This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience while browsing it. By clicking 'Got It' you're accepting these terms.
Most recent
Trending
Top Videos
The best of EcoWatch, right in your inbox. Sign up for our email newsletter!
Three California municipalities filed lawsuits Monday against 37 of the world's biggest fossil fuel companies, including Chevron, Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell. The legal challenges, brought by Marin and San Mateo counties and the city of Imperial Beach, allege that the companies knew about the harm of burning fossil fuels and therefore should pay for current and future damages to the municipalities due to climate change.
The suit also alleges the fossil fuel companies launched a "coordinated, multi-front effort" to discredit climate science and spread doubt.
"Sea level rise is here and we're experiencing it first hand in Marin, as roadways continually flood with king tides and storms," Marin County Supervisor Kate Sears said in a statement.
As reported by the Marin Independent Journal, Sears was asked if the lawsuits were inspired by litigation against the tobacco industry that state attorneys general initiated in the 1990s:
"You could certainly think of it that way, because a lot of what these fossil fuel companies did was modeled after what the tobacco companies did."
"Instead of taking steps to actually do something about the impact of their product," Sears said, "they launched this multimillion dollar lobbying campaign to discredit scientific evidence about climate change."
For a deeper dive:
AP, Marin Independent Journal, SF Gate, CBS SF, SF Weekly, San Diego Union Tribune. Commentary: Sabin Center, Michael Burger analysis
For more climate change and clean energy news, you can follow Climate Nexus on Twitter and Facebook, and sign up for daily Hot News.
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
By Tara Lohan
In 2017 the Thomas fire raged through 281,893 acres in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, California, leaving in its wake a blackened expanse of land, burned vegetation, and more than 1,000 destroyed buildings.
By Danielle Nierenberg and Katherine Walla
As the holiday season ramps up for many across the world, Food Tank is highlighting 15 children's books that will introduce young eaters, growers and innovators to the world of food and agriculture. Authors and organizations are working to show children the importance — and fun — of eating healthy, nutritious and delicious food, growing their own produce, and giving food to others in need.
Trending
By Lauren Wolahan
For the first time ever, the UN is building out a roadmap for curbing carbon pollution from agriculture. To take part in that process, a coalition of U.S. farmers traveled to the UN climate conference in Madrid, Spain this month to make the case for the role that large-scale farming operations, long criticized for their outsized emissions, can play in addressing climate change.