Story originally published in DeSmog 

Communities in the United States suing major fossil fuel producers over climate-related harms got a boost in court on Thursday. At the request of the U.S. Supreme Court, the Department of Justice weighed in on a key procedural question that has been ensnaring the progress of many climate accountability lawsuits — the question of where the lawsuits should be heard.

In 2018, the city and county of Boulder and the county of San Miguel in Colorado filed suit in state court against ExxonMobil and Suncor, arguing the oil companies’ disinformation about their products hurt Coloradans. But the oil companies pushed for the case to be tried in federal, not state, court – a seemingly minor distinction that could have major consequences.

Last October, the Supreme Court called on the U.S. Solicitor General to file a brief “expressing the views of the United States” regarding this jurisdictional dispute that has tied up the Colorado and other climate liability lawsuits and delayed them from getting to trial. The fossil fuel defendants have been fighting relentlessly to force the cases into federal court, where they see an easier path to dismissal, while the communities suing companies like ExxonMobil want the litigation to proceed in state court where it originated. 

In its brief filed Thursday, the Solicitor General backed the Colorado communities’ stance that their legal claims arise solely under state law and therefore belong in state court — a reversal from the Justice Department’s position under the Trump administration supporting the fossil fuel industry’s arguments.

“By finally ending its Trump-era support for Big Oil, the Justice Department has added its voice to a series of unanimous court rulings that support communities in their efforts to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for their climate lies,” Center for Climate Integrity president Richard Wiles, an advocate for holding climate polluters accountable, said in a statement.

The move potentially puts the Colorado communities one step closer to finally getting to trial in state courts.
“Since the Colorado communities filed this case in 2018, ExxonMobil and Suncor have consistently sought to delay the litigation — moving the case from court to court and losing each step along the way. Today’s development brings these communities one step closer to holding fossil fuel companies accountable for their misconduct and obtaining remedies for the serious climate harms Colorado residents are facing,” said Marco Simons, general counsel at EarthRights International, which is supporting the Colorado plaintiffs. As the climate heats up, Colorado is facing hotter springs and summers, a lengthening wildfire season, and shifting precipitation patterns.

The Colorado case, like other climate liability cases filed by municipalities and states against Big Oil, alleges that the industry engaged in a decades-long campaign of disinformation and deception that misrepresented the climate dangers of its products. The case alleges violation of state law, including the Colorado consumer protection statute, and despite dogged attempts by Exxon and Suncor to punt the case to federal court, these courts have repeatedly said that they are not the appropriate venue for the litigation. A federal appeals court ruled twice that the Colorado case belongs in state court. 

ExxonMobil and Suncor then turned to the Supreme Court, filing a petition for review in a last-ditch effort to avoid having to litigate in state court. It wasn’t the first time the industry filed with the Supreme Court in climate liability litigation. In October 2020, the high court granted the industry’s petition in a case filed by Baltimore and then ruled in the industry’s favor on a narrow technical issue that forced federal appeals courts to revisit their previous rulings in several cases, including the Colorado case. Since then, five federal appeals courts have all upheld the position that these cases belong in state court.  
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Now the federal government has added its weight behind this position. In its brief, the Department of Justice said that it has “reexamined” its own stance and concluded that state law claims should not be “recharacterized” as arising under federal law. The Justice Department says the Supreme Court should deny the industry’s petition in the Colorado case.

It remains to be seen whether or not the Supreme Court will follow this advice. If the Court does deny the petition, it may also deny petitions pending in a handful of similar climate cases against the industry. “Whatever they decide to do in the Boulder case will have implications for these other cases,” Center for Climate Integrity’s Alyssa Johl explained.

Karen Sokol, professor of law at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, cautioned that the Department of Justice’s brief may not have much sway given what appears to be an emboldened conservative majority on the Supreme Court.

“I don’t have confidence that the Solicitor General’s brief will matter a lot. I think this [Supreme Court] majority does what it wants,” Sokol said. “The Court has shown that it’s quite favorable to industry generally across multiple cases and multiple areas of law, and the fossil fuel industry in particular.”

In addition, at least two justices have ties to the oil industry writ large. Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s father was a Shell attorney for nearly three decades and served in leadership positions with the American Petroleum Institute, and Justice Samuel Alito owns stock in ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66 (Alito recused himself from the Baltimore case but Barrett did not).

In an emailed statement responding to the development in the Colorado case, Exxon criticized the tactic of climate litigation. “Lawsuits like this one do nothing but waste time and resources and, more importantly, don’t advance efforts to address climate change,” Exxon spokesperson Todd Spitler said. “While we’ll fight this, we’ll also continue devoting billions of dollars to meet today’s energy needs while leading the way in a thoughtful energy transition towards net zero carbon.”
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Suncor did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Story originally published in DeSmog

​French environmental organizations Notre Affaire à Tous, Friends of the Earth France, and Oxfam France last week filed what they say is the world’s first climate lawsuit against a commercial bank, suing BNP Paribas over its continued funding of fossil fuels. The lawsuit is part of a burgeoning movement to pressure financial institutions to end their funding of the fossil fuel sector due to the climate emergency. And if these funders refuse to stop their polluting investments, the movement aims to hold them accountable through strategies such as direct action and litigation.

