New York, Jan 11 (IANS): New York City on Wednesday announced that it has filed a lawsuit against the five largest oil companies for contributing to global warming.

"The City will be seeking damages from BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, and Royal Dutch Shell for the billions of dollars the City will spend to protect New Yorkers from the effects of climate change," Xinhua quoted a statement from the mayor's office as saying.

The city alleges the fossil fuel industry was aware for decades that burning fuel was impacting climate change.

"We're bringing the fight against climate change straight to the fossil fuel companies that knew about its effects and intentionally misled the public to protect their profits," New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio said.

"As climate change continues to worsen, it's up to the fossil fuel companies whose greed put us in this position to shoulder the cost of making New York safer and more resilient," he added.

Meanwhile, de Blasio and Comptroller Scott Stringer also announced that they will divest the city's five pension funds of roughly $5 billion in fossil fuel investments out of its total of $189 billion, which would make New York City the first major US pension plan to do so.