Short Wave - Why Baltimore Is Suing Big Oil Over Climate Change

Episode Date: April 15, 2021

(Encore episode.) Earlier this year, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case brought by the city of Baltimore against more than a dozen major oil and gas companies including BP, ExxonMobil and Shell. In the lawsuit, BP P.L.C. v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, the city government argued that the fossil fuel giants must help pay for the costs of climate change because they knew that their products cause potentially catastrophic global warming. NPR climate reporter Rebecca Hersher has been following the case.Read Rebecca's digital piece about the Supreme Court case here.Email the show at [e-mail] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

This month, the Supreme Court has been busy issuing opinions. We're watching for one in particular, a case we first talked about with Rebecca Hersher back in January when it was initially argued before the court. At the heart of it, who should pay for the damage to cities, states, other municipalities, due to climate change? It's a case that aims to hold fossil fuel companies accountable in a way they never have been before. Stick around. You're listening to Shortwave. from NPR.

Hey Maddie. Hey, Rebecca Herscher. What do you got for me? I have a scary video for you today. Oh, okay. All right. Let's do it. Okay.

Do you have the link I sent you? Can you hit play on that video? I can. I have that capability. Here we go. I think it's so bad at the same time. Oh, my God. Okay, so this is clearly shot on a cell phone.

It's a video of a city street. It's like daytime, but there are people with umbrellas, so it seems like it was raining. Yeah, yeah, it was raining. It had rained a lot, actually, when this video was shot. It's from the spring of 2014. Okay. It was shot in Baltimore. And I'm watching this, and there are the cars lined up kind of on the edge of the street,

like they were parked off the street, but they're all in like a very severe angle. Like, they are like about to fall off the street. Yeah, yeah. The road has actually collapsed. by like a couple of feet. And what you can't see is that this street that's in the video, it's built on a retaining wall next to some train tracks. And that retaining wall is starting to fall.

And all the rain, it's exacerbating that. So it's actually helping the wall collapse. Oh. Oh. Okay. All of the cars have fallen off the side of this road and the cars are just gone. Luckily, no one was injured. But you can hear how scared people are, right?

Yeah. So, Becky, you're a climate reporter. What does this have to do with climate change? What a good question. So I wanted you to watch this video because it's a really dramatic example of the kind of infrastructure damage that climate change can cause. And I wanted you to see it firsthand because I think it can be really hard sometimes to understand the cost of adapting to climate change. But that cost is huge. Like, in this case, extreme rain, the kind that we're seeing more because of climate change, it helped cause this massive wall to collapse.

and it costs more than $12 million to repair that damage. And then you start to think about the bigger costs, building seawalls and restoring wetlands to deal with sea level rise, retrofitting buildings who are resilient to wildfires, right? Dealing with public health costs from heat waves, it's just really, really expensive. And so some cities and counties and states are looking for help, and they're looking for it from oil and gas companies.

So why oil and gas companies? I'm guessing because use of fossil fuels is driving climate change? Yeah, basically. There are now more than 20 lawsuits that have been brought in recent years by cities, counties, and states against these major fossil fuel companies. And they're arguing that those companies should help foot the bill for climate change. And one of the cases, the lawsuit brought by the city of Baltimore, which is why I wanted you to see that video, it went to the Supreme Court this week. and the court is considering a narrow kind of technical question, but it's one that could have huge consequences. So today in the show, adapting to climate change is really expensive.

Should oil and gas companies help foot the bill? This is Shortwave, the Daily Science Podcast from NPR. Okay, so you said that the lawsuit that went before the Supreme Court this week was brought by the city of Baltimore. Yeah, and there are more than 20 of these lawsuits. They're all alleging various versions of the same thing. That climate change is causing damage in this city or the state or the county. And that oil and gas companies are partially responsible. And the Baltimore case just happens to be the one that made it to the Supreme Court.

