Multnomah County has joined a slew of states and municipalities across the U.S. in suing the largest fossil fuel corporations and petroleum trade associations to recover costs associated with responding to extreme weather events linked to climate change.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Circuit Court, alleges the combined carbon pollution emitted by the companies over decades was a substantial factor in causing and exacerbating the 2021 heat dome, which killed 69 people in a county known for its typically mild summer weather.
The complaint also asserts the companies have known for decades about the harmful impact of fossil fuels on the climate but chose to deceive the public about the effects – and continue to portray them as harmless to the environment.
The county is seeking more than $51 billion in damages, including $50 million for the costs it says it incurred as a result of the heat dome, including establishing emergency cooling centers for thousands of heat-stressed residents, supplying air conditioning units to residents, responding to heat-related illnesses and preparing for severe public health emergencies related to extreme heat and wildfires.
The county also seeks $1.5 billion in future damages to cover costs associated with future extreme heat events as well as another $50 billion to study, plan, and upgrade public health care services and infrastructure to “weatherproof” itself against extreme heat.
“The heat dome that cost so much life and loss was not a natural weather event,” the lawsuit states. It “was a direct and foreseeable consequence of the Defendants’ decision to sell as many fossil fuel products over the last six decades as they could and to lie to the County, the public, and the scientific community about the catastrophic harm that pollution from those products into the Earth’s and the County’s atmosphere would cause.”
The suit names Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, Motiva, Occidental Petroleum, Anadarko Petroleum, Space Age Fuel, Valero Energy, Total Specialties USA, Marathon Petroleum, Peabody Energy, Koch Industries, American Petroleum Institute, Western States Petroleum Association and McKinsey & Company, a New York City-based global management consulting giant.
The Oregonian/OregonLive has reached out to several of the companies for comment but most did not respond. In the past, some have filed to dismiss similar complaints, but most have argued the cases need to be moved to federal court, stalling them for years. The defendants and their advocates have said the lawsuits will do nothing to address climate change, its impacts or root causes and have denied they’re responsible for the alleged climate impacts.
In a written statement sent to The Oregonian/OregonLive, Chevron Corporation counsel Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr. contened the Constitution bars “these novel, baseless claims” and said they unfairly “target one industry and group of companies engaged in lawful activity that provides tremendous benefits to society.”
“Addressing the challenge of global climate change requires a coordinated policy response. These lawsuits are counterproductive distractions from advancing international policy solutions,” Boutrous, Jr. said.
Multnomah County’s lawsuit is part of a wave of lawsuits filed by communities around the world against climate polluters. In Germany, a Peruvian farmer is suing German energy company RWE for flood risk caused by a melting glacier above his Andean home. In another case, four fishermen of the Indonesian island of Pari are suing Swiss-based cement producer Holcim for its contributions to extreme flooding, sea level rises and other weather disasters on the island.
In the U.S., 36 cities and counties — including Multnomah County — and seven states have filed public nuisance and consumer protection lawsuits over the past six years, including New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Honolulu, among others. The cases mimic litigation against the tobacco and opioid industries. They seek damages for a bevy of costs associated with floods, wildfires, rising sea levels and other disasters – from building cooling centers to strengthening bridges to building seawalls and upgrading roads.
In April, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a petition from oil companies to hear an appeal in five of the cases, opening the doors to the cases going to trial in state courts across the country. Two of the cases are already in pre-trial discovery.
The two-week extreme heat event in Oregon included a three-day stretch when temperatures in Multnomah County reached record highs of 108 degrees, 112 degrees and 116 degrees – up to 40 degrees above the daily average for the region.
In addition to the 69 people who died of heat-related illness, many other…
Read More: Multnomah County sues big oil and coal companies over heat dome disaster