News & Analysis
October 7, 2020
As a growing number of elected officials in New Jersey are calling for the Garden State to take action against Big Oil for causing and lying about the climate crisis, a recent poll shows that voters facing some of the highest climate costs in the state agree.
In a survey conducted this summer, two-thirds of likely voters in New Jersey’s 3rd Congressional District say they support suing oil and gas companies to hold them accountable for their pollution and to require them to pay for damages related to climate change.
The poll from Expedition Strategies found support increased to 68 percent once voters learned more about the financial impact of climate change and the evidence that fossil fuel companies engaged in widespread climate disinformation campaigns after knowing their products would be “potentially catastrophic.”
The district, which includes parts of Burlington and Ocean counties, will have to spend an estimated $2.4 billion to protect homes, businesses, and infrastructure from sea-level rise by 2040, according to a 2019 study from CCI and Resilient Analytics. That’s the second-highest cost of all districts in the state.
It’s little surprise then that an overwhelming majority of voters say they are concerned about climate change right now (79 percent), and even more are concerned about the impacts of climate change for the next generation (83 percent).
Just last month, the City of Hoboken became the first in New Jersey to sue Exxon and other Big Oil companies to make them pay their fair share of climate change costs. But as this poll makes clear, there is strong support for holding polluters accountable in other parts of the state as well.
