Seas are rising — and so are the costs to keep them at bay. Oregon voters want to hold polluters accountable

Oregonians are eager for solutions to the climate crisis — but the cost of resilience is staggering. The state will need to pay $7.6 billion for seawalls alone to prevent chronic flooding from rising seas by 2040, and that’s just a slice of the pie. 

Recent polling finds that Oregon voters are ready to hold  polluters accountable for their fair share of these costs, given the industry’s role in causing climate change and their decades-long efforts to conceal and undermine climate science. When it comes to suing oil and gas companies to hold them accountable for their deception and the resulting climate damages, voters are overwhelmingly supportive, with 66 percent supporting climate liability lawsuits after messaging. More than half (53 percent) of Oregon voters say they would be likely to get involved if their community organized to sue oil and gas companies.

Oregon voters recognize that the fossil fuel industry played an outsized role in creating and exacerbating the climate crisis, with 39 percent  of respondents saying that oil and gas companies are “very” responsible for climate change and its associated impacts (72 percent indicated that oil and gas companies are “very” or “somewhat” responsible). 

Most Oregonians also want corporations — and particularly oil and gas companies — to be doing more to combat climate change. Fifty-one percent of voters believe that corporations should be doing “much more” on climate change, and 73 percent say  they should be doing “much” or “somewhat” more. Similarly, 78 percent believe that oil and gas companies are not paying their fair share of the costs of climate change.

These numbers are in line with polls conducted by the Center for Climate Integrity and Climate Nexus in other states — including Minnesota, where Attorney General Keith Ellison recently filed a consumer fraud suit against ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute. Notably, in the case of Minnesota, initial support for litigation was much lower than in Oregon, at 58 percent, but rose to 66 percent after hearing statements in favor of climate accountability. Here, we see strong support for climate lawsuits at the outset (64 percent), which increases slightly (66 percent) after messaging, indicating that advocates and elected officials would have an easy time shoring up support for a potential lawsuit. 

You can read the full results of the survey here.

Oregonians are ready for climate accountability. Will their elected leaders stand behind them?