Suing over climate change: Taking fossil fuel companies to court

If climate change were a disaster film, it would likely be accused of being too over-the-top: wildfires reducing entire towns to ashes, hurricanes swamping cities, droughts draining lakes and withering fields, and raging oceans redrawing the very maps of our coasts. And now, many cities and states are asking, who's going to pay for all of this?

"This is real; we're on the front line of climate change right here in Charleston," said John Tecklenburg, the mayor of Charleston, South Carolina. The city's been battered by an endless parade of floods due to sea level rise. Some desperate homeowners have resorted to raising their homes by several feet.

"In the next 50 years we'll see another two to three feet of sea level rise," Tecklenburg said. "The water is our greatest asset; it has also become our biggest challenge."