The County of Maui yesterday became the second Hawaiian municipality to sue Big Oil companies this year for lying about climate change damages they knew their products would cause, bringing the total number of U.S. communities that have filed suit since 2017 to two dozen. The City and County of Honolulu filed a similar lawsuit in March.
Maui Mayor Michael Victorino said the county’s lawsuit, filed against Exxon, Chevron, BP, Shell, and more than a dozen other fossil fuel companies, aims “to hold Big Oil companies accountable for their decades-long disinformation campaign to keep the public in the dark over the climate crisis.”
“Fossil fuel companies have known their products damage the environment and could have taken steps to warn people and reduce damage,” Mayor Victorino said in a press release accompanying the filing. “Instead, they promoted and marketed their products, all the while protecting their own assets.
Maui’s complaint, filed in state court, outlines an array of harms its four islands suffer as a result of Big Oil’s deception about its products: 2019 was the county’s warmest year on record. The county’s fire season, which used to last only a few months but now runs year-round, burned six times as many acres in 2019 than 2018. And more than $3.2 billion in assets, including the county’s five harbors and five airports, are threatened by chronic flooding and sea-level rise.
Mayor Victorino said his community is taking action so the cost of that damage does not fall on taxpayers alone. “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,” he said.
Image by Rebecca Bollwitt on Flickr