Q: Why should my community bring a case?
Fossil fuel companies have known for decades that their products would cause catastrophic climate change, but instead of doing the right thing, they lied to the American people to protect their profits. Now our communities are paying the price for worsening climate damages like wildfires, heat waves, sea-level rise, flooding, and more. The corporate polluters that knowingly caused these threats to our communities should pay their fair share of the costs needed for recovery when the next climate disaster hits, and to make our infrastructure more resilient.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS: Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla
“As a coastal community, Hoboken has directly felt the impacts of climate change, including rising sea levels and more frequent storms. At the same time we’ve invested hundreds of millions of dollars adapting to the realities of climate change, Big Oil companies have engaged in a decades long campaign of misinformation that has contributed to global warming which has disproportionately impacted our residents. We cannot stand idly by and allow Big Oil to continue profiting at the expense of Hoboken residents. It’s time these companies pay their fair share and be held accountable for their actions.”
Q: How do these cases help combat climate change?
“Combating” climate change requires us to simultaneously work on two necessary, urgent, and parallel tracks: climate mitigation and climate adaptation. These cases are focused on the latter, specifically what our communities need in order to adapt and become more resilient to the changing climate. They are about holding the corporate polluters who created and perpetuated this crisis accountable for the costs, so our frontline communities have the resources they need to survive it.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS: Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley
“If we are going to take care of our residents and honor our important history as a community, we need to be resilient in the face of climate change. Mitigating the impacts of climate change is expensive. We would not have to spend the kind of money we are forced to spend but for the actions of the fossil fuel industry. This lawsuit shifts the costs back to where they belong, on those whose knowledge, deception and pursuit of profits brought these dangers to our shores.”
Q: Our community has already shelled out $xx millions for resilience and adaptation projects. How will filing a lawsuit help us?
Your taxpayers have been left holding the bill for climate damages, and that’s wrong. The corporate polluters who knowingly caused climate change should pay their fair share of these and future climate-related resilience and adaptation costs. Filing a lawsuit can help your community ensure that taxpayers alone will not foot these expenses.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS: Maui Mayor Michael Victorino
“Similar to Big Tobacco litigation, which ultimately held those companies liable for their dangerous products and disinformation campaigns, the Big Oil companies sold products that they knew would harm the environment, with devastating effects on public resources and infrastructure, leaving local governments and taxpayers to bear the costs. With all the demands our citizens face in these times of economic, social and healthcare emergencies, it’s unjust to let the oil companies scoop up profits and avoid paying for any of the damage they’ve inflicted.”
Q: What would climate litigation cost my community?
Taking on an industry as wealthy and powerful as the oil and gas industry is not easy. Nor is it going to make for quick work. Outside counsel is often needed to handle the sheer volume of work that comes with bringing one of these lawsuits. However, the cost of outside counsel would not be borne by taxpayers or local governments. Rather, outside counsel only gets paid at the end of the lawsuit, and then only if the state/municipality wins and recovers monetary compensation.
The real question is what would it cost your community to not take action? Climate adaptation costs are here, and they’re only mounting. One way or the other, your community is going to have to address these costs. The only question is: will it do so alone, or with help from those most responsible for actually creating the costs?
IN THEIR OWN WORDS: Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison
“Minnesotans depend on the Attorney General's Office to protect them from fraud, deception and abuse and protect their communities from threats like the spread of COVID-19 and environmental degradation. Because the number of attorneys in our office has shrunk by half over the past two decades while the threats Minnesotans face have gotten more complex, I've successfully sought outside help at no cost to taxpayers, including two attorneys funded by NYU."
Q: How long until our community sees a financial award from litigation?
There is no sure way to predict how long these cases might take or what their outcome will be, but regardless of the outcome, they serve as a critical avenue for vulnerable communities to respond to climate threats without going bankrupt in the process. In the meantime, climate liability lawsuits expose the industry’s legacy of deception as well as the many expenses taxpayers now face as a result.
The fight to take Big Tobacco or Big Pharma to task for their misdeeds wasn’t won in one go, or even a few. Like all worthwhile pursuits of justice, those took time—with quite a few hurdles along the way. But anyone committed to taking on these corporate goliaths knew that the cost of doing nothing would far outweigh any obstacles they might face.
Q: Isn’t this type of lawsuit better suited to larger cities?
Every community, no matter the size, is experiencing damages and facing costs because of climate change.
Smaller cities generally have less resources to direct to adaptation and resilience efforts. A financial award from a climate liability lawsuit would be a gamechanger for small communities unable to confront the massive, but necessary, costs of adaptation.
Furthermore, this kind of complex litigation is not unprecedented. Communities of all sizes have engaged in opioid and PFAS lawsuits, for example, without disruption to city business.
Ultimately, these lawsuits have been brought by municipalities both large (New York City and San Francisco) and small (Imperial Beach, CA, and Hoboken, NJ). What they have in common are leaders who believe their residents shouldn’t bear these costs alone while the corporations that caused the problem and then lied about it get off scot free.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS: Anne Arundel County Executive Stuart Pittman
“Filing this suit is about protecting our taxpayers and businesses from the growing fiscal impacts of climate change. The damage inflicted by these companies damages our environment, and creates massive costs that shouldn’t be borne on the backs of our residents.”
Q: Shouldn’t we wait until more of these cases go to trial before filing a lawsuit ourselves?
No. The costs of climate change are mounting every day. Taxpayers should no longer be on the hook for all of these costs. As duly elected representatives of the people, our elected officials have a duty to do what’s right by their constituents – a duty that exists regardless of what other communities are or are not doing.
Q: What kind of blowback should we expect to receive from the fossil fuel industry?
For decades, Big Oil bankrolled massive PR campaigns to push climate denial and disinformation, and they continue to use many of the same tactics now to attack lawsuits seeking to hold them accountable for their deception. Industry-backed front groups and websites regularly push unfounded claims about climate accountability lawsuits that misconstrue the cases and aim to shift attention away from Big Oil’s well-documented lies about the industry’s role in climate change. Thankfully, public and media awareness of this propaganda is growing. An increasing number of media stories have exposed Big Oil’s use of Big Tobacco tactics that seek to protect corporate profits while refusing to accept any responsibility for the harms caused by the industry’s products.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS: Connecticut Attorney General William Tong
“ExxonMobil made billions of dollars during its decades-long campaign of deception that continues today. Connecticut’s citizens should not have to bear the expense of fortifying our infrastructure to adapt to the very real consequences of climate change. Our case is simple and strong, and we will hold ExxonMobil accountable.”