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New Jersey Sues Big Oil [1]
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Date: 2022-12-04
Hurricane Ida flooded Hoboken, New Jersey in September 2021.
At least seven states and the District of Columbia are suing fossil fuel companies charging that by using fraudulent claims to delay climate policy action they are increasing the climate impacts, risks, and costs confronting state governments. The magnificent seven are New Jersey, Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Vermont. There have been approximately two-dozen climate liability suits introduced since 2015.
New Jersey, the latest state to attack Big Oil in the courts, is suing ExxonMobil, Shell Oil, Chevron, BP, and ConocoPhillips and the industry’s leading lobbying group, the American Petroleum Institute. New Jersey contends that a disinformation campaign begun in the 1980s by the fossil fuel companies and their lobbying arm violated the state’s Consumer Fraud Act. A 2021 study published in the journal Nature concluded at over $8 billion in damages caused by Superstorm Sandy in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut is directly attributable to sea-level rise caused by climate change.
The fossil fuel industry is also being sued by a number of local governments. Twenty cities, including New York City and Hoboken, New Jersey are suing ExxonMobil and other gas companies in state courts. If a court rules in favor of a plaintiff, companies will be forced to pay damages and warn the public of the dangers of their products similar to the way tobacco companies must place a notice on advertisements and cigarette packages that smoking causes cancer.
Oil and gas companies are accusing elected officials of wasting taxpayer money on unfounded litigation, while at the same time trying to get trial venues moved to more corporate friendly courts. The legal firm representing Chevron called the New Jersey lawsuit “a distraction from the serious problem of global climate change, not an attempt to find a real solution.” A spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute insists the New Jersey lawsuit’s claims are false and the fossil fuel industry has achieved its “goal of providing affordable, reliable American energy to U.S. consumers while substantially reducing emissions and our environmental footprint.”
New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin acknowledges that this is going to be a “tough fight.” He does not anticipate “the oil and gas companies that we're suing are going to lie down and say they're agreeing with us, but we're prepared to bring the fight on behalf of the residents of the state.” According to Platkin, the fossil fuel companies knew about the environmental danger of burning fossil fuels for decades, but instead of warning the public or taking action, they hid their research. The former commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, now with the Conservation Law Foundation, believes New Jersey could receive billions of dollars. “Just one storm can cause damage in the tens of billions of dollars before you even get to the kind of chronic impacts of climate change that are already occurring.”
The fossil fuel and utilities industries are incredibly politically connected and need to be stopped before the impending climate catastrophe is irreversible. Even national legislative restrictions are tailored to enhance their profits. In the 2022 mid-term elections, NextEra, one of the largest utilities companies, organized more than $300,000 in campaign donations for Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer to ensure that he included corporate friendly tax-breaks and incentives in Biden infrastructure and budget bills. Two other top recipients of their largess are Senators Joseph Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, whose blocked approving the bills until they accommodated the utilities industry.
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/12/4/2140064/-New-Jersey-Sues-Big-Oil
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