News & Analysis
July 16, 2024
After years of worsening storms and climate-fueled coastal erosion, Puerto Rico is suing ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, and more oil companies to make them pay for deceiving the public for decades about their products’ role in the crisis.
“These companies have known internally for decades that greenhouse gas pollution from fossil fuel products would have adverse impacts on global climate and sea levels,” Puerto Rico Secretary of Justice Domingo Emanuelli Hernández said in a translated press release. “However, they did not truthfully warn Puerto Rican consumers about the consequences of using and burning fossil fuels on the Island, as well as their impact on the environment. It is time for them to mitigate the damage they have caused to Puerto Rico and for Puerto Ricans not to be the ones to pay the bill.”
The lawsuit comes as 37 Puerto Rico municipalities and the City of San Juan are separately suing fossil fuel companies for violating federal racketeering laws and other laws in their coordinated efforts to lie to the public about the harm of their products.
The latest filing makes Emanuelli Hernández the tenth attorney general in the United States to take major fossil fuel companies to court for climate deception, along with the dozens of municipal and tribal governments who have launched climate accountability cases against the industry.
Puerto Rico’s lawsuit aims to make the fossil fuel polluters contribute to an equitable fund to pay for the climate damages and resiliency measures required to safeguard Puerto Rican communities.
