In what advocates are calling a “watershed moment” for climate litigation, Rhode Island’s Democratic Attorney General Peter F. Kilmartin announced on Monday that the state has filed a lawsuit against 21 major oil companies—including BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell—”for knowingly contributing to climate change, and causing catastrophic consequences to Rhode Island, our economy, our communities, our residents, our ecosystems.”

“Despite having clear evidence that its products were harming the planet, the fossil fuel industry failed to warn consumers and regulators about the dangers. For this, it must pay.”
—Naomi Ages, Greenpeace

“This lawsuit marks the first in the country filed on behalf of a state and its citizens against Big Oil,” Kilmartin declared. “For a very long time there has been this perception that they, Big Oil, were too big to take on, but here we are—the smallest state, the Ocean State—taking on the biggest, most powerful corporate polluters in the world, because it’s the right thing to do. They need to be held accountable.”

The suit is supported by Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, Reps. Jim Langevin and David Cicilline, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse—all Democrats. Whitehouse, a congressional leader on climate action, commended Kilmartin for “holding some of the world’s most powerful corporations responsible for the damage they’re inflicting on our coastal economy, infrastructure, and way of life.”

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Bill McKibben, cofounder of 350.org, called it a “major” development:

The filing comes on the heels of a similar pair of landmark lawsuits brought by two cities in California, which U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup dismissed last week. Following Kilmartin’s announcement, Richard Wiles, executive director of the Center for Climate Integrity, said the Rhode Island suit “takes climate liability to another level, and puts Judge Alsup’s recent decision in the rearview mirror.”