An excavator removes contaminated soil from around Duke Energy's decommissioned coal-fired Dan River Steam Station in Eden, NC, near Carrboro, in 2016. Two years earlier, Duke had been responsible for one of the worst coal ash spills in US history. Gerry Broome/AP

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A small North Carolina town has launched the nation’s first-ever climate accountability lawsuit against an electric utility.

The litigation, filed by officials from Carrboro, North Carolina, on Wednesday morning, accuses Duke Energy of waging a “deception campaign” to obscure the climate dangers of fossil fuels. Those efforts resulted in delayed action to curb planet-heating pollution, which has pushed up the costs of climate action today, the lawsuit says.

“When you’re dealing with something like the existential threat of climate change, that requires us to make bold moves,” said Carrboro’s mayor, Barbara Foushee, who helped bring the suit.

The litigation follows a November report from the non-profit research group Energy and Policy Institute, which found some of the utility companies that comprise today’s Duke Energy Corporation—including Duke Power, Carolina Power & Light, and Public Service Indiana—were cautioned about the climate crisis decades ago.

“Although Duke has understood the dangers of climate change for decades, the company actively........

© Mother Jones