The new lawsuit against BNP Paribas, filed February 23 in the Paris Judicial Court, claims that the French bank is in breach of France’s “duty of vigilance” law. That groundbreaking 2017 law requires large companies to assess risks and impacts of their business activities on human rights and the environment and develop plans to identify and mitigate those risks. The law has been invoked in other lawsuits against corporate polluters including French oil major TotalEnergies and most recently against French food company Danone over its contribution to plastic waste.

BNP Paribas, according to the organizations bringing the lawsuit, is “France’s most polluting bank” and Europe’s largest funder of fossil fuel expansion. While the bank recently pledged to reduce its outstanding financing for oil and gas extraction by 2030, the French nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) say this commitment falls short of immediately halting funding for new fossil fuel projects and lacks any firm exit plan from the oil and gas sector.

Lucie Pinson, director of the research and campaigning organization Reclaim Finance, explained that loopholes in BNP Paribas’ fossil fuel financing policy allow it to still offer financial services to oil and gas clients.

“BNP Paribas says it has not financed any new oil projects since 2016 and is aiming to stop all its financing to the oil sector, but its policy does not cover all of the financial services it provides. So it still issues bonds for oil and gas companies,” she told DeSmog via email.

The French bank’s refusal to end its financing for fossil fuel expansion is incompatible with the Paris Agreement objectives and illegal under the duty of vigilance law, the French NGOs argue. They also say that the financial sector more broadly is on notice.

“The French duty of vigilance law imposes an obligation on multinationals in all sectors to take action to protect human rights and the environment, and to do so efficiently,” Justine Ripoll, Campaigner at Notre Affaire à Tous, said in a press release. “The financial sector has a huge responsibility in our collective ability to comply with the Paris Agreement. This first climate litigation against a commercial bank is undoubtedly the first of many around the world.”

While this is the first climate lawsuit brought against a private bank over its fossil fuel financing, there have been previous cases against banks seeking information about policies relating to climate risks and impacts as well as several complaints against banks brought under the OECD Guidelines for multinational enterprises, explained Catherine Higham, policy fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

“Although the case is breaking new ground, it does so as part of a broader pattern of cases that put financial institutions and ‘portfolio emissions’ in the spotlight. As such, I’d imagine we will continue to see other litigants seeking to develop similar case strategies elsewhere,” she told DeSmog via email.

The French NGOs bringing the case say that it is “part of a global litigation movement that aims to hold the major funders of climate chaos accountable for their legal responsibilities.” It is also part of a broader movement targeting financial institutions, particularly banks, for their ongoing role in propping up the fossil fuel sector. In 2021, a DeSmog analysis found that the majority of the board directors leading the world’s top banks had connections to polluting industries and obstructive lobby groups.

And as DeSmog reported last July, the vast majority of financial institutions have no restrictions in place to limit oil and gas expansion, despite mounting pressure from activists and continued criticism from the world’s top diplomat — UN Secretary General António Guterres — who has called new funding for fossil fuels “delusional.” In a speech to the UN Human Rights Council on Monday, Guterres again called out fossil fuel financiers and also signaled support for climate litigation. “Legal action against companies that destroy the climate is an important step forward,” he said. “Fossil fuel producers and their financiers need to understand a basic truth: the pursuit of mega-profits, while so many people are losing their lives and their rights, now and in the future, is totally unacceptable.”

In addition to legal action, other strategies such as divestment and direct action are part of a growing push to hold banks accountable for fossil fuel financing. Campaigns such as Stop the Money Pipeline and Reclaim Finance are working to pressure the financial sector to abandon climate-wrecking fossil fuels. Campaigners are calling on individuals and institutions to end their relationships with big banks that fund ongoing fossil fuel expansion, for example. And activists are organizing mass protests or days of action demanding an end to fossil fuel finance. The youth climate strike movement Fridays for Future, founded by Greta Thunberg, has announced its next Global Strike on March 3 will focus on the demand to “end fossil finance.” On March 21, the organization Third Act — founded by veteran climate activist Bill McKibben — will host a National Day of Action to “stop dirty banks.”

As the world’s largest banks continue to fund the fossil fuel sector, to the tune of trillions of dollars since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, the calls for accountability from climate advocates are likely to grow, along with the risk of litigation.

“Investments in fossil fuel companies must be conditional on the company having a sound transition plan and spending on renewables must increase. Until that happens, it is inevitable that banks such as BNP Paribas will come under pressure from shareholders, from campaigners, and from legal action,” said Pinson of Reclaim Finance. “It is time the banks woke up to the reality of the risks of climate change and stopped profiting at our expense.”

In response to a request for comment on the new lawsuit, a BNP Paribas spokesperson defended the company’s energy transition plan, noting that today more than half of its financing for energy production goes towards “low carbon energies.”

“These NGOs have chosen to engage in litigation rather than dialogue, which we regret,” said BNP Paribas’ Claire Schiff. “By 2030, BNP Paribas will have transitioned its financing activities to low carbon energy production by more than 80%, well ahead of the transition of the rest of the economy.”

