City of Oakland v. BP P.L.C.

325 F. Supp. 3d 1017
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. California
DecidedJune 25, 2018
DocketNo. C 17-06011 WHA; No. C 17-06012 WHA
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 325 F. Supp. 3d 1017 (City of Oakland v. BP P.L.C.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. California primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
City of Oakland v. BP P.L.C., 325 F. Supp. 3d 1017 (N.D. Cal. 2018).

Opinion

William Alsup, United States District Judge *1019INTRODUCTION

In these "global warming" actions asserting claims for public nuisance, defendants move to dismiss for failure to state a claim. For the following reasons, the motion is GRANTED .

STATEMENT

These actions arise out of a vital function of our atmosphere-its thermostat function-that is, keeping the temperature of our planet within a habitable range. The atmosphere hosts water vapor and certain trace gases without which heat at Earth's surface would excessively radiate into space, leaving our planet too cold for life. One of those trace gases is carbon dioxide, a gas produced by, among other things, animal and human respiration, volcanoes and, more significantly here, combustion of fossil fuels like oil and natural gas. As heat radiates skyward, some of it passes close enough to molecules of carbon dioxide to be absorbed. These molecules then re-radiate the energy in all directions, including back toward Earth's surface. The more carbon dioxide in the air, the more this absorption and re-radiation process warms the surface. It turns out that even trace amounts of carbon dioxide in the air suffice to warm the atmosphere.1

The science dates back 120 years. In 1896, building on the findings by Irish scientist (and mountaineer) John Tyndall that carbon dioxide absorbed heat (whereas oxygen and nitrogen did not), Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius published calculations that connected increases in the air's carbon dioxide with increased global temperatures. Arrhenius, however, had no concern over global warming. Rather, his focus remained solving the mystery of the ice ages and their causes (Amd. Compls. ¶ 76; Svante Arrhenius, On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air Upon the Temperature of the Ground , 41 Phil. Mag. & J. Sci. 237 (1896) ).2

In 1938, scientist Guy Stewart Callendar published graphs plotting the warming of Earth using temperature records from around the world. One graph showed a 0.07 Centigrade rise in the mean temperatures of the planet from 1910 to 1930, while another showed a six to eight-percent rise in carbon dioxide in the air over the same period. Given Tyndall's earlier finding, Callendar concluded that one rise had caused the other, namely that more carbon dioxide had trapped more heat and caused the temperature to rise. Callendar, like Arrhenius, was not alarmed over the possibility of global warming. Guy S. Callendar, The Artificial Production of Carbon Dioxide and Its Influence on Temperature , 64 Q. J. Royal Meteorological Soc'y 223 (1938).

In 1957, oceanographer Roger Revelle and chemist Hans Suess published a critique of a then prevailing view that the *1020oceans would absorb excessive airborne carbon dioxide and thus reduce the risk of an atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide. Referring to the ongoing combustion of fossil fuels and release of carbon dioxide, they concluded: "[h]uman beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future" (Amd. Compls. ¶ 77).

Revelle later obtained funding to measure the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, arranging for scientist Charles David Keeling to reside on Mauna Loa in Hawaii to measure and graph the real-time concentrations of carbon dioxide. This project produced the famous Keeling Curve, a graph that shows a steady rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, year after year, like clockwork (id. ¶ 78; see also NOAA, EARTH SYSTEMS RESEARCH LABORATORY , GLOBAL MONITORING DIVISION , https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/full.html (last visited June 15, 2018) ).

From this brief history up to the Sixties, it would be wrong to conclude that scientists had sounded alarm bells for global warming. Arrhenius was more concerned with global cooling than warming. Revelle said a large-scale, one-time experiment was in progress, but he sounded no alarm bells at the time.

But alarm bells over climate change eventually did sound. In 1988, the United Nations established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ("IPCC"). Its main objective was to prepare-based on the best available scientific information-periodic assessments regarding all aspects of climate change, with a view of formulating realistic response strategies. The IPCC had three working groups: Working Group I assessed the scientific aspects of climate change, Working Group II assessed the vulnerability and adaptation of socioeconomic and natural systems to climate change, and Working Group III assessed the mitigation options for limiting greenhouse gas emissions (Amd. Compls. ¶¶ 82-86).

The IPCC completed its first assessment report in 1990. The report made a persuasive case for anthropogenic interference with the climate system, and each subsequent report (about five to six years apart) incorporated advancements in measurements, observations, and modeling-and each presented a more precise picture of how our climate has changed, and what has changed it. The fifth assessment report, released in 2013, was abundantly clear:

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades and millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased.

The report was also clear as to the cause, stating that it was "extremely likely" that "human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century" (ibid. ).3

The science acknowledges that causes beyond the burning of fossil fuels are also at work. Deforestation has been and remains a significant contributor to the rise in carbon dioxide. Others include volcanoes and wildfires in greater numbers. Nevertheless, even acknowledging these other contributions, climate scientists are in vast consensus that the combustion of fossil *1021fuels has, in and of itself, materially increased carbon dioxide levels, which in turn has materially increased the median temperature of the planet, which in turn has accelerated ice melt and raised (and continues to raise) the sea level.

In sum, in the last 120 years, the amount of carbon dioxide (and methane) in the air has increased, with most of the increase having come in recent decades. During that time, the median temperature of Earth has increased 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Glaciers around the world have been shrinking. Ice sheets over Greenland and Antarctica have been melting. The sea level has risen by about seven centimeters since 1993 (about seven to eight inches since 1900). As our globe warms and the seas rise, coastal lands in Oakland and San Francisco will, without erection of seawalls and other infrastructure, eventually become submerged by the navigable waters of the United States (id. ¶¶ 86-90, 124-36).

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325 F. Supp. 3d 1017, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/city-of-oakland-v-bp-plc-cand-2018.