City Sues Fossil Fuel Firms, Plans To Pull Investments

NEW YORK, NY — New York City officials announced plans Wednesday to fully divest pension money from fossil fuel companies, whom the city blames in a new lawsuit for the damage Superstorm Sandy wrought in 2012.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and Comptroller Scott Stringer will ask trustees for the city's three pension funds to pull their $5 billion worth of investments in more than 190 fossil fuel companies within five years. That amout is less than 3 percent of the pension funds' $189 billion value but constitutes one of the largest municipal fossil fuel divestments in the world.

The city has also filed a multibillion-dollar lawsuit against five of the largest fossil fuel firms — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell — to recoup the costs of Sandy recovery and subsequent efforts to protect the city from future storms.

The suit argues the firms continued to pump so-called greenhouse gases into the air despite knowing decades ago of their environmental harm. That pollution has caused sea levels to rise and created more powerful storms that threaten New York City, officials say.

"We’re going after those who have profited and what a horrible, disgusting way to profit — a way that puts so many people’s lives in danger," de Blasio said Wednesday at a news conference in Tribeca.

The moves pull the city into a continuing fight against large global corporations as de Blasio, a Democrat, works to grow his national profile at the start of his second term. Nationwide environmental advocacy groups praised them as landmark steps that make New York City a leader in the push against climate change.

De Blasio and Stringer have previously balked at divestment amid persistent calls from environmental advocates, who argue the city shouldn't prop up financially flailing firms that pollute the earth.

Stringer commissioned a study of the pension funds' climate footprint last year, and the pension funds divested from thermal coal in 2015.

But officials now embrace full divestment as the best path forward. The divestment plan will weigh the city's "fiduciary" obligations to make the smartest possible investments on behalf of retired public employees while giving the city an environmentally friendly portfolio, officials said.

"Safeguarding the retirement of our city’s police officers, teachers, firefighters and city workers is our top priority, and we believe that their financial future is linked to the sustainability of the planet," Stringer said in a statement. "Our announcement sends a message to the world that a brighter economy rests on being green."

The city argues some of the same firms that hold its pension money perpetuated the climate change that led to Superstorm Sandy, which knocked out power for days and killed 43 New yorkers in 2012. The companies knew for decades that they were harming the environment despite embarking on a public campaign denying the impacts of pollution, city officials argue.

The lawsuit aims to force the five targeted companies to help pay for the city's $20 billion effort to shore up its infrastructure so future storms don't have such a devastating impact.

"By suing these five oil majors who knowingly deepened the climate crisis, New York City is taking a game-changing first step in reversing this perverse injustice — many other cities and states are sure to follow," said Naomi Klein, an author and co-founder of the progressive advocacy group The Leap.

A spokesman for Chevron, Braden Reddall, called the lawsuit "factually and legally meritless," saying it does nothing to solve the problems climate change poses.

"Should this litigation proceed, it will only serve special interests at the expense of broader policy, regulatory and economic priorities," Reddall said in a statement.

Shell did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But company spokesman Curtis Smith told the Associated Press that Shell thinks climate change should be addressed by "sound government policy and cultural change to drive low-carbon choices for businesses and consumers, not by the courts."

ConocoPhillips declined to comment. The other two firms did not immediately respond to Patch's requests for comment.

(Lead image: Protesters rally against the Keystone XL fuel pipeline in Lower Manhattan in 2013. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)