So we'll focus on that one. Also very convenient because you live in Baltimore. Indeed, I do. It definitely makes it easier for this reporting. So what specifically does the Baltimore lawsuit allege? So this lawsuit alleges that a long list of big fossil fuel companies, and that includes ExxonMobil and Shell, BP, Chevron, misled the public about the dangers of burning fossil fuels and that those companies have to help the city pay for the costs of climate change. So the lawsuit lays out how global warming is causing damage in the city and how that's expensive for the city government. Like heat waves, for example, they're expensive or flooding.

Like the flooding from climate-driven extreme rain. Yeah, and flooding from sea level rise. So let's start there, because that's actually the simpler one. Sea levels on the east coast of the U.S. are rising more quickly than the global average. Streets sometimes flood during high tide. When there's a storm, water ends up in buildings, which is obviously not good. And when you look out to the future, the city estimates that the amount of Baltimore's port area that will flood frequently will increase by almost 100, 50% in the next 30 years.

Wow, 150%, Becky. That is intense. That is a lot of flooding. Yeah, it's super serious. And I have to imagine that it's going to be really expensive to retrofit Baltimore to be able to deal with what's coming. Yeah, totally. And, you know, climate change isn't just a future cost, right?

Cities are already racking up millions of dollars in infrastructure costs. And to understand why, you have to remember that a lot of cities were built a long time ago. And they weren't designed for climate change. So here's an example from here in Baltimore. I spent an afternoon with a guy named Michelle Anderson. He works for a clean water advocacy group called Blue Water Baltimore. Yeah, so we're basically, we're walking along the Jones Falls. The Jones Falls, is that like a river in Baltimore?

Yeah, exactly. It's a river. It basically runs through downtown and into the harbor. He wanted to show me a spot where construction crews are upgrading pipes that were late about 100 years ago. And listen, I don't want to knock the ingenuity of previous generations. This was a state-of-the-art sewer and stormwater system when it was built. It was considered an engineering marvel at the time. Rivaled the sewers of Paris from what I read.

I even found a Baltimore Sun article about that. Ooh. Wow. Bragging in the newspaper about your new sewer. Yeah. But the, you know, the sewer is old now. It's starting to fail. Pipes have cracked.

They're too small to handle all the water during big, rains. So when it rains a lot in a short period of time, sewage can back up into houses, it can get into waterways like the Jones Falls River, which is obviously bad news. That dumps, you know, tens of millions of gallons of sewage into the waterway, you know, and that's during severe rainstorms, which, you know, increased due to climate change. Yeah, that's not where you want sewage. That's, that's gross. Yeah, it's gross. And fixing it is super expensive. You know, the project, the current project, to fix some of these sewage problems, it costs upwards of a billion dollars. Wow, wow, wow. Okay, okay. So I get it. Climate change, very expensive. So that's why Baltimore sued the oil companies?

Exactly. In 2018, the then-city solicitor announced the lawsuit. His name is Andre Davis. These companies must be held accountable. Climate change is a reality. And what Davis explained was, listen, oil and gas companies have. have known for decades that burning fossil fuels causes climate change, and they've misled the public about that. That's what the lawsuit argues. These companies hid knowledge of the harms from elected officials, from ordinary citizens. So you can hear, like, the logic behind the case is that the companies profited off of misleading the public about the dangers of burning oil and gas.

And now they should help pay for the damage. And it's similar in some ways that argument to the, the lawsuits brought against tobacco companies in the 20th century, right? Which also hinged on companies misleading consumers. Although, obviously, there are some notable differences between the role that cigarettes played in society and the role that fossil fuels play in society. Sure, sure. But that is like a helpful touch point. Okay. So what do the oil and gas companies say about this, Becky? Well, they're fighting the lawsuit. And they have a few different arguments.

I interviewed a lawyer who works with the National Association of Manufacturers, which is a trade group that represents manufacturers. And they submitted what's called an amicus brief in support of the oil and gas companies that are being sued. Basically like an essay for the Supreme Court justices about why Baltimore is wrong and the oil and gas companies are right. The lawyer's name is Phil Goldberg. This isn't something that the energy companies created. This is a byproduct of modern society. And this is why he argues the companies aren't responsible. They aren't liable for the damages from climate change.

