" anything. You premise, "proven without a doubt", is impossible to prove and easily disproved. The best scientists on the planet struggle daily with separating what is natural warming after the Little Ice Age and what is attributable to anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
In the end Big Oil will not pay for climate change, the consumers will.
In my opinion, and in the current case as well as future cases against Big Oil, it is completely irrelevant whether people need the product in question, as far as proving any wrong doing on the part of Big Oil. If it is shown that they have willfully misinformed the public about potentially devastating effects their product can cause, which they were aware of through their own research and have repeatedly blocked meaningful action to address the issue their product is causing, then Big Oil is liable. If climate change projections become a reality in the coming decades and what I mentioned above is indeed our brave new world, then Big Oil will be dreaming of the good old days when people just wanted money as compensation. As I see it, we seem to be drifting towards the worst possible projections.
Jarred, to answer your questions, I do not own a car and do my best to heat only when necessary. I've also chosen to use the most expensive available renewable energy mix for electricity and my yearly consumption is very low, especially compared to American averages. I could have purchased nuclear/oil energy which would have cost less but chose to pay instead. My suggestion to all of you is to limit your uses of hydrocarbons unless they are necessary. The world population needs to understand that until there's a concrete solution to the issue at hand, the days of splurging on whatever we feel like are over.
Peace out,
porcupine
Rather than climate change, lets talk about climate engineering, a far more serious concern.
I think Steves comment above is right on target. But the amounts and how the settlements will look like ? That is anyones guess.
The next question, can we migrate from fossile fuels ? Yes - absolutely and we can start today. I purchase COO's (Certificates Of Origin) from our electricity supplier and that costs me ~0,003 USD extra per kWh. We are leasing an Ioniq EV since last summer, which is the car we (almost) always drive - hence we have spent ~250 USD on gasoline for our other 2 cars in the last 1/2 year making the lease pay for itself.
What has that got to do with the lawsuits ? Fossile fuel companies will not in the future legal negosiations be able to claim that they were the only alternative for society - because they were not !