News & Analysis
February 3, 2020
Fossil fuel companies knew 40 years ago that their products would lead to stronger storms, rising seas, larger wildfires, and other climate disasters. Now they want to completely escape financial liability for the billions of dollars in damages they knowingly caused.
On Wednesday, February 5, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit will hold two oral arguments to consider whether climate damages lawsuits brought against major fossil fuel companies by eight California municipalities should be heard in state or federal court, and whether lawsuits brought by San Francisco and Oakland should proceed if they are not sent back to state court.
The lawsuits argue that major fossil fuel companies — including Exxon, BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Shell — are responsible for exposing their communities to an onslaught of threats from climate change, including sea-level rise, flooding, wildfires, heatwaves, and extreme weather events caused by fossil fuel products and a decades-long denial and disinformation campaign to deceive the public about the harms associated with those products.
The municipalities argue that these companies should pay their fair share of the enormous costs associated with planning for and adapting to climate-related risks, including threats to infrastructure, homes, and businesses.
A Center for Climate Integrity study estimated that California will need to spend $22 billion on seawalls to defend against unavoidable sea level rise by 2040. For the municipalities who brought these lawsuits, the local costs are enormous:
Fossil fuel industry defendants have repeatedly sought to move these and similar climate damages cases from state to federal court, while the municipalities argue that the cases should be heard in state court, just as many cases against the tobacco and opioid industries, who similarly inflicted billions of dollars in costs on communities, were heard and decided in state court.
In December, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals heard similar jurisdictional arguments in the City of Baltimore’s climate damages lawsuit, and a decision is expected soon — the first such decision from a federal appellate court.
These cases are vital to making sure fossil fuel companies are held accountable for causing climate change, lying to Congress and the public about it, and leaving residents and taxpayers with a bill for billions of dollars in damages. The local officials who brought them should be applauded for standing up and insisting that the companies who created the climate crisis pay their fair share of the damages.
