President Trump and congressional Republicans have made clear their intention to enhance fossil gasoline firm earnings by increasing drilling and slashing environmental and public well being protections. It’s more and more doable they might attempt to give the trade what it needs most of all: immunity from legal responsibility for the large damages these firms have knowingly prompted to individuals and the planet. Congress should resist such efforts—whether or not by means of the upcoming funds course of or as stand-alone laws—and shield the flexibility of states, municipalities, and others harmed by fossil fuel-driven local weather change to carry polluters accountable by means of 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 gasoline trade from authorized legal responsibility. Listed here are six causes main fossil gasoline firms worry being held accountable for many years of deceit and the ensuing hurt to individuals and the planet.
1) Individuals are feeling the impacts of local weather change and footing the invoice
The upcoming arrival of “Hazard Season” is a stark reminder that local weather change impacts are already devastating communities worldwide, intensifying many sorts 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 response to NOAA knowledge, 2024 noticed 27 confirmed climate and local weather catastrophe occasions that every prompted damages amounting to $1 billion or extra. The associated fee and lethal results of local weather change fall disproportionately on individuals and communities on the entrance strains of these impacts, lots of them traditionally deprived and under-resourced.
The Trump Administration’s plan to finish local weather analysis at NOAA and the Nationwide Aeronautics and House Administration (NASA) can 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) Strong attribution science traces local weather impacts to fossil gasoline firms
Advances in local weather attribution science, which quantifies the extent to which human actions are chargeable for noticed adjustments 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 gasoline firms to cumulative international emissions is the Carbon Majors database, now run by the UK-based international nonprofit thinktank InfluenceMap.
UCS has been a pacesetter in peer-reviewed scientific analysis linking local weather impacts to emissions that hint on to fossil gasoline firms. Analysis groups led by UCS local weather scientists and joined by a wide range of high educational professional collaborators have revealed a sequence of pathbreaking research quantifying how emissions traced to main fossil gasoline firms have pushed will increase in international temperatures, sea degree rise, ocean acidification, and injury from wildfires.
Most not too long ago, a research 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 eventualities reveal how averted emissions might have saved lives if polluters had taken motion after they first understood the impacts of their merchandise, or when there was normal international understanding of local weather change.
3) Local weather-related monetary danger is actual
As an alternative 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 Large Oil donors, as my colleague Laura Peterson writes (Heads within the sand, half B).
Main fossil gasoline firms have fought arduous to dam necessary and standardized company local weather disclosures, lengthy demanded by traders. In March 2024, the US Securities and Trade Fee (SEC) finalized a regulation that will compel publicly traded firms to evaluate and report on how local weather change will have an effect on their backside strains and, by extension, traders and the general public. The fossil gasoline trade and its allies had lobbied towards the rule, weakening the ultimate model to the purpose that firms are primarily allowed to resolve what climate-related dangers they open up to traders.
However, fossil gasoline trade proxies instantly filed lawsuits towards the rule. By the US Chamber of Commerce, the trade can be suing to dam two California legal guidelines handed in 2023 to strengthen company local weather disclosures—one in all which requires massive private and non-private US-based firms 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 firms within the oil and gasoline sector, 80 to 90 % of carbon emissions outcome from the usage of their fossil gasoline merchandise.
The SEC rule was focused for elimination by a serious oil and gasoline trade commerce affiliation. Shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, the SEC requested the court docket to pause the lawsuits, and in March 2025 the fee voted to withdraw its protection of the rule altogether.
4) Proof of the fossil gasoline trade’s coordinated deception marketing campaign continues to pile up
A mounting physique of proof—bolstered by not too long ago launched inside company paperwork—demonstrates that main fossil gasoline firms have identified for many years that the continued extraction, manufacturing, promotion, and sale of their merchandise would result in catastrophic penalties, and that motion to beat back the disaster would threaten their enterprise mannequin and backside strains.
As an alternative of appearing responsibly, they engaged in a long-term, deliberate disinformation marketing campaign to sow public doubt, block local weather motion, and proceed cashing in on fossil gasoline extraction on the expense of individuals and the planet. These firms haven’t solely didn’t take duty for his or her position within the local weather disaster but additionally actively obstructed efforts to transition to a clear power future. Most of the ways they used—usually following the playbook of the tobacco trade—are nonetheless being deployed immediately.
