Chicago, February 23 (RHC)-- The U.S. city of Chicago is suing six oil and gas giants, as well as an industry trade group, which “funded, conceived, planned, and carried out a sustained and widespread campaign of denial and disinformation about the existence of climate change and their products’ contribution to it.” 

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson filed the lawsuit this week against ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell, ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66 and the American Petroleum Institute.  The suit lays out the climate crisis impacts faced by Chicago, including more frequent and intense storms, flooding, droughts, extreme heat waves and shoreline erosion. 

Chicago joins eight other states, the District of Columbia and multiple municipalities across the U.S. that have filed similar lawsuits against Big Oil over their role in exacerbating the climate crisis.

In related news, in Washington, D.C., climate activists disrupted an event with Montana Governor Greg Gianforte, condemning his policies promoting coal extraction and exacerbating the climate crisis.

One Climate Defiance activist shouted: “We will not stand to sit here and listen to governors talk about things that do not concern us when the pressing concerns are coming in on all sides.  We deserve a livable future.  His children deserve a livable future.  All the children of America and of the world deserve a livable future.”

The governor was forced to leave the event after the activists took to the stage.  Among other things, Gianforte enacted a law last year barring Montana from calculating the climate impacts of major projects.