All the companies are doing is engaging in a lawful business endeavor. And what that is is selling us the energy that we all need to turn on our lights, drive our cars, heat or cool our homes. Doing that is not a liability-causing event. So they're basically just saying, like, we're selling stuff that they want. It's legal, capitalism, capitalism. Exactly. That's the argument. Here's the other thing. Goldberg says that dealing with the cost of climate change and transitioning to cleaner fuels, it's something that Congress should be working on, not the courts. And especially not the state courts. You know, the oil and gas industry is fighting really hard to have this case and other cases like it tried in federal court. And that tiny little narrow question is actually the only question that the Supreme Court is considering this week. So the question is, should the case be tried in federal court like the fossil fuel companies want or in state court like Baltimore's government wants? Yeah, exactly.

I mean, why do we care about that particular answer? I mean, like, to me, I don't know that much about this. Whether or not it's a state or federal case seems pretty far removed from all the flooding and the heat waves. Right. Yeah, no, I think that's a really natural reaction. I promise it's all connected. But we don't need to get into the weeds about the legal arguments. Basically, there are a lot of robust state laws about protecting consumers and making sure corporations don't mislead the public about their products.

And so Baltimore and other cities and states and counties that have filed lawsuits like this one, they feel that state courts are the right place for these cases. Oil and gas companies point to the fact that greenhouse gas emissions that actually trap heat in the atmosphere are not local phenomena. They cross local and state borders, and that means that cases, about climate change responsibility, they should be handled at the national level. So that means federal court. So what happens if the Supreme Court justices decide in favor of the Baltimore government, if it's a state case? Well, it would pave the way for the Baltimore lawsuit to proceed in Maryland state court, which could mean a trial. And the first step would be that the companies that are being sued, which include ExxonMobil and Shell and BP, would be asked to turn over documents about

what they knew about climate change and how they've been doing their business. But it's not just Baltimore, right? All the other cases like this one could conceivably move ahead if the Supreme Court leaned that way. So there's this law professor at Loyola University in New Orleans who studies these climate lawsuits. Her name is Karen Sokol. These cases have the potential to be quite powerful if they finally see their day in court.

And when she says that she's talking about state court, she thinks that if big oil is forced to disclose everything it knew about the dangers of fossil fuels, it might change the way some people see those companies. You know, for a lot of people in the U.S., these companies are household names, and there's a lot of implicit trust that comes with that. So anything that undercuts that would be a real change for an industry that's had a lot of power for a really long time. It's never been held to account in this way in this country. It's largely wielded such tremendous economic and political might, that it's never had to face a threat quite like this. Wow. Okay. So this is like a real saga, Becky. And I guess, you know, my next question is,

you know, we started talking about how expensive climate change damage is for cities and how that damage is already happening. And it seems like even if oil and gas companies end up helping with the cost, that would take a really, really long time. So I guess I'm wondering, like, if you're trying to run a city and balance a budget, are these lawsuits against these really powerful companies, like, really going to help them? I think that's a really good question. And you're right. These lawsuits aren't going to provide cash in the near future. There's no indication of that. Who knows if they ever will provide cash? That said, I think local and state governments are also seeking justice for all the damage and danger associated with climate change. So it's totally unclear what courts will think about the legal arguments that justices are expected to announce their decision later this year. But, you know, justice can go beyond money sometimes.

So we'll see how fulfilling these lawsuits are for residents of cities like Baltimore, whether or not they generate any cash. All right, Becky Herscher. We appreciate you as always. Thanks for bringing us this story. Great, thanks. This episode was produced by Rebecca Ramirez, edited by Viet Le, and fact-checked by Ariel Elizabeth. Beattie. Josh Newell was our audio engineer. I'm Maddie Safaya. Thanks for listening to Shortwave from NPR. You're looking to discover a new series to binge, find your next great read, or check out that movie everyone's talking about. NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast is your guide to all things entertainment. Every weekday, we keep pop culture in high spirits. Listen now to the Pop Culture

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