News & Analysis
February 18, 2021
North Carolina is one of the most vulnerable states in the country to the devastating impacts of climate change. The damage caused by sea-level rise, supercharged storms, and increased flooding has created an array of challenges for communities across the Tar Heel state, many of whom struggle to secure the funding necessary to become more resilient against these worsening climate threats.
As CCI’s Mike Meno explained in an op-ed last year following a report from the state’s Department of Environmental Quality:
Just three major hurricanes in four years (Dorian, Florence, and Matthew) have caused billions of dollars in damage [in North Carolina]. Flooding, cited as “the most frequent, devastating, and important climate-related hazard to focus upon,” prompted billions in losses to the farming industry alone. The greatest impact of recent climate hazards has been “business interruption,” as climate change disrupts supply chains, transportation systems, and people’s jobs.
A recent survey shows that the vast majority North Carolinians agree that the corporate polluters most responsible for the climate crisis should pay their fair share of these costs.
In a poll conducted by Climate Nexus, 85% of North Carolina voters said that oil and gas companies should be held accountable for all or some of the costs associated with climate change, and 72% of voters supported suing oil and gas companies to recover those costs.
The survey found widespread support for accountability across voters of all ideologies, and that support increased when voters learned more about the fossil fuel industry’s history of deceiving the public about climate change.
Such widespread support across partisan views, which is rare in a battleground state like North Carolina, shows that there is a willing audience for climate accountability champions who could connect the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long campaign of deception with the hard costs of climate damages facing state residents.
