Inside the new climate assault on the oil majors

[canetoad]

November 25, 2023 — 6.00am
The infernal heat that began killing people in the normally temperate north-west of the United States in June 2021 began with unusually heavy rain over China, which drove energy into the jet stream which crosses the Pacific and set off a cascading set of climatic events resulting in a heat dome that settled across parts of the US and Canada.

In Multnomah County, Oregon, temperatures reached 42 degrees Celsius, 44.5 degrees and 46.6 degrees over successive days. Before that week began, the county’s record temperature was 41.6 degrees, and its average high temperature was just 21 degrees.

By the time it subsided the heat had killed 69 people. At the time an event like it was inconceivable. But due to rapid global warming, it is now predicted similar heatwaves will strike the region once a decade or so.

Obviously, the heat dome hit on a broader front. Canada’s hottest-ever temperature of 49 degrees was recorded in the village of Lytton, British Columbia. Fires broke out on June 30, killing two. Across Canada 1000 deaths were attributed to the heat. Records were shattered as far south as Palm Springs outside Los Angeles.

https://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/inside-the-new-climate-assault-on-the-oil-majors-20231123-p5embw.html
No paywall: https://archive.md/yGGCa

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But it is Multnomah County that has decided on a course of action that might have consequences around the world. The county is suing the global fossil fuel industry for US$50 billion ($76.2 billion) to cover costs of the heat dome and for future-proofing the county. It is accusing defendants, including ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, the American Petroleum Institute, Koch Industries and the consulting firm McKinsey & Co, of executing “a scheme to rapaciously sell fossil fuel products and deceptively promote them as harmless to the environment, while they knew that carbon pollution emitted by their products into the atmosphere would likely cause deadly extreme heat events like that which devastated Multnomah County in late June and early July 2021.”

Climate litigation is increasing around the world, but the Multnomah case is attracting significant attention.

Partly this has to do with the lawyers saddling up to take on the oil majors, says Professor Douglas Kysar, a specialist in torts law and climate change at Yale University. In the past, in the US, the so-called oil majors cases have often been led an activist lawyer called Vic Sher and the firm he founded, Sher Edling, an effective boutique outfit dedicated to the climate fight.

But this case is being run by three large plaintiff firms and led by one from Texas, “which you know, for us, it’s like Saudi Arabia, it’s ground zero for the oil industry,” says Kysar.

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Full Article; https://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/inside-the-new-climate-assault-on-the-oil-majors-20231123-p5embw.html

No pawall: https://archive.md/yGGCa