California Sues Oil Giants, Says They Deceived Public on Climate Change, Seeks Funds for Wildfires, Storm Damage, Deadly Heat Waves and Droughts

California is suing Big Oil for deceiving the public on how their fossil fuels contributed to climate change.

On Friday California filed a civil lawsuit in state Superior Court in San Francisco against BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, ConocoPhillips, and their trade group, the American Petroleum Institute.

California’s Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom blasted the oil companies and blamed them for wildfires, storms, deadly heat waves, and droughts.

Storms and droughts. Makes sense.

“For more than 50 years, Big Oil has been lying to us — covering up the fact that they’ve long known how dangerous the fossil fuels they produce are for our planet,” Newsom said. “California taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill for billions of dollars in damages — wildfires wiping out entire communities, toxic smoke clogging our air, deadly heat waves, record-breaking droughts parching our wells.”

Excerpt from AP:

The state of California filed a lawsuit against some of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, claiming they deceived the public about the risks of fossil fuels now faulted for climate change-related storms and wildfires that caused billions of dollars in damage, officials said Saturday.

The civil lawsuit filed in state Superior Court in San Francisco also seeks creation of a fund — financed by the companies — to pay for recovery efforts following devastating storms and fires. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement the companies named in the lawsuit — Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and BP — should be held accountable.

The 135-page complaint argues that the companies have known since at least the 1960s that the burning of fossil fuels would warm the planet and change the climate, but they downplayed the looming threat in public statements and marketing.

It said the companies’ scientists knew as far back as the 1950s that the climate impacts would be catastrophic, and that there was only a narrow window of time in which communities and governments could respond.