President Trump and congressional Republicans have made clear their intention to increase fossil gas firm earnings by increasing drilling and slashing environmental and public well being protections. It’s more and more potential they could attempt to give the business what it needs most of all: immunity from legal responsibility for the big damages these companies have knowingly brought about to folks and the planet. Congress should resist such efforts—whether or not via the upcoming funds course of or as stand-alone laws—and defend the power of states, municipalities, and others harmed by fossil fuel-driven local weather change to carry polluters accountable via litigation and laws.
Final month, the Union of Involved Scientists (UCS) joined with almost 200 different teams in signing a letter calling on Congressional Democrats to “proactively and affirmatively reject” potential efforts geared toward shielding the fossil gas business from authorized legal responsibility. Listed here are six causes main fossil gas companies concern being held accountable for many years of deceit and the ensuing hurt to folks and the planet.
1) Persons are feeling the impacts of local weather change and footing the invoice
The approaching arrival of “Hazard Season” is a stark reminder that local weather change impacts are already devastating communities worldwide, intensifying many varieties of maximum climate occasions, driving sea degree rise, and harming human well being.
The US Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has tracked excessive climate and climate-related disasters, together with hurricanes, wildfires, droughts, and floods. In keeping with NOAA knowledge, 2024 noticed 27 confirmed climate and local weather catastrophe occasions that every brought about damages amounting to $1 billion or extra. The associated fee and lethal results of local weather change fall disproportionately on folks and communities on the entrance traces of these impacts, a lot of them traditionally deprived and under-resourced.
The Trump Administration’s plan to finish local weather analysis at NOAA and the Nationwide Aeronautics and Area Administration (NASA) could be disastrous, as my colleague Dr. Marc Alessi writes. And hiding knowledge and stopping analysis will do nothing to sluggish the local weather disaster. Quite the opposite, burying our heads within the sand will solely put extra lives in danger and improve prices to our financial system.
2) Sturdy attribution science traces local weather impacts to fossil gas companies
Advances in local weather attribution science, which quantifies the extent to which human actions are answerable for noticed modifications within the local weather system, present it’s indeniable that the first driver of those escalating harms is the burning of fossil fuels.
A key hyperlink in quantifying the contributions of main fossil gas corporations to cumulative international emissions is the Carbon Majors database, now run by the UK-based international nonprofit thinktank InfluenceMap.
UCS has been a frontrunner in peer-reviewed scientific analysis linking local weather impacts to emissions that hint on to fossil gas corporations. Analysis groups led by UCS local weather scientists and joined by a wide range of high tutorial skilled collaborators have printed a collection of pathbreaking research quantifying how emissions traced to main fossil gas corporations have pushed will increase in international temperatures, sea degree rise, ocean acidification, and harm from wildfires.
Most just lately, a examine led by former UCS science fellow Dr. Shaina Sadai underscores how emissions traced to the world’s main carbon polluters have all however assured sea degree rise for generations to return. A number of situations display how prevented emissions may have saved lives if polluters had taken motion after they first understood the impacts of their merchandise, or when there was basic international understanding of local weather change.
3) Local weather-related monetary threat is actual
As a substitute of addressing the numerous methods local weather change threatens the nation’s monetary stability, the Trump administration is pulling again safeguards with a view to reward his Massive Oil donors, as my colleague Laura Peterson writes (Heads within the sand, half B).
Main fossil gas corporations have fought onerous to dam necessary and standardized company local weather disclosures, lengthy demanded by buyers. In March 2024, the US Securities and Change Fee (SEC) finalized a regulation that might compel publicly traded corporations to evaluate and report on how local weather change will have an effect on their backside traces and, by extension, buyers and the general public. The fossil gas business and its allies had lobbied towards the rule, weakening the ultimate model to the purpose that corporations are primarily allowed to determine what climate-related dangers they speak in confidence to buyers.
Nonetheless, fossil gas business proxies instantly filed lawsuits towards the rule. Via the US Chamber of Commerce, the business can also be suing to dam two California legal guidelines handed in 2023 to strengthen company local weather disclosures—one in all which requires giant private and non-private US-based companies that do enterprise in California and have annual revenues larger than $1 billion to reveal their international warming emissions all alongside the worth chain. For corporations within the oil and gasoline sector, 80 to 90 % of carbon emissions consequence from the usage of their fossil gas merchandise.
The SEC rule was focused for elimination by a serious oil and gasoline business commerce affiliation. Shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, the SEC requested the courtroom to pause the lawsuits, and in March 2025 the fee voted to withdraw its protection of the rule altogether.
4) Proof of the fossil gas business’s coordinated deception marketing campaign continues to pile up
A mounting physique of proof—bolstered by just lately launched inner company paperwork—demonstrates that main fossil gas corporations have recognized for many years that the continued extraction, manufacturing, promotion, and sale of their merchandise would result in catastrophic penalties, and that motion to push back the disaster would threaten their enterprise mannequin and backside traces.
As a substitute of appearing responsibly, they engaged in a long-term, deliberate disinformation marketing campaign to sow public doubt, block local weather motion, and proceed making the most of fossil gas extraction on the expense of individuals and the planet. These corporations haven’t solely didn’t take accountability for his or her position within the local weather disaster but additionally actively obstructed efforts to transition to a clear vitality future. Most of the techniques they used—usually following the playbook of the tobacco business—are nonetheless being deployed right this moment.
