In a statement, Ryan Meyers, attorney for American Petroleum Institute, called lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry “meritless” and a “waste of taxpayer resources.”
“The record of the past two decades demonstrates that the industry has achieved its goal of providing affordable, reliable American energy to U.S. consumers while substantially reducing emissions and our environmental footprint,” he said in a statement.
Similarly, Chevron Corporation dismissed the merits of the lawsuit.
“Addressing climate change requires a coordinated international policy response, not meritless local litigation over lawful and essential energy production,” said Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr. of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher.
“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.’”
Bucks County is the first in Pennsylvania to take legal action against the industry. However, there have been more than 1,725 climate lawsuits across the country, according to Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.