In an effort to improve their chances of winning the mounting legal battles, fossil fuel giants have tried to move climate liability lawsuits from state to federal court — but the U.S. Supreme CourtRichard Wiles, the president of the Center for Climate Integrity, said in a statement Saturday that “California’s decision to take Big Oil companies to court is a watershed moment in the rapidly expanding legal fight to hold major polluters accountable for decades of climate lies.
“Whether it’s fires, droughts, extreme heat, or sea-level rise, Californians have been living in a climate emergency caused by the fossil fuel industry, and now the state is taking decisive action to make those polluters pay,” said Wiles. “As similar cases proceed toward trial, California’s move is an unmistakable sign that the wave of climate lawsuits against Big Oil will keep growing and that these polluters’ days of escaping accountability for their lies are numbered.
California’s lawsuit, which also names the American Petroleum Institute as a defendant, comes days afterbased on previously unreported documents that detail Exxon’s behind-closed-doors effort to cast doubt on climate science after 2006, when the company publicly acknowledged the link between fossil fuels and climate change for the first time.
“Wildfires wiping out entire communities, toxic smoke clogging our air, deadly heatwaves, record-breaking droughts parching our wells,” Newsom continued. “California taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill. California is taking action to hold big polluters accountable.”noted Friday that California’s lawsuit aims to establish “a fund that would be used to pay for recovery from extreme weather events and mitigation and adaptation efforts across the state.
“The lawsuit claims that California has already spent tens of billions of dollars paying for climate disasters, and expects costs to rise significantly in the years ahead,” the
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