“With respect to our thermal coal exposure, we made total exit decisions in 2019 and our remaining exposure is only residual,” Schiff added. “Regarding oil, we are now leaving exploration-production. In 2030, our portfolio will only retain the remainder of loans to be amortized. Regarding gas, we will reduce our production financing by 30% and focus on supply and low-emission power plants, in line with the European taxonomy, which considers that gas has a role to play in the ecological transition under certain conditions.”
Last year, the European Union approved a controversial proposal to categorize gas and nuclear as green investments under the EU’s regulatory guidelines for investors. 

Sumeyra Arslan, campaigner and researcher with the climate finance organization BankTrack, said that these reductions and commitments do not go far enough.

“While the targets have a high percentage of reduction, they do not cover underwriting services and short-maturity loans repaid before 2030. We believe that this leaves a huge loophole for the finance of fossil fuel companies and projects that are harmful to the environment,” she explained. Additionally, she noted that BNP Paribas can still finance low-emission thermal gas power plants, and that renewables such as solar and wind still make up a relatively minor share of the bank’s total energy financing, at just seven percent.
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“As long as banks continue business as usual and finance oil and gas expansion giants, lawsuits will be necessary to hold them accountable,” Arslan said. 

Story originally published in DeSmog

Austria is the latest country to be facing a lawsuit brought by some of its youngest citizens who say their government is failing to protect them from the worsening climate crisis.

Backed by the Austrian chapter of the youth climate strike organization Fridays for Future, a group of 12 children and adolescents launched a landmark constitutional climate case against the Austrian government on Tuesday. The case specifically challenges a 2011 climate protection law, claiming it is ineffective and outdated, and therefore infringes upon children’s constitutional rights.

“For years, Fridays for Future has been demanding the revision of the Climate Protection Law in order to (finally) establish compliance with the Paris Agreement. However, since the Climate Protection Law remains ineffective to this day, twelve children are now going to court and Fridays for Future is supporting them,” Michael Spiekermann, an activist with Fridays for Future Austria, said in a statement.

Young people around the world are increasingly turning to the courts to challenge their government’s climate policies or responses. Climate experts confirm these measures are inadequate given the large gap between countries’ climate pledges and policies, and the action needed to achieve the objectives of the Paris Agreement. 

Many of these youth-led climate lawsuits invoke constitutional or human rights claims. In the United States and Canada, for example, youth are suing their federal governments on constitutional grounds. Those cases do not challenge a particular policy but rather allege that the government’s systemic actions pertaining to climate and energy endanger young people’s fundamental rights, as the climate crisis intensifies over time.

Outside of North America, youth have filed climate lawsuits in a number of other countries, from South Korea to Sweden. In November, Greta Thunberg announced she was joining more than 600 other Swedish youth in a class action case against her home country. Later this year, a groundbreaking climate case filed by six Portuguese youth against 33 European countries will come before the European Court of Human Rights. And in April 2021, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court decided in favor of youth in a case challenging Germany’s Climate Protection Act. The court found parts of that law to be unconstitutional for failing to sufficiently protect the rights of youth and future generations.

The latest youth climate case against Austria is most similar to the German case. It likewise challenges the state’s Climate Protection Act on constitutional grounds. Specifically, the case contends that the law fails to protect youth because it lacks updated emissions reduction targets, among other deficits. Michaela Krömer, lead lawyer for the Austrian youth plaintiffs, said that the case has a solid legal foundation because the rights and protection of children, including intergenerational equity, are enshrined in Austrian constitutional law.

“The Austrian constitution grants children very special fundamental rights. These rights unequivocally stipulate that the well-being of children must be protected also in terms of intergenerational justice,” Krömer said in a statement. “Children thus have a right to active protection against the consequences of the climate crisis. A Climate Protection Law which lacks greenhouse gas reduction targets, clear responsibilities and an accountability mechanism clearly infringes these constitutional rights.”

But while Germany’s climate law, passed in 2019, included an emissions reduction target for 2030, Austria’s policy — enacted in 2011 — does not cover emissions reductions beyond 2020. Furthermore, according to Fridays for Future Austria, the mitigation actions that are covered under the policy lack verification measures, or methods to ensure their effectiveness. The new lawsuit seeks to have the court strike out parts of the law as unconstitutional and prompt the government to pass a new, more effective climate law. 

​DeSmog reached out to Austria’s Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology but did not receive an immediate response.

Story originally published in DeSmog

Young Canadians suing the federal government over its role in worsening the climate crisis are hoping that an appeals court will give them a chance to be heard at trial, after a judge dismissed their case over two years ago. The case was back in court this week as lawyers for the youths argued that the Federal Court of Appeal should overturn that judge’s ruling and permit the case to move towards trial. 

“This case is ripe for trial because we are in a climate emergency,” Chris Tollefson, one of the attorneys representing the 15 youth plaintiffs in La Rose v. His Majesty the King, said during the two-day hearing on February 14 and 15, held virtually over Zoom. A three-judge panel from the appeals court in Ottawa presided over the hearing, and will determine the fate of the case at this stage. 

