Latest reports suggest that a small North Carolina town has launched the nation’s first-ever climate accountability lawsuit against an electric utility.
Filed by officials from Carrboro, North Carolina, on Wednesday morning, the litigation accuses Duke Energy of waging a “deception campaign” to obscure the climate dangers of fossil fuels. Those efforts resulted in delayed action to curb planet-heating pollution, which has pushed up the costs of climate action today, the lawsuit says.
“When you’re dealing with something like the existential threat of climate change, that requires us to make bold moves,” said Carrboro’s mayor, Barbara Foushee, who helped bring the suit.
The litigation follows a November report from the non-profit research group Energy and Policy Institute, which found some of the utility companies that comprise today’s Duke Energy Corporation – including Duke Power, Carolina Power & Light, and Public Service Indiana – were cautioned about the climate crisis decades ago.
“Although Duke has understood the dangers of climate change for decades, the company actively participated in a far-reaching, decades-long campaign to deceive the public and decision-makers about these dangers,” the suit says.
In 1969, the lawsuit says, officials from utilities now owned by Duke attended a meeting of the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group, where they were informed that scientists believed increasing carbon emissions would be a “long-term problem of major consequence”.
Read also: Climate 200 : Ad campaign comparing Dutton to Trump sees donations increase by $380,000
The same trade group in 1984 commissioned a study that included two hypothetical news stories from the future – one in which fossil fuel emissions continued unabated and caused devastating impacts, and another in which emissions were reined in and a safer future was secured, the lawsuit says.
Despite these warnings, Duke continued to build out fossil fuel infrastructure, oppose legal limits to planet-heating pollution and back efforts to promote doubt about climate science, according to the suit.
In 1991, the lawsuit says, the Edison Electric Institute placed newspaper advertisements with the message: “How much are you willing to pay to solve a problem that may not exist?” Duke maintained its membership in the institute.
“They tried to sow confusion about climate change and the fact that there’s a threat that we face in the future,” said Howard Crystal, legal director of the Energy Justice Program at the non-profit Center for Biological Diversity, who is advising the plaintiffs on the case.
The deception continues to be a problem today, now in the form of “greenwashing”, said Crystal.
On social media, Duke has portrayed itself as a leader in bringing on “cleaner energy solutions” despite having one of the largest planned gas buildouts of any company in the US.
“They’re still expanding fossil fuels and suppressing renewables – in flat defiance of scientists demanding that we do the exact opposite,” said Jim Warren, executive director of local non-profit NC Warn, in a statement.
According to one study, Duke Energy in 2021 had the third-largest emissions footprint of any business in the United States.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
