The county is Multnomah, which is where Portland is. So this type of activist lawsuit is no surprise. It’s amazing to me that officials are spending time and money on this ideological fight instead of focusing on the real problems that affect Portland citizens and businesses every single day such as drug abuse, encampments, property crime, physical assaults, and general blight. It’s also strange, or maybe purposeful, that the city does nothing about political violence in the city, particularly from groups like Rose City Antifa. The city used to be beautiful, safe, and was very attractive, but things have changed and they need to be fixed ASAP.

Regarding the 2021 ‘heat dome’ event - there isn’t convincing science that attributes climate change for that one-off event. The subsequent few years have not had something similar. UW Atmospheric Science professor Cliff Mass wrote about this previously (https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/07/was-global-warming-ca...) and demonstrated that it is most likely a rare event caused by a mix of overlapping factors and not causally linked to climate change. Other studies have claimed in their title or abstract that this event was caused by climate change, but when you read the actual paper, you’ll see them admit that they’re making a probabilistic guess and that it is also possible that it is just a rare event. Unfortunately journalists have recycled those headlines without any critical thought around it.

All that said, I do think there is something to the argument that fossil fuel companies (and many other industries) have been deceitful in their marketing and public campaigns as to the impact of their industry. The plastics industry (which is also fossil fuels driven) also comes to mind. But the reality is that the choice to use fossil fuels is also one made individually, by every citizen. It seems odd to me to try to blame the fossil fuel industry when it’s all of us, and when the real problem is just over consumption (regardless of the material in question).