January 12, 2018
New York City has filed suit against the nation's largest oil companies — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, and Royal Dutch Shell — for contributing to global warming. Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city sought billions of dollars from the companies to recover money spent on climate change, the Associated Press reported Wednesday. “In this litigation, the City seeks to shift the costs of protecting the City from climate change impacts back onto the companies that have done nearly all they could to create this existential threat,” the city's complaint said, according to The Wall Street Journal.
De Blasio, according to Politico, wanted the oil companies to pay for reparations and resiliency efforts taken after Hurricane Sandy, which the government claimed was caused by climate change. While a spokesman from Shell said climate change was a complex issue that the courts shouldn't handle, the other four did not comment. “Climate change is a complex societal challenge that should be addressed through sound government policy and cultural change to drive low-carbon choices for businesses and consumers, not by the courts,” Shell's spokesman said.
The lawsuit was the latest of New York officials' moves to oppose fossil fuels. Officials recently called divestment from the companies because of climate change:
Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio (dih BLAH'-zee-oh) and Comptroller Scott Stringer are set to announce plans on Wednesday to divest the city's five pension funds of roughly $5 billion in fossil fuel investments out of its total of $189 billion.
Clara Vondrich of the DivestInvest campaign says hundreds of institutional investors managing assets of over $5.5 trillion have taken their money out of fossil fuels ...
Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (KWOH'-moh) also plans to have the state pension funds begin to divest.
In 2015, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman began investigating whether Exxon lied to the public and its investors about climate change's risks.
Kenneth P. Cohen, a representative for Exxon, flatly denied suppressing climate change research. “We unequivocally reject the allegations that Exxon Mobil has suppressed climate change research,” he said.