New York sues fossil fuel industry over climate change

New York City officials have announced the city is hitting out against the fossil fuel industry in two ways: a lawsuit against a number of large oil and gas companies and a promise to divest city’s funds from the industry. According to a report in The Independent, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city would be seeking billions in the lawsuit to recoup money spent by the city for resiliency efforts related to climate change. The Mayor’s Office said the cost of the so-called ‘resiliency’ programme which includes improvements to aging ‘physical infrastructure, like coastal protections, upgraded water and sewer infrastructure, and heat mitigation, but also public health campaigns, for example, to help protect residents from the effects of extreme heat’ could cost the city more than $20bn. ‘As climate change continues to worsen, it's up to the fossil fuel companies, whose greed put us in this position, to shoulder the cost of making New York safer and more resilient,’ De Blasio is quoted in the report as saying. The defendants in the city's federal lawsuit are BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell who, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, account for 8% of global sea level rise – a pressing issue for the island of Manhattan. Environmental activist Bill McKibben of 350.org called the actions by the city ‘one of a handful of the most important developments’ in the past 30 years.