Posted on 12/20/2017 1:19:37 PM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
The city and county of Santa Cruz has joined a growing number of communities suing oil companies over climate change, alleging a Big Tobacco-like plot in which the fossil fuel industry long concealed the dangers of its products from consumers.
The two lawsuits, filed Wednesday, blame the use and combustion of oil, gas and coal for accelerating sea level rise and threatening hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to the famously dramatic and much visited Santa Cruz County coast.
While the challenge is similar to other suits recently filed by waterfront communities in California, including San Francisco, the new cases in Santa Cruz County Superior Court go a step further. They seek to recoup not only the costs of rising seas but of other climate-related events, including big storms, widlfires and drought.
“We believe enough is enough,” said Santa Cruz County Supervisor Zach Friend, who represents the seaside city of Capitola as well as several miles of unincorporated shoreline.
“These types of weather events are going to become more common and we can expect more of the fires we saw in Wine Country and Southern California,” Friend said. “It is directly related to fossil fuel-based climate change.”
The tactic of suing oil companies over climate change has gained momentum over the past year in California, as regulation of the fossil fuel industry has eased under President Trump and scientists more precisely link the fallout of global warming to fossil fuels.
While past lawsuits of this kind have had limited success, the newer cases have yet to be taken up by the courts.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Is santa cruze full of nitwits? What a pile of bull****.
Santa Cruz is a leftist cesspool.
Climate change is frying their brains too.
Sue every citizen with a car......that will work.
Just how much are rising seas worth these days?
Santa Cruz is cool, in the afternoon for an hour or so. The train that goes down the middle of the street, the pier, the beach. Then get out of there before sundown.
It’s utterly filled with thieves, dopers, and crime.
And every oil company should immediately cease all deliveries of fuel to that city.
A forest fire is now a "weather event"? Let me get this straight. A forest fire is "Big Oil's" fault because the forest is dry and dead wood litters the forest floor, because of less rain, because of El Nino, because of global warming, because of oil production into fuel, because when their product is used it creates Carbon Dioxide?
Big Oil should sue for legal fees associated with a frivolous lawsuit.
The insanity is proliferating.
So is Austin, Texas.
That’s true, but not near as bad as Santa Cruz.
Prove it.
Hopefully, this will bankrupt the town.
#metoo, climate change has caused me to suffer brain damage from heat stroke, I want to sue for damages
is that Alinsky ?
Yep.
Couldn’t have anything to do with prohibiting the removal of flammable biomass until it reaches catastrophic proportions. Nah. Not a chance.
This must explain why the US Forest Service has adopted the infamous “Let It Burn Policy” and allowed 9 fies to burn all summer in Oregon with no attempt to suppress , until september when they blew up into major life threatening conflagrations and wiped out tens of thousands of acres of prime timber
Given that these are politically correct lawsuits, along with other frivolous lawsuits they’re compromising the 6th Amendment-right to a speedy trial for bonafide lawsuits imo.
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