Mayor Bill de Blasio, accompanied by a phalanx of elected officials and climate activists, came to Manhattan Youth’s Downtown Community Center in Tribeca on Wednesday afternoon to announce a pair of initiatives that aim to combat the effects of climate change.
First, he announced that the City had filed suit in federal court on Tuesday evening, seeking billions of dollars in damages from five major oil companies. (The defendants in this suit are ExxonMobil, BP, ConocoPhillips, Shell, and Chevron.) Second, the Mayor reported that the City will soon begin the process of divesting billions of dollars in securities associated with business that contribute to climate change held by municipal pension funds.
Recalling 2012’s Hurricane Sandy, Mr. de Blasio said, “the storm took 44 lives and inflicted $19 billion in damage in a matter of hours. This was a tragedy that was wrought by the actions of the fossil-fuel companies. It hit home here in New York City and it was devastating. Today we talk about how we break that cycle — about how we will no longer participate in a system that endangers our people. And we’re going after those who have profited.”
“What a horrible, disgusting way to profit,” the Mayor said of the oil companies named in the City’s suit. “It’s time that they are held accountable.” He said of the Downtown Community Center, “this building bore the brunt. Even though there were steel doors and sand bags and all sorts of protection, this building was left with 20 feet of standing water. It took years to fix the damage in just this one building.”
The day after Sandy, the Downtown Community Center begins pumping out the water
“This is a fight we’re in the middle of right now,” the Mayor continued. “We’re fighting for our lives and we can’t depend on anyone else to do it for us. New York City is standing up and saying we will take our own action to to protect our people. We’re not waiting. We’re using our tools, our power.”
“When we act,” he predicted, “others will follow, because they see the biggest city in this country decisively moving forward.”
“The City is taking on these five giants,” he added, in a reference to the oil companies named in the suit, “because they are the central actors responsible for this crisis and they should not get away with it any more. We are seeking billions of dollars in damages to protect us against extreme weather and rising seas, and to fortify New York City against future storms.”
“Sandy may have been seen as an act of God, but it didn’t happen by accident,” he reflected. “For decades, Big Oil ravaged the environment. Big Oil copied Big Tobacco. They used a classic, cynical playbook. They denied and denied and denied that their product was lethal. Meanwhile, they spent a lot of time hooking society on that lethal product. Think about how cynical and dangerous that is — knowing the damage that was being caused, having all the evidence in the world. And yet, using all the tools at their disposal to deepen the crisis for their own profit.”
“Were they punished for these destructive actions?” he asked rhetorically. “No — they were rewarded to the tune of trillions of dollars. Today, the nation’s biggest city says ‘no more.’ It’s time for them to start paying for the damage they’ve done. It’s time for Big Oil to take responsibility for the devastation they have wrought.”
The Mayor’s presentation was followed by City Comptroller Scott Stringer, who said, “an old saying tells us, ‘we do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.’ When I look at my two young sons, I think about the world they will grow up in. We want to leave a green, clean Earth, for all of our kids.”
But, the Comptroller added, “NASA says our planet is warming at a pace unprecedented in the last thousand years. There is more CO2 in the atmosphere today than at any point in the last 400,000 years. Experts put the potential economic losses in America as a direct result of climate change to be hundreds of billions of dollars. And a study released last year says that New York will see massive flooding every five years by 2030 because of rising sea levels.”
For this reason, Mr. Stringer said, “we’re setting a formal goal to divest from fossil fuels. Tomorrow, the Mayor and I will submit a joint resolution to the trustees of the New York City pension system to begin analyzing the path forward to our ultimate aim of divesting from fossil fuel companies.” He estimated that such a program would take several years to implement, and noted that the City has some $5 billion invested in shares of more than 190 companies that contribute in some way to global warming. “We’re going to get New York City pension funds into the business of making our planet greener and cleaner,” he said.
After a series of speeches and presentations, the floor was opened to questions. The first query was about the amount of damages sought by the City’s litigation, and, “if you recover that amount tomorrow, does it become general revenue, or is it going to be set aside exclusively for remediation in communities like this one?” Mr. de Blasio, answered, “no, we have not specified an amount. By definition, it would be in the billions. But the focus is on addressing the impact of climate change, and protecting ourselves going forward. We have a $20-billion plan already underway, but we know the need is much greater than that. So that would be the focus of any damages we receive.”
Given that both the lawsuit and the divestment process appear likely to take years, the Mayor was asked, “you mentioned that this building flooded, and with hundred-year storms coming every five years, this building and this community might get swamped at least twice more because there a successful outcome on either of these fronts. Is there a renewed emphasis or push in the nearer-term?” Mr. de Balsio replied, “the $20-billion plan that we are undertaking is the best tool that we have in the here and now. That’s been moving steadily all over the five boroughs and it has made us safer than we were five years ago. Are we where we need to be? No. We have a lot more to do. I would also argue that at the end of that $20 billion, we’re going to have to do a lot more. What should be happening now, separate from everything we are discussing here, there should be a federal vision for protecting coastal America. That’s a real simple idea. The federal government should be investing to protect the places where a huge percentage of the population lives. But there is not even the beginning of a federal plan to protect coastal America. How many horrible storms have ravaged huge swaths of the American population, without even the semblance of a proactive federal response? We need to fight for that. Bluntly, I think it’s going to take some changes in the federal dynamic to get us to that. But we’ll fight for it either way.”
One questioner noted that, “in terms of this resembling the tobacco litigation, there’s an unfortunate precedent that once those judgements came in, many states that were party to the settlement, became dependent on the anticipated revenue that was coming from it. And on some level, they were in bed with the tobacco companies, because they needed them to remain viable. If $20 billion is going to come from Big Oil, will the City ever be in the morally hazardous position of wishing them well enough they will still be around to pay off in years to come?
The Mayor replied, “morally, we know exactly how we feel about what these companies have done to the earth. It is well documented. I don’t ever want to see this City feel that kind of dependency. First, they should make up for what they’ve done to us. Second, the real solution for us, and for so many other places in the country, is for a federal vision to address the issue. There’s no private source of funding that possibly replaces an actual federal plan with real resources.”