Initially filed in October 2019, the La Rose case — the Canadian equivalent of the landmark U.S. youth climate lawsuit Juliana v. United States — seeks to hold the Canadian government accountable for contributing to dangerous climate change. It alleges the government’s actions, such as continuing to promote fossil fuel development, are disproportionately harming Canada’s youth and violating young people’s fundamental rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 

The case requests a court order declaring the government’s conduct as unconstitutional and mandating the government implement a science-based climate recovery plan to reduce Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions according to its fair share. Justice Michael Manson of Canada’s Federal Court tossed the case in October 2020, finding it to be too political in nature and not suitable for the courts. 

Lawyers for the youths appealed Manson’s ruling and argued in this week’s hearing that the case is appropriate for the judicial system to weigh in. Even though climate change is complex and global in scope, courts are capable of grappling with it, they contended, pointing to climate court cases in other countries — most notably the Netherlands — where citizens have successfully challenged government responses to the climate crisis. Reidar Mogerman, an attorney for the youth plaintiffs, argued that courts “can’t be on the sidelines” on an issue as existential and consequential as climate change. 

“If we don’t win and the court is not on the stage, that’s a big problem for society,” Mogerman said during a post-hearing press conference organized by Our Children’s Trust, a nonprofit supporting youth-led climate litigation. 

“The [Canadian] government said the court should use caution and take an incremental approach, even when the people of Canada are facing an existential crisis,” Andrea Rodgers, senior litigation attorney at Our Children’s Trust, said. “This is a government that is the tenth highest greenhouse gas emitter in the world.” 

As Rodgers noted, Canada has consistently failed to meet its own emissions reduction targets set for itself since 1998. “Elected leaders say climate change is an emergency and one day later authorize a pipeline to transport 600,000 barrels of oil from Alberta to British Columbia,” she said. The Canadian government has continued to promote fossil fuel expansion in recent years, from its decision in 2018 to purchase the TransMountain crude oil pipeline after the developer pulled out of the project, to its approval last year of an oil and gas megaproject off of the country’s eastern shore.   

Young people bringing the lawsuit explained that while their government claims to be taking the climate threat seriously, it has proceeded with little meaningful action to rein in emissions. They are therefore left with few options and court involvement becomes necessary, they argue.

“It’s a lot of talk, but where is the action?” 20-year-old plaintiff Raine Robinson said. “If [the government] really thought climate change was this big issue they wouldn’t be arguing against this case,” Robinson said, adding that the youth are “at the point where we’ve exhausted all of our options.” 

“We are pursuing the legal basis because we have tried everything else,” explained youth plaintiff Lauren Wright. 

Reflecting on the government’s arguments that climate change is too massive and complex to be handled by courts, plaintiff Albert Lalonde responded: “If it’s too big and too political and too complicated, then where does that leave us?”
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Mogerman, attorney for the youths, said that this question of Lalonde’s was raised during this week’s hearing. “The telling exchange was where one of the judges said to the federal government lawyer, ‘What would you say to one of these children who told you that you’ve admitted that climate change is real, you’ve admitted that it has the potential to destroy their future, they challenge what you’re doing, and you tell them they can’t go to court? Where do they go, what do they do?’ There was really not a real answer to that question.”

Story originally published in DeSmog

​Shell’s board of directors officially has been served with a world-first lawsuit aiming to hold its corporate directors personally liable for alleged mismanagement of climate risk. The lawsuit, filed Thursday by UK-based environmental law organization ClientEarth, contends that Shell’s strategy to address climate change and manage the energy transition fails to align with the objectives of the Paris Agreement and leaves the company in a vulnerable position as society shifts away from fossil fuels.

ClientEarth alleges that inadequate climate strategy by Shell and improper management by the board amounts to violations under the UK Companies Act. ClientEarth, itself a token shareholder in Shell, filed its case in the High Court of England and Wales in London and is suing the company’s 11 directors. Institutional investors with collective holdings of over 12 million shares in Shell are supporting the legal action, which comes on the heels of Shell reporting a record $40 billion in profits in 2022.

“Shell may be making record profits now due to the turmoil of the global energy market, but the writing is on the wall for fossil fuels long term,” ClientEarth senior lawyer Paul Benson said. “The shift to a low-carbon economy is not just inevitable, it’s already happening. Yet the Board is persisting with a transition strategy that is fundamentally flawed, leaving the company seriously exposed to the risks that climate change poses to Shell’s future success — despite the Board’s legal duty to manage those risks.”  

This is the first ever case targeting a company’s board over its handling of climate risk and alleged failure to prepare for the energy transition. As DeSmog previously reported, it is likely just the beginning of such litigation against corporate directors.

Climate Litigation Piling up Against Shell

ClientEarth initiated this new lawsuit last year when it gave notice to Shell’s board of its intention to sue and is the latest in a string of legal actions seeking to hold the oil major accountable for its alleged climate and environmental misdeeds. Earlier this month the environmental and corporate accountability group Global Witness lodged a greenwashing complaint with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission claiming that Shell was misleading investors and authorities on its renewable energy spending. 

That complaint came just days after more than 11,300 individuals and 17 institutions from the heavily polluted Nigerian community of Ogale sued Shell in the UK High Court, adding to existing legal claims filed in 2015 by 2,335 residents of the Nigerian community of Bille — bringing the total to over 13,000 people from the Niger Delta taking Shell to court. These claims are demanding damages from oil spills that have devastated the local communities and their environment.

