Multnomah County, home to Portland, joins more than two dozen other cities and counties across the nation that are suing fossil fuel firms for their perceived role in causing climate change.
The county is asking for $50 billion in actual damages and $1.5 billion in future damages.
It also wants the defendants to contribute an estimated $50 billion to “study, plan, and upgrade the public health care services and infrastructure to ‘weatherproof’ the county from future extreme heat events and to safeguard the public health,” according to the suit.
Some of the measures would include expanding health care and emergency services, adding insulation and HVAC systems to buildings, tearing out asphalt, and planting more trees.
The suit does not explain how these upgrades could occur without using fossil fuels in manufacturing, shipping, or construction.
“At the core, this lawsuit is about fairness and accountability for these giant oil companies who have record profits, who have known about the damage that their products do to our environment, and who have been using pseudoscience, disinformation, and outright lies for decades,” wrote Multnomah County chair Jessica Vega Pederson on a county web page.
But some in the Oregon media are questioning the county’s motives in filing the suit.
Assigning Blame for the Heat Dome
The suit was filed in June 2022 in the Multnomah County Circuit Court in Portland, and alleges that carbon pollution played a significant factor in causing the 2021 Pacific Northwest Heat Dome, which it describes as “one of the most deadly and destructive human-made weather disasters in American history.”
During that three-day event in June 2021, temperatures in the area reached 116° Farenheit. That’s more than 30° F above the daily average in the region and higher than any other day in the country’s recorded history.
“There was nothing ‘natural' about the heat dome, or about the wildfires,” wrote Multnomah County commissioner Susheela Jayapal. “There was also nothing inevitable about them. They were caused by climate change, and they were preventable.”
But the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Climatehub is not so certain.
“The dome was caused by a high-pressure system,” it stated on its website.
“The high-pressure system blocked the cooling marine winds … allowing the sun to continue to warm the air and land surface. As it got hotter, warm air rose and was pushed back down to the high-pressure system, further heating the air.”
ClimateHub claims that “analysis from one scientific study shows that climate change played a role.”
“The warming of 1.2 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times increased the possibility of an event this extreme occurring,” it said.
The extreme heat of the climate dome is blamed for the deaths of 69 people in the county and 800 people across Washington and Oregon.
Multnomah County places the blame on 17 companies named in the suit, including Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, Motiva, Occidental Petroleum, and Anadarko Petroleum.
The plaintiffs are also suing industry groups, including the American Petroleum Institute and the Western States Petroleum Association.
“These businesses knew their products were unsafe and harmful, and they lied about it,” wrote Ms. Pederson. “They have profited massively from their lies and left the rest of us to suffer the consequences and pay for the damages.”
Pederson wants a quick end to the use of fossil fuels.
The Battle Lines Are Drawn
As a member of the Oregon State Legislature, Pederson championed the Clean Electricity and Coal Transition Act, a first-of-its-kind law to eliminate coal from Oregon’s energy mix.
That act earned her a Distinguished Service Award from the Sierra Club in 2015.
She spearheaded the county’s resolution to commit to 100 percent clean electricity by 2035 and 100 percent clean transportation by 2050. She also has pushed for bans on natural gas hookups in new construction, moved to ban gas-powered leaf blowers, and wants to take on wood stove heat.
Pederson and fellow commissioner Lori Stegmann are both members of the Center for Climate Integrity, which asserts that oil companies have sought to hide evidence of climate change from the public for decades.
“We are confident that, once we show what the fossil fuel companies knew about global warming and when, and what they did to deny, delay and deceive the public, the jury will not let the fossil fuel companies get away with their reckless misconduct,” wrote attorney for the plaintiff, Roger Worthington, a partner at Worthington & Caron.
Meanwhile, an attorney for Chevron responded to the lawsuit, calling it “unconstitutional and counterproductive.” An ExxonMobile statement called the suit a “waste of time and resources that does nothing to address climate change.”
Media Questions Multnomah’s Motives
Many in the Oregon media claim that the county is suing to shift blame for its botched response to the extreme heat event.
“Despite forecasts warning of intense heat, Multnomah County opened only five of its 19 neighborhood libraries—the free, air-conditioned refuges that residents often seek to escape summer temperatures—at the start of the heat wave,” wrote The Oregonian editorial board on June 25.
The heat dome occurred the year after voters approved a county-backed $300 million library tax bond.
“It was not until the second day of triple-digit temperatures that officials recognized the urgency of the heat wave should outweigh their overcautious COVID-19 practices, leading them to open four more branches,” according to The Oregonian.
The high that day, according to the county’s lawsuit, was 112° F.
“The county got its flush of library cash, hoarded its empty, air-conditioned libraries, and [now] proceeds to blame oil companies,” wrote the Taxpayers Association of Oregon in Oregon Catalyst on June 28.
Many other public recreation areas were also closed to the public at the same time, it added.
“Portland Parks and Recreation still has not reopened the community arts centers closed because of COVID-19, even though the City Council approved a $22 million loan to restart the program five months ago,” according to The Portland Tribune on July 21, 2021.
“Most of the centers are air conditioned and could have provided relief…”
“Neither Multnomah County nor Portland wanted to open their air-conditioned public recreation buildings to house heat-wave victims,” added the Taxpayers Association.
The county is also faulted for creating a heat-wave hotline, but failing to get the word out or to properly staff it. More than 750 calls for help were made but never answered.
The problems with governance continued the following summer.
After the heat dome, county officials pledged to provide air conditioners for those in need. But when a heat wave hit in 2022, they had not done so.
“The city’s new voter-approved clean energy program had millions of dollars on hand at the start of the year to buy thousands of energy-efficient cooling units but only finalized agreements with its local nonprofit distribution partners in May,” The Oregonian reported on July 31, 2022.
The units were not distributed until July. Temperatures reached 99° F in June.
Lawyers for Multnomah County say it could take at least a decade for its case to be resolved.
