Climate Damages and Deception: Panel Reviews California Legal Actions Against Fossil Fuel Industry

authordefault
on

By Kayaย Axelsson

In San Francisco this week, Fossil Free California hosted a panel discussion on the most recent municipal litigation against the fossil fuelย industry.

Last year, San Francisco and Oakland sued the worldโ€™s five largest investor-owned fossil fuel producers over predicted climate change costs to theseย cities.

The municipalities sued on the basis of public nuisance โ€” essentially claiming that the oil companies should be held financially accountable for the costs of adapting these cities for a changing climate, since it was fossil fuel pollution that largely fueled the global warming that is endangering Californiaย communities.

At the event, Kristina Dahl, senior climate scientist from the Union of Concerned Scientists, described these damages asย  โ€œnear termโ€ threats to both homes and public infrastructure. โ€œWhat weโ€™ve realized is that long before our homes and roads are completely under water with high level tides [in the next century], we are going to experience a whole lot of nuisance level flooding [in thisย century].โ€

โ€œOur report shows the number of homes at risk of flooding chronically, that is, every other week, due to sea level rise. The city of San Francisco is looking at losing 4,000 homes by the end of this century. San Mateo County is looking at over 30,000 homes at risk. Nationwide weโ€™re looking at 2.5 million homes across the United States within this century. In just the next 30-year mortgage timeframe, there are 300,000 homes at risk, worth over a trillionย dollars.โ€

She concluded that, โ€œitโ€™s a fair question to ask, should those most responsible for producing greenhouse gases share in thatย burden?โ€

In June, however, Judge Alsup of the US District Court for the Northern District of California declined to hear San Franciscoโ€™s public nuisance case at trial. Judge Alsupโ€™s opinion questioned if it was fair to place the blame for global warming on those who โ€œsupplied what weย demanded.โ€

But research by the Center for International Environmental Law has pointed to evidence that the oil industry has manipulated that demand โ€” as well as the information available to the public and the government โ€” on the negative consequences of theirย products.

San Francisco Deputy City Attorney, Yvonne Merรฉ, assured the audience that the city is in the process of appealing thatย ruling.

Records from the archives of these oil companies have shown that executives knew, as early as 1957, about the threat of climate change, and they incorporated this knowledge into their operational plans for building projects in the Arctic as early as the 1980s.

Steven Feit, of the Center for International Environmental Law,ย explained:

โ€œThey also had the necessary expertise to understand the context and the importance of what they were seeing. They researched hurricane formation. They looked into paleoclimate historic sea levels, carbon concentrations in the atmosphere and the way that those interacted with historic temperatures so that they could find oilย offshore.โ€

โ€œThey were extremely coordinated,โ€ Feitย alleges.

According to Feit, oil industry giants were also aware that oil was not the only choice of viable energyย supplies.

โ€œThey also knew of alternatives. [โ€ฆ] Since the 1940โ€™s they were studying carbon sequestration from gas streams. [โ€ฆ] They were looking into solar patents by the end of the 1970s. Basically all of the US solar industry was owned by the oil industry. And instead of releasing it into the public and allowing us to take a different path, they took all of this technology and mostly just sat on it,โ€ Feitย said.

At present, California judges remain split on the responsibility of the courts to hear the public nuisance claims. Deputy Attorney Merรฉ noted that unlike San Franciscoโ€™s case, in which Judge Alsup held and then dismissed the case in federal court, Judge Chhabria (also of the Northern District Court of California) ruled that state courts should rule in the San Mateo County case.ย ย 

May Boeve, Executive Director at 350.org, elucidated the importance of these cases beyond simple wins or losses in the courtroom over funds to help communities adapt to these enormous climate changes. Boeve suggested that these cases clarify questions of responsibility for theย public:

โ€œThe reason itโ€™s important to have a known target or villain in this social movement is that we know as consumers we are all responsible in small part for this problem. But that can be so demobilizing, and that feeling has been so effectively used by industry [in order] to avoid their share of the responsibility. And itโ€™s time to hold them to account.โ€ย ย 

Boeve added, โ€œLetโ€™s be clear: itโ€™s not that we created a villain, the villain was already there, especially for communities living next to coal and oilย plants.โ€

Feit noted that there are dozens of other climate cases involving legal strategies to hold companies accountable for private and public ecological damages, including this farmer in Peru whose case against German Energy Giant, RWE, could make history in a German court over the threats climate change poses to his hometown, which sits near a flooding glacialย lake.

Alex Lenferna commented on the importance for those of us in the global north to help find ways to map responsibility and pay for the climate damages that are disproportionally suffered by those in the globalย south.

(For a full chart of climate change cases check out this website with hundreds of other cases in and outside of the Unitedย States).

The claims are growing with theย evidence.

As Dahl explained, recent findings show that nearly two thirds of the total carbon dioxide and methane emissions since the late 1800s is attributable to 90 fossil fuel companies (Ekwurzel et al 2017).

As the history of the fossil fuel industry has revealed itself, scientists have developed clear models for quantifying and attributing the damages to relevant parties in the extractive industry. It may just take the law a moment to catchย up.

Image credit: Deborah Moor, Union Of Concernedย Scientistsย 

authordefault

Related Posts

The EU and many member states have set limits for how much manure farmers are allowed to apply in their fields, but crucial oversight is lacking.

The EU and many member states have set limits for how much manure farmers are allowed to apply in their fields, but crucial oversight is lacking.
on

Robert Wilkie was speaking at a conference co-hosted by the group behind the radical Project 2025 agenda.

Robert Wilkie was speaking at a conference co-hosted by the group behind the radical Project 2025 agenda.
on

Scope of corporate influence underscores concerns the technology will be used to prolong demand for planet-heating natural gas.

Scope of corporate influence underscores concerns the technology will be used to prolong demand for planet-heating natural gas.
on

A 1961 oil and gas well is the suspected source of a geyser eruption in the region where Permian wastewater disposal is causing a flurry of earthquakes.

A 1961 oil and gas well is the suspected source of a geyser eruption in the region where Permian wastewater disposal is causing a flurry of earthquakes.