And in May 2021 the Dutch chapter of Friends of the Earth, Milieudefensie, won a landmark climate court case against Shell claiming the company’s business was not aligned with the Paris Agreement’s goals and human rights obligations. The court ordered Shell to slash emissions across its entire supply chain by 45 percent by 2030. Shell is appealing the verdict and appears to be ignoring its duty to comply, as the company has publicly committed to reducing only part of its supply chain emissions — not those released from using their products — by 2030 while continuing to invest in new oil and gas development. 

According to ClientEarth, Shell’s board “has since rebuffed parts of the verdict, indicating that it is unreasonable and essentially incompatible with Shell’s business.” The case against Shell’s board of directors aims to compel the company to comply with the Dutch court verdict and with its legal obligations under the UK Companies Act. Additionally, Shell faces a raft of climate lawsuits in the U.S. brought by states and municipalities over its alleged deception and efforts to derail meaningful climate action despite advanced knowledge of climate risks decades ago.

In response to the new lawsuit targeting the company’s directors, Shell denied that it has acted improperly and said it would oppose ClientEarth’s efforts to pursue its claim through the court.

“We do not accept ClientEarth’s allegations. Our directors have complied with their legal duties and have, at all times, acted in the best interests of the company,” a Shell spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

“We believe our climate targets are aligned with the more ambitious goal of the Paris Agreement: to limit the increase in the global average temperature to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels,” the spokesperson continued. “Our shareholders strongly support the progress we are making on our energy transition strategy, with 80% voting in favour of this strategy at our last Annual General Meeting. ClientEarth’s attempt, by means of a derivative claim, to overturn the board’s policy as approved by our shareholders has no merit.”

Telling a Different Story Inside Shell

While Shell claims to support the Paris Agreement and says it will achieve net zero emissions by 2050, internal corporate communications obtained through subpoena by a U.S. congressional committee suggest that the company has no intention to genuinely pursue these objectives.

According to documents released in September by the U.S. House Oversight Committee as part of its investigation into Big Oil and climate disinformation, Shell privately urged caution in communicating about the energy transition due to litigation risk.

In an internal company slide deck on messaging around the energy transition, Shell clarifies that the net zero emissions goal is a “collective” ambition and challenge for society and is not a Shell goal or target. The company states that it “has no immediate plans to move to a net-zero emissions portfolio over our investment horizon of 10-20 years.”

Shell further advised its employees to refrain from suggesting the company would take climate action that risked its fundamental business strategy, writing: “Please do not give the impression that Shell is willing to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to levels that do not make business sense.”

In ClientEarth’s view, the oil giant’s failure to advance its own transition to net zero will only harm the company in the long run. “Long term, it is in the best interests of the company, its employees and its shareholders — as well as the planet — for Shell to reduce its emissions harder and faster than the Board is currently planning,” Benson said.
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The High Court will next decide if it grants permission for ClientEarth’s case to proceed.

Democrats on the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform have wrapped up a historic investigation into Big Oil’s obstruction and obfuscation of climate and the clean energy transition and are handing the torch off for others to continue to the probe and to press for accountability. The investigation has uncovered extensive industry records such as internal emails that are likely to be highly relevant to the batch of climate lawsuits currently pending against major oil and gas companies such as Shell, Chevron, BP, and ExxonMobil.
 
On December 9, 2022 the Committee released hundreds of pages of documents – part of the internal industry record gathered through subpoenas - and a 31-page memo summarizing some of the key findings. This latest release follows the Committee’s revelation in September of documents and initial findings that Committee leaders say show the industry is misleading the public. Overall the documents offer evidence and indications that the oil and gas industry is intent on continuing and expanding its extractive, climate-damaging business despite claims of becoming cleaner and pursuing credible climate action. Such claims, industry critics contend, amount to greenwashing, which some of the lawsuits point to in alleging that the industry’s deceptive conduct is ongoing.
 
“Even though Big Oil CEOs admitted to my Committee that their products are causing a climate emergency, today’s documents reveal that the industry has no real plans to clean up its act and is barreling ahead with plans to pump more dirty fuels for decades to come,” Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney said in a statement announcing the latest release of industry documents.
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The nearly two-year investigation honed in on Big Oil’s role in disseminating climate disinformation and delaying or blocking meaningful climate action, and the gap between the industry’s public rhetoric and its internal discussion on climate and the energy business. While previous investigations by journalists, academics and others have revealed the industry’s historical conduct of undermining climate science and misleading the public, including through funding climate denial messaging, the House Oversight probe illuminates the industry’s ongoing efforts to deceive and engage in disinformation, particularly through hollow ‘net zero’ pledges and the promotion of technologies and alternative fuels like carbon capture and hydrogen or ‘renewable’ natural gas that preserve the role of fossil fuels under the guise of climate solutions.
 
“Internal emails and messaging guidance show that Big Oil’s climate pledges rely on unproven technology, accounting gimmicks and misleading language to hide the reality,” Rep. Ro Khanna, Chair of the Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on the Environment, said in a September statement. He is calling for further action to hold the industry accountable and told NBC News that the documents obtained by the Committee “will be handed over to those with more resources who can act on the information.”
 
