The city joined a long line of state and local litigants alleging Big Oil knew burning fossil fuels caused climate-related problems like sea level rise.
BY DAVID HASEMYER Inside Climate News
The city of Hoboken, New Jersey, filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking damages from ExxonMobil and other major oil and gas companies for misleading the public about the harmful climate-related impacts such as sea level rise they knew would be caused by burning fossil fuels.
The city cast itself as a prime example of an oceanside community “at the forefront of climate change,” as Mayor Ravi Bhalla said in announcing the lawsuit.
Less than five miles from midtown Manhattan in New York City, Hoboken is uniquely vulnerable to sea level rise, according to the lawsuit filed in Hudson County Superior Court. It set forth nuisance, trespass and negligence claims, as well as violations of the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act.
“As America’s fifth-densest city, its residents and infrastructure are integrally connected to its 1.5 miles of coastline,” the lawsuit said. “More than half of Hoboken’s residents, half of its schools and all of its hospitals, rail and ferry stations, and hazardous waste sites are within five feet of its high tide line.
“Sea level rise therefore threatens major sections of Hoboken with flooding at high tide.”
Global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions from cars, trucks, electric utilities and other industrial processes has caused the sea level to rise by nearly a foot in and around Hoboken, which is considerably more than the average around the world, the lawsuit said, adding: “Multiple additional feet of sea level rise are projected in the coming decades as a result of fossil fuel use.”
The number of high tide flood days has already more than doubled since 2000, the lawsuit said, while climate change also threatens the city with more frequent and severe flooding from storm surge during coastal storms.
Other defendants named in the lawsuit include BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell and the American Petroleum Institute, an oil and gas trade association.
“The climate harms masked by defendants’ half-century of deception have now slammed into the shores of Hoboken,” the lawsuit said.
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