Multnomah County, Oregon, which includes the Portland metropolitan area, has added the state’s largest natural gas utility as a defendant to its $51.55 billion climate lawsuit.
The lawsuit originally named as defendants a laundry list of oil companies and industry groups, including ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, and the American Petroleum Institute. The amended complaint now adds Northwest Natural Gas Company.
The suit is one of dozens of similar cases across the country, alleging the defendants engaged in a “scheme to deceptively promote fossil fuel products as harmless and rapaciously selling the products.” The Oregon suit seeks damages from a heat dome event in 2021. While the event brought high temperatures for several days, killing 72 in Multnomah County, it didn’t break the state’s record, which was 119 degrees set in 1898, long before large amounts of fossil fuels were being consumed.
Last month, Just the News reported that Gale Norton, former attorney general of Colorado who served as Secretary of the Interior under George W. Bush, warned that these lawsuits, if successful, would be highly lucrative for the firms representing the plaintiffs. This would create an incentive to go after other large emitters, such as heavy industries and utilities.
In a statement celebrating Multnomah County’s move, the Center for Climate Integrity, which receives funding from the anti-fossil fuel Rockefeller funds, said that other utilities will soon become targets of the anti-fossil fuel campaign. […]
— Read More: justthenews.com
