<
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2026/08/it-just-got-way-easier-to-sue-fossil-fuel-companies-over-climate-change/>
"Deadly heatwaves in May smashed records in the UK, France, Spain, and parts of
North Africa. India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh saw April temperatures soar to
113-122 degrees Fahrenheit. A late spring heat dome in the US marked the
hottest March on record, and in a 1,000-year July storm, parts of Texas were
left reeling after flash flooding killed multiple people. That same month,
wildfires in Canada turned skies orange and exposed over 106 million North
Americans to hazardous air quality. In the US alone, catastrophic events from
1980 to 2026 have killed approximately 17,377 people and cost over $3.2
trillion.
In terms of the sheer scope of heat and extreme weather, 2026 has been a year
of climate disasters.
Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry—by far the greatest contributor to global
climate change, accounting for approximately 68 percent of greenhouse gas
emissions and almost 90 percent of carbon dioxide emissions—is holding firm. In
response to a growing tide of litigation seeking to hold it at least partly
responsible for the climate crisis, oil and gas groups and their networks have
accelerated their defenses, fighting with their all-too-familiar playbook of
discrediting the science linking emissions to extreme weather events such as
heatwaves, wildfires, flooding, heavy storms and hurricanes. With the help of
the Trump administration and industry partners, oil and gas groups have lodged
disinformation campaigns targeting specific studies and even individual climate
scientists.
“How can you show proximate causation in injury?” asked Michael Buschbacher, a
partner at Boyden Gray PLLC during an October 2025 Federalist Society panel on
climate litigation. He has supported industry opposition to renewable energy
mandates, state-level climate liability lawsuits, and SEC climate risk
disclosure mandates. “Bad weather is of course not new. So how do you show that
emissions from company X cause injury Y from a hurricane or whatever?” He then
wondered about the consequences of the suits should they be successful. “Will
they reduce global carbon emissions, or will it just be a payday for
contingency fee lawyers and opportunity for virtue signaling from progressive
politicians?”
A new peer-reviewed study published earlier this month in
Earth’s Future
suggests that it is possible to demonstrate that “emissions from company X
cause injury Y.” It also could potentially provide evidence so industry could
be forced to answer for climate impacts. The new methodological framework has,
for the first time, drawn a straight line from single corporate emitters like
Exxon or Chevron, or even whole countries like the United States, to specific
heatwaves and areas of extreme rainfall. By running over 150 simulations across
8 different climate models, the study’s author, Christopher Callahan—an Earth
systems scientist and assistant professor at Indiana University’s O’Neill
School of Public and Environmental Affairs—built a statistical model to figure
out the relationship between the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and
the odds of extreme heat or rain. He then used real emissions data to calculate
the extent to which specific fossil fuel emitters increased the risk of extreme
weather.
The study’s results are clear: “There is no level of emissions that does not
contribute to changing climate impacts,” Callahan told me. “Every ton
matters.”"
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
