A new frontier opened today in the struggle for climate justice as EarthRights International (ERI) brings the fight for climate accountability from the coasts to the mountains. In a new case filed in Colorado District Court, Boulder County, San Miguel County, and the City of Boulder filed suit against ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy demanding that the companies pay their share of the costs of climate change caused by their products and their actions. This case brings the number of climate lawsuits on behalf of US municipalities into double digits—and comes just two weeks after campaigners in the Netherlands put Shell on legal notice of possible legal action in that country as well.
Prior US lawsuits against major oil companies came from coastal cities. Today’s lawsuit is a powerful reminder that climate change impacts are not limited to coastal communities and ecosystems. Climate change has diverse and increasingly severe impacts on people and ecosystems throughout the United States and around the world. From more heat waves and severe droughts to destructive wildfires and changing rainfall patterns, the impact of climate change threatens these communities’ stability and way of life. But climate change also uniquely impacts Colorado’s mountain environment. Local residents will likely experience more infestations of mountain pine beetles, reduced snow, earlier spring runoff from snow, and greater rainfall density, and worse ground-level ozone. These changes not only impact the fragile mountain ecosystems, but could also hurt the local economy and damage roads, the agricultural sector, and the ski industry.
As the plaintiffs highlight, Boulder County, San Miguel County, and the City of Boulder will need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming decades to respond to climate change and fix the damage left by oil companies. Even though these communities are already taking action to reduce their own carbon footprint—including opposing the expansion of fracking in their state—they still bear the brunt of the cost of responding and adapting to climate change. These measures include conducting studies to assess climate damage, creating programs to prevent and recover from wildfires, and confronting the potentially massive climate impacts to the Colorado farmlands. Both the impacts and the costs of climate change will accelerate dramatically in the coming years.
With cases from California to New York to Germany, Netherlands and the Philippines, plaintiffs all over the world are suiting up to hold major carbon producers accountable for their contribution to the climate crisis. Significantly, the plaintiffs in these cases are heading into court with a mounting body of evidence that oil and gas companies like ExxonMobil, Suncor, and Shell Oil knew about climate change decades earlier than previously believed and responded by sowing doubt and confusion to stall action. In November, CIEL released a comprehensive synthesis of the available evidence on what the oil industry knew about climate science, when they knew it, and what they did with the information.
And new evidence keeps coming to light. Just last week, CIEL launched new analysis of Shell Oil documents unearthed by Dutch journalist Jelmer Mommers showing the global oil giant understood and acted on climate science while publicly sowing doubt as to its validity and fighting its regulation.
“For ERI, the Colorado plaintiffs, and cities and communities around the world seeking to hold oil companies accountable for their role in climate change, both the facts and the law are increasingly on their side,” says CIEL President Carroll Muffett.
“And for ExxonMobil, Suncor, and other major carbon polluters, today’s suit is still more proof that climate litigation is not a passing wave. It’s a rising tide.”
To learn more about the lawsuits, please visit EarthRights website.
By Madeleine Simon, Communications Intern
Originally posted April 17, 2018