{"id":22739,"date":"2018-05-17T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-17T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.redmond-reporter.com\/news\/can-king-county-win-its-lawsuit-against-big-oil\/"},"modified":"2018-05-17T15:04:08","modified_gmt":"2018-05-17T22:04:08","slug":"can-king-county-win-its-lawsuit-against-big-oil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.redmond-reporter.com\/news\/can-king-county-win-its-lawsuit-against-big-oil\/","title":{"rendered":"Can King County win its lawsuit against Big Oil?"},"content":{"rendered":"
King County is swinging big with its latest lawsuit. On May 9, the county filed a suit against five major oil companies—Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips—alleging that the corporations knew about the impacts of fossil fuels on climate change, but downplayed them to the public. And some legal experts think that the county has a fighting chance.<\/p>\n
Three allegations make up the pillars of the suit. The first is that fossil fuel combustion is the primary driver of climate change. Next, the county claims that these five companies knew about the impacts of fossil fuels on global warming. The third element is that, despite this knowledge, the companies committed to their fossil fuel-based business models and employed intentionally misleading public campaigns that downplayed the environmental dangers of fossil fuels.<\/p>\n
“[The] defendants, notably, did not simply produce fossil fuels. They engaged in large scale, sophisticated advertising and communications campaigns to promote pervasive fossil fuel usage and to portray fossil fuels as environmentally responsible and essential to human wellbeing—even as they knew that their fossil fuels would contribute, and subsequently were contributing, to dangerous global warming,” the suit reads. “Defendants’ promotion of fossil fuels has also entailed denying mainstream climate science or downplaying the risks of global warming.”<\/p>\n
In 2015, reports emerged that ExxonMobil knew about the role of fossil fuel combustion in climate change<\/a> going back decades despite their public expressions of doubt about climate <\/a>science<\/a>.<\/p>\n The suit argues that the oil companies, through their actions, have created a severe “public nuisance,” a legal offense in which the public, rather than an individual, suffers injury, loss, or damage.<\/p>\n King County joins numerous other jurisdictions around the country that have pursued similar lawsuits against the oil industry. In January, New York City filed its own suit<\/a> against the same five companies. Last summer, two California cities and one county initiated legal action against a whopping 37 fossil fuel <\/a>producers<\/a>. San Francisco, Oakland, and Boulder, Colo. have also filed <\/a>suits<\/a>.<\/p>\n If the county wins the suit (filed in King County Superior Court), the damages extracted from the companies would go towards helping King County mitigate the impacts of climate change.<\/p>\n