BUCKS COUNTY, Pa. — Bucks County sued big oil companies Monday morning to cover the costs it believes climate change will cause to protect critical infrastructure over the next fifteen years.
In the 178-page filing, Bucks County sued, among other subsidiaries, BP America, Chevron, Conoco Phillips, Phillips 66, Exxon Mobil, Shell and the American Petroleum Institute.
The American Petroleum Institute is a trade association and lobbying force for the oil and gas industry.
The suit alleges decades of climate change conspiracy, saying the defendant companies went to great lengths both to understand the dangers associated with burning fossil fuels and covering it up. It further alleges negligence, trespass and civil conspiracy.
In a statement provided to FOX29 in Philadelphia, the American Petroleum Institute said in part the lawsuit was, "Nothing more than a distraction from important national conversations and an enormous waste of taxpayer resources."
This comes more than two years after landmark testimony in front of the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee detailing evidence that ExxonMobil knew about the potential dangers of burning fossil fuels as early as 1978, ten years before NASA scientist Jim Hansen testified in front of the U.S. Senate about the dangers of the resource and climate change.
The FOX43 Weather Team detailed part of this history of climate change communication in 2021. You can find the full program below, linked directly to the portion about that testimony.
According to a Center for Climate Integrity study with Resilient Analytics and Scioto Analysis, Pennsylvania communities could face up to an estimated $15 billion in costs by 2040 to protect local infrastructure from climate change. That infrastructure includes everything from roads and storm drains to local schools' air conditioning needs due to rising temperatures.
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In that study, Lancaster ranks sixth in the Commonwealth for municipalities facing the highest costs to install air conditioning in public schools, at nearly $8 million.
That data is backed up by a separate Climate Central analysis over the past fifty years, showing the increased cooling demand in the Harrisburg area since 1970.
York, Chambersburg and Lancaster all rank within the top ten in funds needed to offset the impact of urban heat islands, which are areas where extreme heat is intensified because of a lack of natural spaces to make up for roads, buildings and other structures that absorb the sun's heat.
Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity released a statement on the Bucks County lawsuit, saying in part:
“More than one in four people in the U.S. now live in a community suing major fossil fuel companies to make them pay for their climate deception. Bucks County is the first Pennsylvania government to file a climate accountability lawsuit against Big Oil companies, but it likely won’t be the last.”
In a response to this story, Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr. of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher. counsel for the Chevron Corporation. issued a statement to FOX43 saying:
"Addressing climate change requires a coordinated international policy response, not meritless local litigation over lawful and essential energy production. As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held in dismissing a similar New York City lawsuit, ‘such a sprawling case is simply beyond the limits of state law.’”
