Al Gore will be his star witness.
Attorney General Peter F. Kilmartin on Monday filed suit in state court against some of the largest fossil-fuel companies alleging that they knowingly contributed to climate change and seeking to hold them responsible for its impacts on Rhode Island.
In the first case of its kind in the nation, Kilmartin announced the Superior Court complaint alongside Gov. Gina Raimondo at the Narragansett seawall, an iconic stretch of Rhode Island’s 400-mile coastline that is under threat in the face of rising seas and more severe storms.
Kilmartin pointed to superstorm Sandy in 2012 and the historic spring floods of 2010 as examples of severe weather tied to climate change that have already caused damage in Rhode Island and have cost the state money to repair roads, bridges and other infrastructure.
″‘Big Oil’ knew for decades that greenhouse gas emissions from their operations and their products were having a significant and detrimental impact on the Earth’s climate,” he said. “Instead of working to reduce that harm, these companies chose to conceal the dangers, undermine public support for greenhouse gas regulation and engage in massive campaigns to promote the ever-increasing use of their products at ever-increasing revenues in their pockets.”
The filing comes after two recent decisions in federal courtrooms in California on similar lawsuits related to the costs of climate change. One judge threw out a case brought by San Francisco and Oakland, acknowledging the science of climate change but saying that government, not the court system, is the proper venue to take up the issue.
But another judge allowed cases lodged by San Mateo and Marin Counties and the City of Imperial Beach to continue by sending them to state court. Other cities and counties, including New York City have brought cases in state courts, similar to what Rhode Island is doing, believing that their chances are better outside the federal system.
The Rhode Island lawsuit is a first because no other state has sued fossil-fuel companies for climate-change impacts, said Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.
Massachusetts and New York have launched fraud investigations into ExxonMobil over climate change, but perhaps the closest case to Rhode Island’s was filed by a group of states against power companies in an attempt to force them to reduce emissions. The Supreme Court in that case ruled against the states, saying that air pollution is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The recent rulings in California might affect how the Rhode Island court treats the state’s case, but they don’t constitute precedent, Burger said.
“Neither of the decisions controls what happens in the court in Rhode Island,” he said. “In addition, we have two decisions that say the exact opposite of each other. So a court in Rhode Island has a choice to go along with either of them or to go in whatever direction it wants.”