News & Analysis
February 19, 2020
Former Vice President Joe Biden defended the right of communities to take fossil fuel companies to court for causing climate change during tonight’s Democratic presidential primary debate.
“If you demonstrate that [the companies], in fact, have done things that are bad and they’ve been lying, they should be able to be sued,” Biden told the audience in Las Vegas in response to a question from Telemundo’s Vanessa Hauc.
(And here’s the deal, as Joe would say: it has been demonstrated that they’ve been lying about climate change. For decades.)
The first-ever climate reporter to moderate a presidential debate, Hauc pressed Biden to give details on how he’d hold accountable “these companies that are responsible for the destruction of our planet,” as he previously pledged to do.
“This is an industry we should be able to sue,” Biden replied. “We should go after, just like we did the drug companies, just like we did with the tobacco companies.”
To date more than a dozen communities across the country have taken fossil fuel companies to court to make them pay for billions of dollars in damages from sea-level rise, floods, wildfires, and other climate disasters, and more are sure to follow.
Watch Biden’s full answer below:
Vice President @JoeBiden is 100% correct:
— Pay Up Climate Polluters (@climatecosts) February 20, 2020
Communities should be able to sue #BigOil for destroying our climate, just as Big Tobacco and Big Pharma were sued for the damage their products caused.#MakePollutersPay #ExxonKnew (via @NBCNews) pic.twitter.com/McDVvfMkiD
