California Cities Sue Oil Companies

I've posted before, a lot, here and here, that a carbon tax must happen if we are to stop the flow of CO2 into the atmosphere and our oceans.  Now there's a new strategy that might be successful, suing the oil companies.  San Francisco has started it, and Oakland and other California cities are joining in.

The two Californian cities join the counties of Marin, San Mateo and San Diego and the city of Imperial Beach that have taken similar legal action in recent months, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

San Francisco city attorney Dennis Herrera and Oakland city attorney Barbara J. Parker filed separate lawsuits on Tuesday in the superior courts of San Francisco and Alameda County on behalf of their respective cities. 

They seek to hold the companies responsible “for the costs of sea walls and other infrastructure necessary to protect San Francisco and Oakland from ongoing and future consequences of climate change and sea level rise caused by the companies' production of massive amounts of fossil fuels,” according to a joint announcement from the attorneys.

Herrera accused the fossil fuel companies of copying a page from the Big Tobacco playbook by launching a “multi-million dollar disinformation campaign to deny and discredit what was clear even to their own scientists: global warming is real, and their product is a huge part of the problem.” 

“Now, the bill has come due,” Herrera said. “It's time for these companies to take responsibility for the harms they have caused and are continuing to cause.

“These companies knew fossil fuel-driven climate change was real, they knew it was caused by their products and they lied to cover up that knowledge to protect their astronomical profits. The harm to our cities has commenced and will only get worse. The law is clear that the defendants are responsible for the consequences of their reckless and disastrous actions,” she concluded.

A carbon tax would be more effective, but this helps.

 [T]he California city attorneys they want the courts to “hold the defendants jointly and severally liable for creating, contributing to and/or maintaining a public nuisance and to create an abatement fund for each city to be paid for by defendants to fund infrastructure projects necessary for San Francisco and Oakland to adapt to global warming and sea level rise.” 

“The total amount needed for the abatement funds is not known at this time but is expected to be in the billions of dollars,” they said.

If they can get the courts to cooperate, this would certainly get the attention of the oil companies.