Officials in New York City on Wednesday announced a lawsuit against five major oil companies over infrastructure damage caused by climate change and plans to divest roughly $5 billion in fossil fuel investments from the city’s five pension funds. The announcement from Mayor Bill de Blasio came roughly a week after the Democrat was inaugurated for a second term. It marks his strongest action yet to address global warming and its associated sea-level rise, which devastated the city with massive flooding during Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
At a press conference Wednesday, de Blasio said that while there may have been climate change deniers in New York City before Sandy, he doubts there were any left afterward. The world, he said, is facing a “painful, horrible reality” and the city will “no longer participate in a system that endangers our very own people.”