Marshall Fire from Broomfield, Colorado, 6:00 p.m. MST on 12/30/2021. Credit: NOAA/NWS Boulder
By Elliott Negin
Four years ago, Boulder, Colorado sued ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy — owner of the state’s only oil refinery — for climate change damages and adaptation expenses. Boulder and its co-plaintiffs, Boulder County and San Miguel County, where Telluride is located, have estimated that damage from extreme weather events will cost them more than $100 million by 2050.
In the end, they overestimated the duration and underestimated the price.
Video of Marshall Fire from NWS Boulder at approximately 11:55 AM MST on 12/30/2021. Credit: NOAA/NWS Boulder
In late December, the Marshall Fire devastated Boulder County, devastating more than 6,000 acres and incinerating more than 1,000 homes and seven commercial buildings at an expected cost of $1 billion, making it the fire the Colorado’s most destructive in terms of property loss.
The Marshall Fire was not the only — or even the largest — in Colorado since the three communities filed their lawsuit, which is still pending in state court. In fact, four of Colorado’s five largest fires by area have occurred since then, ranging from 108,000 to nearly 209,000 acres.
ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy, a company based in Alberta, Canada, have a large carbon footprint in Colorado.
ExxonMobil has produced more than a million barrels of oil from Colorado fields, according to the Colorado Communities Complaint, and its subsidiary XTO Energy is currently producing 60 million cubic feet of natural gas per day from 492,000 acres. in the county of Rio Blanco. There are also 95 Exxon and Mobil gas stations in the state. In total, the company’s production and transportation operations in Colorado were responsible for more than 420,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions between 2011 and 2015, according to the complaint.
Meanwhile, Suncor’s US headquarters is based in Denver, and its oil refinery, which produces 98,000 barrels of refined oil per day, is less than 5 miles from downtown. Suncor gas stations, which sell Shell, Exxon and Mobil-branded products, supply about 35% of the gasoline and 55% of the diesel sold in the state, according to a 2016 Denver Business Journal article. complaint, Suncor’s operations in Colorado were responsible for about 1 million metric tons of carbon emissions in 2016 alone, equivalent to the annual production of more than 217,000 typical passenger vehicles.
Colorado communities argue that ExxonMobil and Suncor knew their products were causing global warming as far back as 1968, when a report commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade association for the U.S. oil and gas industry, highlighted guard against the threat that burning fossil fuels posed to the climate. Either way, ExxonMobil and Suncor not only continued to produce and market fossil fuel products without disclosing the risks, community complaints, but they also engaged in a decades-long disinformation campaign. to create doubt about the reality and seriousness of climate change.
“The defendants’ actions have already caused or contributed to rising temperatures in Colorado,” the lawsuit states. “Colorado saw average temperatures rise 2.5 degrees [Fahrenheit] over the last 50 years, with more than one 2nd degree [Fahrenheit] rising since 1983.” Those higher temperatures extended what was a four-month fire season in the western states to six to eight months, or even year-round, according to the US Forest Service. Wildfires are starting earlier, burning more intensely and destroying larger tracts of land than ever before.
The three plaintiffs want ExxonMobil and Suncor to pay “their share” of the damages caused by their “intentional, reckless and negligent conduct.” This share could amount to billions of dollars to help cover the cost of an increasing number of heat waves, wildfires, droughts, intense rainfall and floods.
Boulder’s trial in April 2018 was not the first U.S. climate-related case against the fossil fuel industry. New York City and eight coastal cities and counties in California, including San Francisco and Oakland, had previously filed similar lawsuits against ExxonMobil and other oil and gas companies, seeking compensation for damages to their communities. To date, at least 27 states, counties and cities have sued major fossil fuel companies for fraud or climate-related damage, or both — and with good reason. The cost of climate change-related disasters continues to climb.
Indeed, the Marshall Fire was just one of 20 climate and weather disasters in 2021 that caused at least $1 billion in damage, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, just two shy of the record. from 22 in 2020 and much more. than the average of 6.3 large-scale disasters in the United States per year between 2000 and 2009. In total, last year’s billion-dollar disasters resulted in $145 billion in damages – 52% of more than in 2020 – and 688 deaths. The common denominator of these growing numbers? Climate change.
“The fingerprints of climate change were all over many of the billion-dollar events that hit the United States in 2021,” says Rachel Licker, senior climatologist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “We’re basically watching long-standing climate projections from the past come true.”
This article was produced by Earth | Food | Lifea project of the Independent Media Institute.
Originally published by the Union of Concerned Scientists, The Equation.
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