CHARLESTON, S.C. - The City of Charleston, South Carolina, today filed a state lawsuit against 24 fossil fuel companies, including Exxon, Shell, Chevron, and BP, to hold them accountable for lying about climate change harms they knew their products would cause.
Charleston is the 21st community in the United States to file a lawsuit seeking to hold Big Oil accountable for lying about climate change since 2017, and the first in the American South. Today’s lawsuit comes one week after Hoboken, New Jersey, filed a similar lawsuit against many of the same companies.
A copy of the lawsuit is available here.
Richard Wiles, executive director of the Center for Climate Integrity, released the following statement:
“Big Oil’s lies have stuck cities like Charleston with multi-billion dollar bills to protect against climate-driven flooding and sea-level rise. Now those same companies face an ever-growing flood of lawsuits to hold them accountable for their decades of deception.
“With today’s filing, Big Oil is facing climate lawsuits on both coasts, in the northeast, the midwest, the south, the Rocky Mountains, and even Hawaii. The public is ready to hold this corrupt industry accountable for causing and lying about climate change, and officials across the country are stepping up to take action.
“As climate change floods cities like Charleston, Big Oil is now knee deep in lawsuits seeking justice for decades of the industry’s lying about their central role in causing the problem.”