Massachusetts Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Maura Healey speaks at the Annual Greater Boston Labor Council Breakfast on Sept. 5, 2022, in Boston. After years of legal appeals and delays, some oil companies are set to stand trial in lawsuits brought by state and local governments over the damages caused by climate change.
Those practices, the claims argue, violate a variety of laws including consumer protection, public nuisance, failure to warn, fraud and racketeering. Some of the lawsuits seek to force oil companies to help pay for the damages caused by climate change. Others aim to impose penalties for the use of deceptive business practices. Some want to compel the companies to fund a corrective education campaign about the climate threats they once downplayed.
Oil industry backers argue that governments themselves have promoted the use of fossil fuels, and that attempts to hold companies accountable for climate change will hurt consumers. Wiles said the Massachusetts case against Exxon Mobil could reach trial as soon as next year. When the case was filed in 2019, then-Attorney General Maura Healey, now the Democratic governor, said the monetary damages could reachIf the Massachusetts suit wins a ruling that fossil fuel companies can be held liable for climate damages, it would prompt a “flood” of cases, Wiles said, as other attorneys general seek money for their states.
Boulder County, he said, is spending millions to prepare for a climate future that is projected to include wildfires, droughts, floods and intense storm events. The lawsuit seeks to force oil companies to pay for the past and future damages caused by climate change. “The fact that this whole avenue of delay and distraction has been shut down is huge,” said Leigh Currie, director of strategic litigation with the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy. Currie helped write and litigate the lawsuit in her previous role with the state attorney general’s office. “We can go forward and actually answer some of the questions that these lawsuits pose.”
Neither Newsom’s office nor Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office granted interview requests.