From Desmog International, some heartening news:
The state of New Jersey filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against five oil companies and the oil industry’s most powerful lobbying group for covering up and misleading the public about climate change, the latest round of state and municipal-led climate litigation seeking accountability from the oil industry.
The lawsuit, filed in the New Jersey Superior Court, states that the companies knew about climate change for decades and actively sought to conceal that information from the public. Instead, they funded PR campaigns aimed at confusing and misleading the public.
The oil companies “concealed and misrepresented the dangers of fossil fuels; disseminated false and misleading information about the existence, causes, and effects of climate change; and aggressively promoted the ever-increasing use of their products at ever-greater volumes,” the complaint states.
The lawsuit names ExxonMobil, Shell Oil Company, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, and the American Petroleum Institute, the main lobbying group in which the five oil companies were members.The case comes just ahead of the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, which devastated New Jersey and other parts of the eastern seaboard, and the storm “previews the grave climate-related consequences New Jersey faces as a direct result of Defendants’ tortious deception,” the lawsuit argues.