Take, for instance, a confidential inner Shell report from 1998 that outlines a state of affairs set in 2010 through which a collection of violent storms devastate the US east coast, prompting public outrage over the fossil gas business’s position in local weather change. On this state of affairs, insurers deny legal responsibility and a fierce debate erupts over who ought to pay the prices. A coalition of environmental nonprofit teams brings a category motion lawsuit towards the US authorities and fossil gas corporations, on the premise that they’d lengthy didn’t act on warnings from scientists (together with the businesses’ personal) that one thing have to be completed. The state of affairs continues:
“A social response to the usage of fossil fuels grows, and people grow to be ‘vigilante environmentalists’ in the identical manner, a era earlier, they’d grow to be fiercely anti-tobacco. Direct-action campaigns towards corporations escalate. Younger shoppers, particularly, demand motion.”
The timing of this confidential Shell report is notable. In 1998, I used to be working at Company Accountability on its tobacco marketing campaign. Beginning in 1994, US states had begun suing Massive Tobacco to get well the prices of treating folks with tobacco-related sickness. By 1998, Minnesota’s lawsuit went to trial, and the tobacco business sought to settle the litigation. Finally, the Grasp Settlement Settlement with the attorneys basic of 52 states and territories required the 4 largest US tobacco companies to pay lots of of billions of {dollars} in well being care prices; finish sure promoting, promotion and advertising and marketing practices; shut its lobbying arm and fraudulent science arm; and launch tens of millions of pages of inner paperwork.
It appears Shell has lengthy been conscious about the specter of authorized accountability for the harms attributable to its merchandise.
5) Local weather accountability lawsuits and laws are advancing on the state degree
At present, knowledgeable by overwhelming bodily and social science proof, authorized motion towards the fossil gas business is advancing in courts world wide, a part of a rising international motion for local weather justice.
One in 4 folks in the US at present reside in a state, territory, or municipality that’s suing main fossil gas companies to carry them accountable for fraud, local weather damages, or racketeering. The lawsuits contend that—very like the tobacco business in its deception in regards to the risks of cigarettes—fossil gas corporations have lengthy understood the hurt their merchandise trigger and selected to prioritize revenue over folks and the planet.
Individually, a rising variety of US state legislatures are contemplating so-called local weather superfund legal guidelines, which might require the firms answerable for probably the most heat-trapping emissions to assist pay for the rising prices to guard public infrastructure from climate-driven damages. Two states—Vermont and New York—have handed local weather superfund laws.
The fossil gas business has fiercely attacked local weather lawsuits and legislative efforts in courtroom, delaying justice in local weather litigation for years with meritless procedural hurdles and unfounded claims of preemption. However earlier this yr, the US Supreme Courtroom denied two petitions by the fossil gas business and its allies searching for to halt instances by Honolulu and 5 states, affirming their proper to hunt justice in state courts.
The fossil gas business has employed aggressive techniques to rebuff these advances for accountability and money in on political favors. A fossil gas business foyer group launched a public marketing campaign opposing local weather accountability lawsuits, and CEOs of main oil and gasoline companies together with Chevron and ExxonMobil reportedly met with President Trump to ask for his assist preventing each local weather litigation and local weather superfund laws. Simply weeks later, Trump signed an Government Order focusing on states’ rights.
6) Local weather accountability advocates usually are not backing down
The Trump administration’s assaults on local weather and environmental justice applications and advocates are a sign to the fossil gas business and its surrogates that bullying and intimidation are the order of the day.
Final month, a North Dakota jury dominated in favor of Vitality Switch in its long-running meritless Strategic Lawsuit In opposition to Public Participation (SLAPP) towards Greenpeace, discovering the group responsible for greater than $660 million in damages for supporting Indigenous-led resistance to the Dakota Entry Pipeline.
But company accountability campaigners stay steadfast.
Greenpeace entities in the US have introduced their intention to attraction, and Greenpeace Worldwide has filed an anti-SLAPP lawsuit towards Vitality Switch in a Dutch courtroom, searching for to get well all damages and prices ensuing from the company’s meritless litigation.
In the meantime, UCS and different targets of a legal scheme to hack into e mail accounts of workers at public curiosity organizations searching for to carry the fossil gas business accountable for its position in local weather change proceed to push for justice.
We have now recognized for a number of years that ExxonMobil repeatedly used materials stolen via the hack in its protection towards local weather accountability lawsuits in a number of US states. A longtime ExxonMobil lobbying agency, DCI Group, is reportedly being investigated in reference to the scheme, and allegedly shared info stolen via the hacking operation with ExxonMobil earlier than leaking it to the media. ExxonMobil and the DCI Group have thus far publicly denied involvement within the hacking scheme, and there’s no indication that the US authorities intends to convey legal fees towards the DCI Group or ExxonMobil.
UCS continues to press for accountability for the perpetrators of the legal hacking scheme.
And given the mounting human and monetary toll of local weather change and the mountain of proof of the fossil gas business’s deliberate marketing campaign of disinformation, obstruction, and intimidation, no US Senator or Consultant ought to vote to defend this business from dealing with penalties for its deception and the huge ensuing hurt.
