Hoboken, New Jersey, became the latest city to sue Exxon Mobil Corp. and other oil majors to force them to pay hundreds of millions of dollars toward its efforts to adapt to the effects of climate change.
The lawsuit, announced Wednesday by Democratic Mayor Ravi Bhalla, is the 20th such challenge facing the oil industry. Cities, counties, and states have accused the companies of lying to cover up the effects that their products would have on greenhouse gas emissions.
Exxon Mobil and other oil majors have tried to beat back many of those lawsuits by forcing them from state courts into federal courts, which are thought to be more favorable venues for the industry. Federal appellate courts have denied those attempts three times so far — for cases brought by California cities and counties, Baltimore, and Boulder, Colorado.
Environmentalists have said those setbacks all but guarantee at least one of the lawsuits, if not more, will head to trial. Oil companies have already appealed one of those losses to the Supreme Court and plan to appeal more.
Hoboken is suing several oil companies, including Shell, BP, and Chevron, as well as the American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s major lobbying group. New Jersey city’s lawsuit is the second to take on API after Minnesota also included the group in its lawsuit in June.
Like many of the other lawsuits, Hoboken is accusing the oil companies of purposefully lying and concealing the harms their products would cause. The city says those actions violate New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act, among other things.
“We cannot stand idly by and allow Big Oil to continue profiteering at the expense of Hoboken residents,” Bhalla said in a press conference Wednesday, announcing the lawsuit. “It’s time these companies pay their fair share and be held accountable for their actions and their role in climate change.”
Bhalla described the damages Hoboken has experienced from climate change effects, including more severe storms like Hurrican Sandy and sea level rise. Climate change has driven nearly a foot of sea level rise in and around the city, a rate “higher than almost all other regions in the entire world,” the mayor said.
The growing number of climate lawsuits against Big Oil could get a boost in a potential Biden administration too. Biden’s revamped climate plan, unveiled in July, promised to direct the attorney general to “support ongoing plaintiff-driven climate litigation against polluters.”
Industry groups say Hoboken’s lawsuit is politically motivated, like the others brought by cities and states, and counterproductive to efforts to cut emissions.
“Filing a bunch of these lawsuits is a political strategy by a handful of environmental advocates trying to scapegoat the energy industry when, in reality, fighting climate change is a shared global challenge that requires collaboration and innovation to overcome,” said Phil Goldberg, special counsel for the National Association of Manufacturers’ Accountability Project.