Take, for instance, a confidential inside Shell report from 1998 that outlines a state of affairs set in 2010 wherein a sequence of violent storms devastate the US east coast, prompting public outrage over the fossil gasoline trade’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 gasoline firms, on the idea that they’d lengthy didn’t act on warnings from scientists (together with the businesses’ personal) that one thing have to be performed. 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 firms 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 Large Tobacco to recuperate the prices of treating individuals with tobacco-related sickness. By 1998, Minnesota’s lawsuit went to trial, and the tobacco trade sought to settle the litigation. Finally, the Grasp Settlement Settlement with the attorneys normal of 52 states and territories required the 4 largest US tobacco firms to pay tons 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 thousands and thousands of pages of inside paperwork.
It appears Shell has lengthy been conscious about the specter of authorized accountability for the harms brought on by its merchandise.
5) Local weather accountability lawsuits and laws are advancing on the state degree
At the moment, knowledgeable by overwhelming bodily and social science proof, authorized motion towards the fossil gasoline trade is advancing in courts world wide, a part of a rising international motion for local weather justice.
One in 4 individuals in the USA at the moment reside in a state, territory, or municipality that’s suing main fossil gasoline firms to carry them accountable for fraud, local weather damages, or racketeering. The lawsuits contend that—very similar to the tobacco trade in its deception in regards to the risks of cigarettes—fossil gasoline firms have lengthy understood the hurt their merchandise trigger and selected to prioritize revenue over individuals and the planet.
Individually, a rising variety of US state legislatures are contemplating so-called local weather superfund legal guidelines, which might require the companies chargeable 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 gasoline trade has fiercely attacked local weather lawsuits and legislative efforts in court docket, delaying justice in local weather litigation for years with meritless procedural hurdles and unfounded claims of preemption. However earlier this 12 months, the US Supreme Court docket denied two petitions by the fossil gasoline trade and its allies looking for to halt instances by Honolulu and 5 states, affirming their proper to hunt justice in state courts.
The fossil gasoline trade has employed aggressive ways to rebuff these advances for accountability and money in on political favors. A fossil gasoline trade foyer group launched a public marketing campaign opposing local weather accountability lawsuits, and CEOs of main oil and gasoline firms together with Chevron and ExxonMobil reportedly met with President Trump to ask for his assist combating each local weather litigation and local weather superfund laws. Simply weeks later, Trump signed an Govt Order concentrating on states’ rights.
6) Local weather accountability advocates will not be backing down
The Trump administration’s assaults on local weather and environmental justice applications and advocates are a sign to the fossil gasoline trade and its surrogates that bullying and intimidation are the order of the day.
Final month, a North Dakota jury dominated in favor of Power Switch in its long-running meritless Strategic Lawsuit In opposition to Public Participation (SLAPP) towards Greenpeace, discovering the group accountable 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 USA have introduced their intention to attraction, and Greenpeace Worldwide has filed an anti-SLAPP lawsuit towards Power Switch in a Dutch court docket, looking for to recuperate all damages and prices ensuing from the company’s meritless litigation.
In the meantime, UCS and different targets of a prison scheme to hack into e-mail accounts of workers at public curiosity organizations looking for to carry the fossil gasoline trade accountable for its position in local weather change proceed to push for justice.
We have now identified for a number of years that ExxonMobil repeatedly used materials stolen by means of 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 by means of the hacking operation with ExxonMobil earlier than leaking it to the media. ExxonMobil and the DCI Group have to this point publicly denied involvement within the hacking scheme, and there’s no indication that the US authorities intends to carry prison costs towards the DCI Group or ExxonMobil.
UCS continues to press for accountability for the perpetrators of the prison hacking scheme.
And given the mounting human and monetary toll of local weather change and the mountain of proof of the fossil gasoline trade’s deliberate marketing campaign of disinformation, obstruction, and intimidation, no US Senator or Consultant ought to vote to protect this trade from going through penalties for its deception and the huge ensuing hurt.
