Why Charleston’s lawsuit against Big Oil over climate change has merit

Coastal flooding in South Carolina has become three times more prevalent in the past decade, according to weather data — and it’s only getting worse. Thirty-eight of the 52 major flooding events recorded in Charleston since 1921 occurred in the last 10 years. These events threaten residents and the local economy.

A sea wall to protect Charleston’s historic downtown from flooding damage is expected to cost $1.4 billion and other coastal flooding fixes tally $1.6 billion. Who should pay for that massive $3 billion bill: hardworking taxpayers who are trying to survive increasingly extreme weather or corporate polluters that have profited mightily while fueling these disasters for decades?

The city of Charleston rightfully believes that major fossil fuel companies — whose officials knew decades ago their products could cause “potentially catastrophic” climate damages but lied about it to protect their profits — should pay their fair share. The city is one of many across the country fighting to hold ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and other major polluters accountable for that deception and make them pay for the harm they’ve caused.

This week, a Charleston County Circuit judge will hear arguments about whether the case should, like others across the country, move toward trial.

Big Oil knew its products were fueling extreme weather events decades ago, long before the term “climate change” became commonplace. In the 1970s, Exxon scientists accurately predicted how much the continued use of their fossil fuel products would heat the climate today. In the 1980s, a Shell working group warned executives that this warming would lead to “significant changes in sea level, ocean currents, precipitation patterns, regional temperature and weather.” And by the 1990s, Exxon, Mobil and Shell were concerned enough about the impacts of climate change that they took steps to protect their own infrastructure — including by raising oil rigs in anticipation of the rising seas now threatening Charleston and the Lowcountry.

But as Charleston argues in its lawsuit, rather than help protect others, these companies “engaged in a coordinated, multifront effort to conceal and deny their own knowledge of those threats, discredit the growing body of publicly available scientific evidence, and persistently create doubt … about the reality and consequences of the impacts of their fossil fuel pollution.”

Why? In the words of a senior Exxon lobbyist, “we were looking out for our investments, we were looking out for our shareholders.”

Charleston’s lawsuit is similar to those filed against tobacco companies for lying about the health harms of their product. But just like the tobacco lawsuits didn’t aim to cure cancer, Charleston’s case is not about solving climate change. The city’s case is about surviving it by protecting taxpayers and holding polluters accountable.

This is what the law is for: holding bad actors responsible and ensuring that communities like Charleston’s aren’t left footing the bill to clean up a mess they didn’t cause.

Dozens of communities throughout the country are demanding fossil fuel companies pay their fair share, and many courts around the country are allowing the cases to proceed. State courts in Vermont, Minnesota, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, and state supreme courts in Hawaii and Colorado, have all affirmed that similar climate deception cases can move toward trial in state court.

Big Oil and its allies’ attempts to mischaracterize these cases doesn’t change the fact that they are about holding oil companies accountable for their deception — plain and simple.

In the words of one Colorado judge, “Local Governments are not attempting to litigate a policy solution to global climate change, limit fossil fuel use or production, or control greenhouse gas emissions,” but rather are arguing that the defendants “accelerated the pace and exacerbated the harm by concealing and misrepresenting the dangers of unchecked fossil fuel consumption to increase their sales.”

Charleston’s case is built on a strong legal framework and decades of evidence. Big Oil can’t keep sticking communities with the cost to clean up its mess. Charleston deserves its day in court.

Corey Riday-White is a managing attorney at the Center for Climate Integrity, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.

Cover photo: By MSN