Having grown up roughly 30 miles from downtown Chicago, many wonderful times are etched in my memory, from late-summer Cubs games at Wrigley Field with the outfield walls covered in ivy to Lake Shore Drive and Navy Pier to Bears' games at Soldier Field, to dinners in Greektown.
Those days are gone.
According to Chicago Police Department data, the Windy City recorded 617 murders and 2,450 shootings in 2023, with its murder rate recorded at five times that of New York City — and the bloody band plays on.
Following a crime-riddled four years as Chicago's first black female mayor, besieged Lori Lightfoot resoundingly lost her reelection bid on February 28, 2023, only to be replaced by current Mayor Brandon Johnson, who is arguably far worse — and even more out of touch with reality — in the job than was Lightfoot.
So, just two months into 2024, what does the Democrat mayor decide to do?
What any Democrat politician worth his or her weight in hypocrisy does: deflect. Yep, deflect from his city's real problems of runaway crime and a substandard public education system. And what better target? "Climate change."
More specifically, according to Chicago officials, "climate deception" — including "climate destruction" and "climate fraud." Here's more, via the Chicago Sun-Times:
Chicago is suing five of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, accusing them of lying about their products and the dangers of climate change that contributes to flooding, extreme heat, and other destructive forces that hurt the city and its residents.
Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration filed a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court Tuesday that names BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, and Shell, accusing the companies of discrediting science and misleading the public as the climate crisis continued to wreak havoc on the planet.
The city is also suing the trade group American Petroleum Institute, which it accuses of conspiring with the companies to deceive consumers through disinformation campaigns even as the industry acknowledged internally that climate change was real.
Shocked? Neither was I. The lawsuit contends:
The climate change impacts that Chicago has faced and will continue to face — including more frequent and intense storms, flooding, droughts, extreme heat events, and shoreline erosion — are felt throughout every part of the city and disproportionately in low-income communities.
The complaint cites the more than 700 deaths in the summer of 1995 during a four-day heat wave as evidence that climate change disproportionately affects low-income communities.
While I can't comment definitively on this specific claim, I do have the common sense to know a thing or two about the potential dangers associated with weather extremes — be they hot or cold — and the lack of air conditioning or adequate heat, as well as the sufficient intake of water and nourishment. But to go back nearly 30 years and blame a heatwave on climate change? A bit of a stretch, in my opinion.
Nevertheless, Johnson said in a statement:
There is no justice without accountability. From the unprecedented poor air quality that we experienced last summer to the basement floodings that our residents on the West Side experienced, the consequences of this crisis are severe, as are the costs of surviving them. That is why we are seeking to hold these Defendants accountable.
Ald. Matt Martin (47th Ward) said in a statement that the "pursuit of endless profits" is more important to Big Oil than public safety.
These companies knowingly deceived Chicago consumers in their endless pursuit of profits. As a result of their conduct, Chicago is enduring extreme heat and precipitation, flooding, sewage flows into Lake Michigan, damage to city infrastructure, and more.
That all comes with enormous costs. But both the facts, and the law, are on our side, and we intend to shift those costs back where they belong: on the companies whose deceptive conduct brought us the climate crisis.
OK hold the bus. Even if one accepts the alderman's charge that oil companies are all about endless profits, what have those companies done to create extreme heat, and other such ridiculous assertions? (Zero)
And not to nitpick, but the facts and the law are not on Chicago's side.
Mark Denzler, president and CEO of the Illinois Manufacturers' Association, said manufacturers are taking a leading role in combating climate change.
Illinois manufacturers (and nationally) are addressing climate change. We’ve reduced emissions more than any other sector since 1990. This has been litigated again and again around the country, and when these lawsuits have been filed, they’ve been unsuccessful.
Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr. of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, counsel for Chevron Corporation, said in a statement that addressing “climate change requires a coordinated international policy response, not meritless local litigation over lawful and essential energy production,” adding:
As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held in dismissing a similar New York City lawsuit, ‘such a sprawling case is simply beyond the limits of state law.
API general counsel and Senior Vice President Ryan Meyers said in a statement that over the past two decades, the oil and gas industry has worked to reduce emissions and its environmental footprint.
This ongoing, coordinated campaign to wage meritless, politicized lawsuits against a foundational American industry and its workers is nothing more than a distraction from important national conversations and an enormous waste of taxpayer resources.
Climate policy “is for Congress to debate and decide," Meyers said, "not a patchwork of city halls and courts.”
The Bottom Line
Whatever the eventual outcome of the lawsuit, it will likely take multiple years and untold millions of dollars — money that Chicago likely doesn't have — to settle.
According to Pat Parenteau, professor of law emeritus at Vermont Law and Graduate School, “Chicago is signing up for many, many years of litigation. Ten years is my estimate — if they get to the goal line and prove billions of dollars in damages.”
Meanwhile, my old stomping grounds continue to face out-of-control murder rates and other violent crimes that I would have never anticipated more years ago than I'll admit.
But, hey — tilting at windmills is the coin of the realm of the Democrat Party in 21st-century America.
Related:
Young People Don't Actually Give a Damn About Climate Change, Poll Finds
'The Evidence Is Overwhelming': UN Wants $2.7 Billion to Help Migrants 'Displaced by Climate Change'