President Trump and congressional Republicans have made clear their intention to enhance fossil gasoline firm earnings by increasing drilling and slashing environmental and public well being protections. It’s more and more doable they might attempt to give the trade what it needs most of all: immunity from legal responsibility for the large damages these firms have knowingly prompted to individuals and the planet. Congress should resist such efforts—whether or not by means of the upcoming funds course of or as stand-alone laws—and shield the flexibility of states, municipalities, and others harmed by fossil fuel-driven local weather change to carry polluters accountable by means of 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 gasoline trade from authorized legal responsibility. Listed here are six causes main fossil gasoline firms worry being held accountable for many years of deceit and the ensuing hurt to individuals and the planet.
1) Individuals are feeling the impacts of local weather change and footing the invoice
The upcoming arrival of “Hazard Season” is a stark reminder that local weather change impacts are already devastating communities worldwide, intensifying many sorts 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 response to NOAA knowledge, 2024 noticed 27 confirmed climate and local weather catastrophe occasions that every prompted damages amounting to $1 billion or extra. The associated fee and lethal results of local weather change fall disproportionately on individuals and communities on the entrance strains of these impacts, lots of them traditionally deprived and under-resourced.
The Trump Administration’s plan to finish local weather analysis at NOAA and the Nationwide Aeronautics and House Administration (NASA) can 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) Strong attribution science traces local weather impacts to fossil gasoline firms
Advances in local weather attribution science, which quantifies the extent to which human actions are chargeable for noticed adjustments 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 gasoline firms to cumulative international emissions is the Carbon Majors database, now run by the UK-based international nonprofit thinktank InfluenceMap.
UCS has been a pacesetter in peer-reviewed scientific analysis linking local weather impacts to emissions that hint on to fossil gasoline firms. Analysis groups led by UCS local weather scientists and joined by a wide range of high educational professional collaborators have revealed a sequence of pathbreaking research quantifying how emissions traced to main fossil gasoline firms have pushed will increase in international temperatures, sea degree rise, ocean acidification, and injury from wildfires.
Most not too long ago, a research 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 eventualities reveal how averted emissions might have saved lives if polluters had taken motion after they first understood the impacts of their merchandise, or when there was normal international understanding of local weather change.
3) Local weather-related monetary danger is actual
As an alternative 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 Large Oil donors, as my colleague Laura Peterson writes (Heads within the sand, half B).
Main fossil gasoline firms have fought arduous to dam necessary and standardized company local weather disclosures, lengthy demanded by traders. In March 2024, the US Securities and Trade Fee (SEC) finalized a regulation that will compel publicly traded firms to evaluate and report on how local weather change will have an effect on their backside strains and, by extension, traders and the general public. The fossil gasoline trade and its allies had lobbied towards the rule, weakening the ultimate model to the purpose that firms are primarily allowed to resolve what climate-related dangers they open up to traders.
However, fossil gasoline trade proxies instantly filed lawsuits towards the rule. By the US Chamber of Commerce, the trade can be suing to dam two California legal guidelines handed in 2023 to strengthen company local weather disclosures—one in all which requires massive private and non-private US-based firms 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 firms within the oil and gasoline sector, 80 to 90 % of carbon emissions outcome from the usage of their fossil gasoline merchandise.
The SEC rule was focused for elimination by a serious oil and gasoline trade commerce affiliation. Shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, the SEC requested the court docket to pause the lawsuits, and in March 2025 the fee voted to withdraw its protection of the rule altogether.
4) Proof of the fossil gasoline trade’s coordinated deception marketing campaign continues to pile up
A mounting physique of proof—bolstered by not too long ago launched inside company paperwork—demonstrates that main fossil gasoline firms have identified for many years that the continued extraction, manufacturing, promotion, and sale of their merchandise would result in catastrophic penalties, and that motion to beat back the disaster would threaten their enterprise mannequin and backside strains.
As an alternative of appearing responsibly, they engaged in a long-term, deliberate disinformation marketing campaign to sow public doubt, block local weather motion, and proceed cashing in on fossil gasoline extraction on the expense of individuals and the planet. These firms haven’t solely didn’t take duty for his or her position within the local weather disaster but additionally actively obstructed efforts to transition to a clear power future. Most of the ways they used—usually following the playbook of the tobacco trade—are nonetheless being deployed immediately.
