Lawyers acting on behalf of environmental campaigners have written to Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick arguing a proposed new coal mine in Cumbria would...
Dana Drugmand | December 2, 2020
By Dana Drugmand • Wednesday, December 2, 2020 - 08:22
On January 19, 2021 — just one day before President-elect Joe Biden takes the oath of office — the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a climate change accountability lawsuit brought by Baltimore, Maryland, against almost two dozen fossil fuel corporations.
Dana Drugmand | October 22, 2020
By Dana Drugmand • Thursday, October 22, 2020 - 10:42
More Americans than ever before — 54 percent, recent polling data shows — are alarmed or concerned about climate change, which scientists warn is a planetary emergency unfolding in the form of searing heat, prolonged drought, massive wildfires, monstrous storms, and other extremes.
These kinds of disasters are becoming increasingly costly and impossible to ignore. Yet even as the American public becomes progressively more worried about the climate crisis, a shrinking but vocal slice of the country continues to dismiss these concerns, impeding efforts to address the monumental global challenge.
Dana Drugmand | September 10, 2020
By Dana Drugmand • Thursday, September 10, 2020 - 14:28
Delaware, the home state of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, announced on Thursday, September 10 that it is taking dozens of major oil and gas companies including BP, Chevron, and ExxonMobil to court over the rising costs of climate impacts such as sea level rise and coastal flooding.
Like other U.S. states and municipalities suing the fossil fuel industry, Delaware says that the industry knew half a century ago about the likely climate impacts resulting from the use of its products, but instead of warning the public or changing their business model, the fossil fuel companies engaged in campaigns to attack climate science and downplay the risks of burning coal, oil, and gas in order to stave off policy responses.
Dana Drugmand | September 2, 2020
By Dana Drugmand • Wednesday, September 2, 2020 - 11:39
New Jersey has now joined the wave of lawsuits seeking to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for climate impacts. The city of Hoboken today filed a case against major oil and gas companies and the American Petroleum Institute (API), a powerful industry trade group which has played a major role in promoting “uncertainty” about climate science.
The lawsuit seeks to recover costs associated with climate impacts like extreme flooding and sea level rise. Like other climate liability lawsuits targeting fossil fuel companies, Hoboken's suit alleges that the oil and gas companies and their lobbying group not only knew early on about the climate harms resulting from their products, but actively engaged in campaigns of deception to undermine climate science and avoid policy responses.
Dana Drugmand | August 13, 2020
By Dana Drugmand • Thursday, August 13, 2020 - 16:06
A New England-based environmental law group is taking major oil companies to court, claiming the firms have failed to adapt some of their petroleum storage terminals to withstand increasingly severe storm and flooding events worsened by the climate crisis.
DeSmog | August 7, 2020
By DeSmog • Friday, August 7, 2020 - 06:00
You thought you knew the story of climate denial, but what about its connection to cigarette filter tips or public broadcasting? Listen to the Drilled podcast and you’ll learn fascinating new details about the propaganda campaign of the century: the creation of climate denial.
Dana Drugmand | June 30, 2020
By Dana Drugmand • Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - 18:04
On Tuesday, June 30, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, released a comprehensive action plan for tackling climate change.
Some environmental groups criticized the plan for lacking ambition and not directly targeting fossil fuel production. However, the Democrats' agenda does support a powerful provision for holding fossil fuel companies accountable for their contributions to the disastrously warming planet: Not granting them legal immunity from Congress.
Dana Drugmand | June 25, 2020
By Dana Drugmand • Thursday, June 25, 2020 - 11:01
Washington, D.C. is suing the four largest investor-owned oil and gas companies — BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell — for allegedly misleading consumers about climate change, including historically undermining climate science and even now using deceptive advertising about the companies’ role in leading solutions to the climate crisis.
District of Columbia Attorney General Karl A. Racine announced the consumer fraud lawsuit on Thursday, June 25. The lawsuit claims that the four oil majors violated the District’s Consumer Protection Procedures Act by engaging in misleading acts and practices around the marketing, promotion, and sale of fossil fuel products, which produce globe-warming pollution. The D.C. lawsuit alleges that these companies knew since at least the 1950s about the harmful consequences of burning fossil fuels and that they engaged in a campaign to deceive the public about those risks.
Alex Varley-Winter | May 14, 2020
By Alex Varley-Winter • Thursday, May 14, 2020 - 14:44
America’s largest bank is shunning calls from shareholders to disclose its full emissions, despite warnings from its own economists that “catastrophic” climate change could end up threatening human life “as we know it.”
JPMorgan Chase, which a coalition of U.S. environmental groups recently claimed is the world’s largest financer of fossil fuels, has instructed its shareholders to vote down a proposal for the bank to report the emissions of its lending activities at its upcoming annual general meeting (AGM) on May 19.
Dana Drugmand | April 30, 2020
By Dana Drugmand • Thursday, April 30, 2020 - 15:56
While fossil fuel companies defend against mounting climate liability lawsuits in court, their surrogates are working in parallel to target the attorneys, academics, and institutions supporting these lawsuits. This defensive strategy involves vigorous public records requests, and in some cases legal action or intervention, to try proving a supposed conspiracy by those working to hold polluters accountable.
ExxonMobil has itself argued that attorneys general and municipal officials that have sued the company are engaged in a conspiracy to take down Big Oil. That argument hasn’t gained traction in court, but this hasn’t stopped operatives tied to fossil fuel funding from trying to take up that charge.
