Column: Hold oil, gas companies accountable for Hawaii’s climate change costs

Last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) revealed that 2019 was the hottest year on record in Hawaii, and we know that increasing temperatures pose risks to public health, especially among vulnerable residents.

Declining rainfall threatens our fresh water supplies, and when the rains do come they increasingly come in “rainbombs” that overwhelm our storm water infrastructure and flood our communities. A warming ocean is bleaching our coral reefs that protect us from storm surge, and sea-level rise robs our beaches and overwhelms our roads — especially on the windward side of our island.

These consequences of climate change were forced onto us by oil and gas companies who — we now know — had knowledge as far back as the 1960s that their products were incredibly dangerous and would lead us into crisis. They had a responsibility to minimize the danger, or at least to warn us about it.

Instead, they did the opposite.

Starting about 30 years ago, these companies mounted an aggressive and sophisticated campaign of disinformation and deception, denying the danger their products pose and preventing any regulation attempts that would have impacted their profits.

Tragically, it worked. Public understanding around climate change became increasingly confused, and sound science was undermined and politicized. A recent study by a national taxpayer protection group found that just four big oil companies made nearly $2 trillion in profits during that period. Yet now, they and other fossil fuel companies expect the rest of us to pay the enormous costs of dealing with the danger they willingly brought to our shores.

That is why we filed a lawsuit in Hawaii Circuit Court last week — to hold these companies accountable for mounting costs that they knew for decades would land in our lap. We may be a small island community, but we are standing up and fighting back. We will make our case before a judge and jury, to shift those costs back where they belong — on the companies who lied to us about the catastrophic dangers associated with their products. Oahu should not have to pay the bill to clean up the mess those companies knowingly left us.

Big Tobacco claimed that cigarettes didn’t cause cancer. Big Pharma pushed opioids despite knowing that addiction would result. But Big Oil’s decision to deceive is by far the most devastating to our shared future and our kids.

We expect the oil and gas industry to continue their deception campaign, to mischaracterize the intentions behind our lawsuit, to attack the individuals involved, and to try to convince the public that “everyone is to blame” for the consequences of climate change. That is because they want “everyone” else, and not them, to pay the sky-high costs of weathering the climate storm of their making.

As we stated in our court filing: “Defendants’ wrongful conduct as set forth herein was committed with actual malice. Defendants had actual knowledge that their products were defective and dangerous, and acted with conscious disregard for the probable dangerous consequences of their conduct’s and products’ foreseeable impact upon the rights of others, including the City and its residents.”

Holding oil and gas companies accountable for that behavior is what this lawsuit is all about. We are not alone. Cities and counties across the continent, the state of Rhode Island, and even a fishermen’s trade association, are taking this same fight to the fossil fuel industry, and for the same reason: to protect our people, our property, our city budget, and our local economy.

Kirk Caldwell is the mayor of Honolulu; Joey Manahan is a City Councilman and Budget Committee chairman.