Take, for instance, a confidential inside Shell report from 1998 that outlines a state of affairs set in 2010 wherein a sequence of violent storms devastate the US east coast, prompting public outrage over the fossil gasoline trade’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 gasoline firms, on the idea that they’d lengthy didn’t act on warnings from scientists (together with the businesses’ personal) that one thing have to be performed. 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 firms 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 Large Tobacco to recuperate the prices of treating individuals with tobacco-related sickness. By 1998, Minnesota’s lawsuit went to trial, and the tobacco trade sought to settle the litigation. Finally, the Grasp Settlement Settlement with the attorneys normal of 52 states and territories required the 4 largest US tobacco firms to pay tons 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 thousands and thousands of pages of inside paperwork.
It appears Shell has lengthy been conscious about the specter of authorized accountability for the harms brought on by its merchandise.
5) Local weather accountability lawsuits and laws are advancing on the state degree
At the moment, knowledgeable by overwhelming bodily and social science proof, authorized motion towards the fossil gasoline trade is advancing in courts world wide, a part of a rising international motion for local weather justice.
One in 4 individuals in the USA at the moment reside in a state, territory, or municipality that’s suing main fossil gasoline firms to carry them accountable for fraud, local weather damages, or racketeering. The lawsuits contend that—very similar to the tobacco trade in its deception in regards to the risks of cigarettes—fossil gasoline firms have lengthy understood the hurt their merchandise trigger and selected to prioritize revenue over individuals and the planet.
Individually, a rising variety of US state legislatures are contemplating so-called local weather superfund legal guidelines, which might require the companies chargeable 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 gasoline trade has fiercely attacked local weather lawsuits and legislative efforts in court docket, delaying justice in local weather litigation for years with meritless procedural hurdles and unfounded claims of preemption. However earlier this 12 months, the US Supreme Court docket denied two petitions by the fossil gasoline trade and its allies looking for to halt instances by Honolulu and 5 states, affirming their proper to hunt justice in state courts.
The fossil gasoline trade has employed aggressive ways to rebuff these advances for accountability and money in on political favors. A fossil gasoline trade foyer group launched a public marketing campaign opposing local weather accountability lawsuits, and CEOs of main oil and gasoline firms together with Chevron and ExxonMobil reportedly met with President Trump to ask for his assist combating each local weather litigation and local weather superfund laws. Simply weeks later, Trump signed an Govt Order concentrating on states’ rights.
6) Local weather accountability advocates will not be backing down
The Trump administration’s assaults on local weather and environmental justice applications and advocates are a sign to the fossil gasoline trade and its surrogates that bullying and intimidation are the order of the day.
Final month, a North Dakota jury dominated in favor of Power Switch in its long-running meritless Strategic Lawsuit In opposition to Public Participation (SLAPP) towards Greenpeace, discovering the group accountable 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 USA have introduced their intention to attraction, and Greenpeace Worldwide has filed an anti-SLAPP lawsuit towards Power Switch in a Dutch court docket, looking for to recuperate all damages and prices ensuing from the company’s meritless litigation.
In the meantime, UCS and different targets of a prison scheme to hack into e-mail accounts of workers at public curiosity organizations looking for to carry the fossil gasoline trade accountable for its position in local weather change proceed to push for justice.
We have now identified for a number of years that ExxonMobil repeatedly used materials stolen by means of 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 by means of the hacking operation with ExxonMobil earlier than leaking it to the media. ExxonMobil and the DCI Group have to this point publicly denied involvement within the hacking scheme, and there’s no indication that the US authorities intends to carry prison costs towards the DCI Group or ExxonMobil.
UCS continues to press for accountability for the perpetrators of the prison hacking scheme.
And given the mounting human and monetary toll of local weather change and the mountain of proof of the fossil gasoline trade’s deliberate marketing campaign of disinformation, obstruction, and intimidation, no US Senator or Consultant ought to vote to protect this trade from going through penalties for its deception and the huge ensuing hurt.
