As billion-dollar climate disasters pile up, and world leaders fail to act against global warming, lawsuits on behalf of impacted states, cities and other government entities have increased in number with the intent of holding the fossil fuel industry accountable for its contribution to climate change-caused economic damages. But directly linking specific companies and their […]

  • In recent decades a growing number of lawsuits have been launched by states, cities and other government entities to hold fossil fuel companies financially liable for the climate harm caused by the greenhouse gas emissions their products produce.

  • But those efforts often come up against challenging legal arguments made by the companies saying that their actions and emissions cannot be scientifically linked to specific climate change-driven extreme weather events.

  • Now, fast-advancing attribution science is offering answers to those legal arguments. A new study has created a framework that connects the emissions over time of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies — BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Saudi Aramco and Gazprom — to rising temperatures and specific heat-related climate disasters.

  • Researchers say that, in time, this framework for assigning attribution and financial damages could be extended to specific fossil fuel companies and a range of climate change-intensified extreme events such as hurricanes, flooding, sea-level rise and wildfires. The framework has yet to be tested in court.