There is speculation that Khanna could be referring to the Department of Justice. DOJ could open its own investigation into Big Oil, and the Department has investigatory tools that even Congress lacks. Given that Big Oil and its trade associations refused to fully cooperate with the Committee and its subpoenas, and heavily redacted many of the documents that were handed over, DOJ could play a key role in breaking through the industry’s obstruction.
 
“It’s time for the Department of Justice to engage and initiate actions to hold these bad faith polluters accountable for the catastrophic damage they have caused and the massive fraud they’ve perpetrated on the American people,” said Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, an advocacy group focused on climate accountability.
 
In the meantime, litigation is already underway seeking to hold fossil fuel entities accountable for climate-related harms and alleged fraudulent behavior, with around two dozen states and municipalities currently suing the industry in courts across the country. Lawyers for the government plaintiffs will surely be pouring over the Committee’s documents and potentially using them to make their case.
 
“This new batch of compromising evidence will help communities seeking justice through the courts and ensure that fossil fuel companies pay for the outsize role they have played in climate change and the suffering of communities,” Delta Merner, a lead scientist at the Science Hub for Climate Litigation at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement.

​The latest youth climate lawsuit challenging the government’s response to the climate crisis has been filed in Sweden. On Friday, November 25 an association called Aurora announced the lawsuit against the Swedish state. The youth-led association, representing over 600 young people born between 1996 and 2015, filed its case as a class-action on behalf of all Swedish youth. Prominent Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is among the plaintiffs.
 
“Today on Black Friday is the perfect day to sue the state over its insufficient climate policies. So that’s what we did. See you in court!” Thunberg wrote on Twitter.
 
The lawsuit follows several letters that the youth campaigners sent to government officials, requesting the government investigate and calculate its “fair share” of reducing GHG emissions in line with limiting warming to 1.5°C and then take all necessary measures to achieve its equitable share of emissions reductions. The campaigners contend that Sweden is failing to adequately address emissions and prevent dangerous warming, endangering the fundamental human rights of young people as climate impacts worsen over time, during the expected lifetime of today’s youth.
 
The youth plaintiffs base their legal claims on alleged violations under the European Convention on Human Rights, including rights to life, private and family life, and non-discrimination (Articles 2, 8, and 14, respectively), and the right to property (Article 1). According to a summary of the case, plaintiffs “ask the court to order the state to implement its fair share of GHG emissions reductions to keep global warming below 1.5°C, by adopting sufficient and adequate procedural and substantive measures to ensure that emissions are continuously reduced and that GHG are absorbed through natural carbon sinks, in order to limit the risk of negative impacts of climate change on them.”
 
According to a 23-year-old spokesperson for the youth plaintiffs, the lawsuit is part of a larger movement of turning to the courts in the absence of urgent policy responses to the climate emergency.
 
“People in power don’t seem to realize that large-scale and immediate action is required to prevent it from worsening further,” Ida Edling told Courthouse News. “The global movement of climate litigation has shown that lack of sufficient climate action is irresponsible and unimaginably dangerous and illegal.”

​Finland is facing a legal challenge from environmental groups alleging the government is in breach of its obligations under a new climate law. According to Greenpeace, it is the first climate litigation to arise in the Nordic country.
 
Greenpeace Norden and the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation filed an administrative appeal in late November arguing that the state had failed to take or consider additional measures to ensure it would meet its emissions reduction targets, which would be necessary given the collapse of Finland’s carbon sinks. Heavy logging and lack of forest protections has turned the land sector from a carbon sink or absorber of CO2 to a source of carbon emissions, threatening the government’s ambition to achieve carbon neutrality by 2035.
 
That goal is enshrined in Finland’s new climate law, the Climate Change Act. Under this law, Finland must adopt plans or policies to reach its climate commitments and do annual assessments to report on progress The law sets emissions reduction targets for 2030, 2040, and 2050 and includes a goal of strengthening carbon sinks. As explained in a Greenpeace press release: “The collapse of Finland’s carbon sinks in 2021 has created a situation where the government’s climate policy plans are insufficient for meeting the Climate Act’s targets.”
 
Finland’s annual report for 2022, the lawsuit argues, failed to take into account additional measures needed to address the loss of carbon sinks. This violates the state’s obligations under the Climate Change Act, plaintiffs say.
 
“Finland has science-based climate goals and a climate law that is meant to ensure that the goals are reached. Finns can be proud of that. But now the government has neglected its legal duty to assess the adequacy of action and, as needed, to decide on additional measures, sufficient to meet the goals,” said Greenpeace Norden’s Senior Climate Policy Advisor Kaisa Kosonen. This is why it’s our duty as NGOs to seek for a court ruling on this.”
 
The lawsuit was filed with Finland’s Supreme Administrative Court.

Story originally published in DeSmog

​Nearly 25 years ago, oil major Shell predicted in an internal 1998 report that a class-action lawsuit would be brought against fossil fuel companies following “a series of violent storms.” That prediction is finally coming true: A group of Puerto Rican communities, which were ravaged by Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017, are suing Shell and other fossil fuel producers in a first-of-its-kind, class action climate liability lawsuit.  

