Chicago sues oil and gas companies over climate change

The city of Chicago is suing five oil and gas companies and a trade group that represents them for their role in contributing to climate change and its effects, arguing that the companies misled the public about how fossil fuel use affects the well-being of city residents. -structure.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Cook County Circuit Court, accuses BP, Chevron, Shell, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil and the American Petroleum Institute of launching a “climate deception campaign” over the burning of fossil fuels to protect their profits.

Chicago is the latest in a series of government bodies to take legal action against fossil fuel distributors over how climate change affects cities and states. Cities in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, South Carolina and Puerto Rico have taken similar actions since 2017, according to the Center for Climate Integrity.

Chicago, represented by its own attorneys and attorneys from the Chicago firm DiCello Levitt and the San Francisco firm Sher Edling, is not seeking a specific amount from the defendants. However, the city is requested to be reimbursed for costs resulting from climate change-related events, such as infrastructure and property damage.

Since 1980, Chicagoans have experienced warmer winters, less ice cover on Lake Michigan and other lakes, heat waves, decreased snow and more intense rain events Lawyers make the claim alongside the damage climate change is causing to the city’s infrastructure and housing.

This damage is greater in “low-income communities and communities that have historically experienced racial, social, health and economic disparities,” the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit also included the finding that 2023 is the hottest year on record and pointed to expected increases in extremely hot days.

Warmer weather than normal is expected to affect the Chicago area this week.

To prepare for these forecasts and other weather events, Chicago needs to build new infrastructure that will withstand more intense weather and repair the damage that occurs: The city plans to invest almost $200 million to protect the city’s most vulnerable areas from the consequences of climate change. said the lawsuit.

Lawyers argued in the lawsuit that the companies had known for decades that their products would cause atmospheric warming.

Despite this knowledge, the companies’ subsequent efforts to continue the widespread use of fossil fuels “increased greenhouse gas emissions, accelerated global warming, and resulted in the devastating effects of climate change on the city of Chicago,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit compares the companies’ advertising efforts to those of the tobacco industry in response to public health research on the effects of smoking.

The lawsuit alleges that, in parallel with the companies’ own marketing efforts, the American Petroleum Institute helped run campaigns to cast doubt on the causes of climate change, prolong fossil fuel use, and intensify climate change to the detriment of Chicagoans.

In a statement, the institute’s attorney, Ryan Meyers, called the action “unfair” and a “colossal waste of taxpayer resources,” arguing that climate policy is the purview of Congress, not cities.

A case management hearing is scheduled for June 20, according to court records.