San Francisco and Oakland announced Wednesday that they are suing five big oil companies for costs associated with climate change mitigation.
Each city filed its own suit against Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, BP and Royal Dutch Shell, asking the court to hold the companies responsible for the cost of seawalls and other infrastructure that cities will need to mitigate the effects of climate change.
City officials contend the companies were aware of their harmful impacts on the climate but continued to sell large quantities of fossil fuels. They also say the companies engaged in a campaign of misinformation to deceive consumers on the effects of fossil fuels.
“It’s time for these companies to take responsibility for the damage they’ve caused and are continuing to cause,” said San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera at a waterfront news conference. The nearly identical lawsuits state:
“Defendants have produced massive amounts of fossil fuels for many years. And recent disclosures of internal industry documents demonstrate that they have done so despite knowing -- since at least the late 1970s and early 1980s if not earlier -- that massive fossil fuel usage would cause dangerous global warming.”
The lawsuits demand that the oil companies create an abatement fund to cover the costs “to build seawalls and other infrastructure to protect human safety and public property in San Francisco [and Oakland] from global warming-induced sea level rise.” Most of those costs have yet to be incurred, but the plaintiff cities estimate that they'll eventually run into the billions of dollars.