Environment

California sues big oil companies over climate change

It cites decades of deception despite knowing that burning fossil fuels would warm the planet and change the climate.
Cars line up at a Shell gas station June 17, 2022, in Miami. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier, File)

California sued Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP, and the oil industry’s primary interest group, the American Petroleum Institute, over allegations that they oversaw a decades-long deception regarding the harms of burning fossil fuels.

Filed in San Francisco County Superior Court, the complaint alleges that the companies have denied or downplayed climate change in public statements and marketing practices despite knowing since at least the 1960s that burning fossil fuels would warm the planet and change the climate.

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