On Monday, the New Jersey League of Municipalities — an association of municipalities representing over 560 mayors and 13,000 elected and appointed officials across the Garden State — passed a resolution calling on the state’s Governor Phil Murphy and Attorney General Gurbir Grewal to sue major fossil fuel companies to recover the overwhelming costs of rising seas, severe flooding, and other extreme weather events plaguing their communities.
The bipartisan vote marks the latest show of support for climate accountability in New Jersey, and one of the most significant. The boroughs of Sea Bright and Bradley Beach, the Chosen Freeholders of Atlantic County and Union County, and — just as of last week — the borough of Red Bank have all passed their own resolutions urging the state to ensure that climate polluters pay for the damages they knowingly caused. In June of this year, the New Jersey Senate Environment and Energy Committee approved a resolution calling on the state to join five other states and the District of Columbia in taking legal action against Big Oil for their climate deception.
The League’s resolution references the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long campaign to mislead the public about the climate crisis in order to protect its own profits. It reads, in part:
“The State of New Jersey should take all appropriate legal action to protect the State from climate change impacts by shifting costs associated with climate change back onto the companies who knew their actions were contributing to climate change and its dangerous impacts, but continued to produce, promote, market, and sell fossil fuels.”
In September of this year, the city of Hoboken became the first in New Jersey to file a consumer fraud and cost recovery lawsuit against Exxon and other oil giants, as well as the American Petroleum Institute, the world’s largest oil and gas trade association.
But especially as worsening climate impacts continue to diminish local budgets, not every city and town has the resources to take on Big Oil — which is why a bipartisan group of two dozen New Jersey elected officials has demanded that the state take action. On behalf of communities fighting to stay afloat across the entire Garden State, it’s time for New Jersey’s state officials to step up.