California AG announces lawsuit against oil, gas companies

Joined by California Governor Newsom, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced over the weekend the filing of a lawsuit against five of the largest oil and gas companies in the world – Exxon Mobil (XOM), Shell (SHEL), Chevron (CVX), ConocoPhillips (COP), and BP (BP) – and the American Petroleum Institute for allegedly engaging in a decades-long campaign of deception and creating statewide climate change-related harms in California. Filed in San Francisco County Superior Court, the complaint asserts that “although the companies have known since at least the 1960s that the burning of fossil fuels would warm the planet and change our climate, they denied or downplayed climate change in public statements and marketing.” As detailed in the complaint, “California has spent tens of billions of dollars to adapt to climate change and address the damages climate change has caused so far, and the state will need to spend multiples of that in the years to come.” Attorney General Bonta, “on behalf of the people of California, is seeking nuisance abatement through the creation of a fund to finance climate mitigation and adaptation efforts; injunctive relief to both protect California’s natural resources from pollution, impairment, and destruction as well as to prevent the companies from making any further false or misleading statements about the contribution of fossil fuel combustion to climate change; damages; and penalties.”