The groundbreaking case — filed November 22 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico — is the first climate-related class action lawsuit in the United States filed against the fossil fuel industry to target the industry with federal charges of racketeering. It alleges that the fossil fuel defendants engaged in a coordinated, multi-front effort to promote climate denial and defraud consumers by concealing the climate consequences of fossil fuel products in order to inflate profits.  

Sixteen Puerto Rican municipalities are suing as a class or representatives on behalf of the more than 60 municipalities on the island that all experienced devastating losses from the 2017 hurricanes. The case demands that fossil fuel companies pay for damages associated with catastrophic storms, beginning with the 2017 hurricanes, and their lingering impacts, arguing that these disasters are worsened by climate change.

The more than 200-page complaint alleges that fossil fuel companies’ products and deceptive conduct greatly accelerated global warming, including warming oceans. Climate models predict that as oceans warm, hurricanes will become more intense, leading to more turbocharged storms like Maria and Irma. 

The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season, in which both Irma and Maria hit, saw six major hurricanes and resulted in nearly $300 billion of damage. In Puerto Rico, Maria alone caused almost 3,000 fatalities and more than $120 billion in damages, destroying the island’s power grid and devastating other critical infrastructure like roads and health care facilities. This September, almost five years to the day after Maria hit, Hurricane Fiona slammed Puerto Rico, again impacting infrastructure and compounding damages from the 2017 storms. With mounting climate-related disaster costs, the question becomes, how can Puerto Rico pay for this? 

Through this new litigation, the island’s municipalities are trying to compel some of the world’s largest oil, gas, and coal companies to pay for the consequences of the climate crisis their products have fueled. As explained in a press release announcing the lawsuit, the companies’ “failure to disclose the truth about their products had disastrous effects for Puerto Rico, which was defenseless against the historically strong hurricanes that hit the island in 2017.” The Global Climate Risk Index report from 2020 noted that between 1999 and 2018, Puerto Rico was the country most affected by climate change, due in part to “exceptionally devastating” storms.

Companies named as defendants in the lawsuit include BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Shell, Occidental Petroleum, Motiva Enterprises, BHP, Arch Resources, Peabody Energy, and Rio Tinto. All are among the 90 corporate entities, or “carbon majors,” that research indicates are responsible for nearly two-thirds of carbon emissions since the Industrial Revolution; the companies listed above together account for about 40 percent of industrial emissions from 1965 to 2017, according to the complaint. 

The complaint, supported by excerpts from industry communications, delves into how oil companies knew over half a century ago about the potential catastrophic impacts of a warming planet, and that this warming resulted from the use of their products. It also details how they deliberately acted to conceal what they knew about climate impacts and to publicly disseminate disinformation, fund climate denial, and obstruct policy responses and attempts to shift to alternative energy sources. 

“Instead of acting to limit the potential greenhouse gas emissions, they mobilized with the coal and fossil fuel dependent industries to manufacture and spread propaganda and deception about climate science, contrary to their own internal scientific conclusions, in order to ensure unabated emissions and the sale of their products to consumers worldwide and in Puerto Rico,” the complaint contends.

As part of their disinformation and deception campaigns, fossil fuel companies funded various “free market” think tanks and front groups to amplify their misleading messaging. The lawsuit calls out a handful of these organizations, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), which received more than $2 million from Exxon, the Heritage Foundation, the Heartland Institute, Frontiers of Freedom, and Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), which took funding from Exxon, Chevron, and Peabody. 

Another group that the complaint alleges was central to the deception campaign was the Global Climate Coalition, an industry lobby organization formed in 1989 by companies and trade associations in carbon-intensive sectors such as fossil fuels, chemicals, automobiles, and electric utilities, to undermine climate science and thwart climate policies. The complaint details the GCC’s obstructionist role, which included the formation of a communications task force that in 1998 created the infamous “victory will be achieved when” internal memo that outlined the coalition’s objective to manipulate the public’s understanding of climate science. 

Such conduct demonstrates an orchestrated attempt to obfuscate and obstruct, and this misleading behavior is ongoing, according to legal counsel for the municipalities. 

“This is a laid out, multifaceted plan that was decades in the making that is still being perpetuated to this day,” Melissa Sims, an attorney with the law firm Milberg Coleman Bryson Phillips Grossman PLLC, which is representing the Puerto Rican communities, told DeSmog. 

A “New Front in the Climate Liability War”

The lawsuit brings more than a dozen legal claims under federal and Puerto Rican law, such as consumer fraud, violation of Puerto Rican consumer protection rules, and violation of federal antitrust law. Notably, it also alleges violations under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, a federal statute designed to fight organized crime or other corrupt conduct. 

RICO has been successfully used to hold the tobacco industry accountable for lying about the health hazards of their products, and has been applied in litigation against opioid and auto manufactures. Until now, it had yet to be asserted in a climate liability lawsuit, although several Democratic senators have previously called for a federal probe of Big Oil that could result in potential racketeering litigation. 

Patrick Parenteau, emeritus professor of law and senior fellow for climate policy in the Environmental Law Center at Vermont Law and Graduate School, said he had been expecting a RICO claim to arise in climate liability litigation. 

“I think this opens a whole new front in the climate liability war,” he told DeSmog via email. “It sends yet another signal to the financial markets that fossil is a bad investment.” 

Parenteau acknowledged that a racketeering claim adds extra challenges, since plaintiffs will need to prove collusion between the defendants. “But it ups the ante in terms of potential remedies and damages,” he explained. 

Additionally, Parenteau explained that since the lawsuit was filed in federal court, it can avoid the venue disputes that have delayed the other climate liability lawsuits targeting fossil fuel companies. 
Representatives for several of the oil company defendants said in emailed statements that this litigation is a “baseless distraction” and that climate solutions must be reached through “smart policy from governments” rather than courts. 

“Addressing a challenge as big as climate change requires a truly collaborative, society-wide approach. We do not believe the courtroom is the right venue to address climate change,” Shell spokesperson Anna Arata said in a statement. 

A lawyer for Chevron also described the climate crisis as a societal challenge resulting from “worldwide conduct” of consumers, including Puerto Ricans.

“Residents and public officials in Puerto Rico rely every day on oil and gas to live and work on the island, power their homes, become a tourist destination, and grow their economy. This lawsuit is one in a series of suits that attempt to punish a select group of energy companies for a challenge that is the result of worldwide conduct stretching back to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution,”  said Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr., of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, counsel for Chevron Corporation. 

A 2021 peer-reviewed study by Harvard researchers Naomi Oreskes and Geoffrey Supran, however, suggests that these kinds of statements are part of a misleading narrative framing that downplays the gravity of the climate crisis, normalizes dependency on oil and gas, and focuses blame on individual consumers. According to the study, which examined communications from ExxonMobil, “These patterns mimic the tobacco industry’s documented strategy of shifting responsibility away from corporations—which knowingly sold a deadly product while denying its harms—and onto consumers.”

ExxonMobil did not respond to a request for comment on the new lawsuit from Puerto Rico.

​Boutrous added: “Chevron believes the claims alleged are legally and factually meritless, and will demonstrate that in court.”

But if the federal racketeering litigation that determined that tobacco companies had committed fraud on a massive scale is any indication, the fossil fuel companies could be in real legal peril with this new RICO litigation. 

“Tobacco opened the door to using RICO, and let’s face it—RICO was enacted to fight organized crime,” said Sharon Eubanks, an attorney who previously led the U.S. Justice Department’s successful RICO litigation against Big Tobacco in United States v. Philip Morris USA, et al. “That seems to be what we have here with Big Oil as well.”

​A group of scientific, medical and policy experts – including renowned climate scientist Dr. James Hansen – is suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in an attempt to compel the agency to address greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under a federal statute designed to control hazardous chemical substances.
 
The climate experts filed their lawsuit on November 12, 2022 in federal court in Eugene, Oregon. The case follows the EPA’s rejection of a petition submitted by the experts explaining the grounds for initiating a rulemaking under the Toxic Substances Control Act to phase out anthropogenic GHGs that are driving the rapidly escalating climate crisis. Plaintiffs demand that EPA use its authority under the TSCA to develop regulations to limit and eventually eliminate planet-warming emissions, the majority of which stem from producing and consuming fossil fuels. According to the complaint: “Without regulation under TSCA, the U.S. Government will not eliminate the unreasonable risk to health and the environment posed by greenhouse gas emissions.”
 
Previously the EPA has relied on the Clean Air Act to devise regulations addressing climate pollution, such as setting controls for vehicle tailpipe emissions. The Toxic Substances Control Act has not been utilized for climate purposes, although EPA did impose a general ban on chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in aerosols – chemicals that deplete the ozone layer and act as GHGs - in 1978. The TSCA requires EPA take action to control any chemical substance or mixture determined to present a risk of injuring or causing widespread harm to health or the environment.
 
Plaintiffs argue that GHGs (beyond just CFCs) qualify under the statute as dangerous substances that warrant agency action to control.
 
“TSCA is a chemical safety act. Right now, greenhouse gases are the most unsafe chemicals on the planet. TSCA is designed to control chemical risk other authorities can’t,” Donn Viviani, plaintiff and former EPA scientist, said in a statement. “I worked at EPA for over 30 years, and it is hard for me to understand why the Agency would need a Petition to regulate these unsafe chemicals,” he continued. “Indeed, it is virtually unbelievable to me that they denied the Petition and require a lawsuit to take action to contend seriously with the worst risk that mankind has ever faced.”
 
The climate experts submitted their petition to EPA on June 16, 2022. Several months later in September, EPA denied the petition, claiming the request was not specific enough given the enormous scope of the climate crisis. EPA also said the government is taking steps to address climate change. Efforts already underway and future measures, the agency argued, would be sufficient to meet the U.S.’s climate targets.
 
But Dan Galpern, the attorney representing the plaintiffs and executive director of the organization Climate Protection Restoration Initiative, said current climate actions and spending, such as those included in recent legislation (the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act), “remain hopelessly inadequate.”
 
“The Agency’s reasonable use of TSCA to restrict GHG pollution really would shape an enduring legacy for Biden,” said Dr. Hansen. “The future of young people is at stake, and it is well past time we got serious.”