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Climate
‘Just as Big Oil Predicted’: Fossil Fuel Industry Under Fire as Record Heat Broils Western States
"Extreme heatwaves like the one impacting the Western US this month are one of the catastrophic disasters these companies predicted their conduct would bring about," said Public Citizen.
Mar 19, 2026
Spring has not yet even begun, but as science journalist Rebecca Boyle wrote Thursday for The Atlantic, "it feels like we skipped right to summer" across the Western United States, which is facing record temperatures this week.
As of Monday, 39 million people across California, Nevada, and Arizona were under heat alerts. Temperatures in Los Angeles are reaching "25-35 degrees above normal," records are being "rewritten" in Las Vegas, and Phoenix is facing temperatures of 105°F two months earlier than usual, according to warnings issued by the National Weather Service (NWS) this week.
"This is not normal. Or at least it wasn’t normal in the past," said Boyle, who explained that it was the result of hot air being trapped by "a bizarrely strong ridge of high pressure in Earth’s atmosphere," the kind that would be uncommonly strong even in the summer.
Citing a model created by the nonprofit group Climate Central, she said that human-caused climate change had made these extreme temperatures five times more likely.
The NWS warned that a heatwave in March is "very dangerous, particularly for those not acclimated to the heat and/or traveling from cooler climates.”
Counts by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that 1,600-2,400 Americans die each year from heat-related causes, and they've more than doubled since 1999.
Meanwhile, a report from the Federation of American Scientists last year found that "the combined effects of extreme heat cost [the US] over $162 billion in 2024—equivalent to nearly 1% of the US GDP."
The Western United States has recently experienced its warmest winter on in recorded history, leading to a record snow drought. Scientists say this has depleted water supplies and will make the region more vulnerable to wildfires and drought later this year.
Climate scientist Daniel Swain told ABC News 10 of Northern California that this is only the beginning of how the climate crisis will impact the state in the coming decades.
"The hottest hots are already getting hotter, and they will continue to get hotter. We haven't seen the hottest temperatures that we're going to see in the next 20 or 30 years," Swain said. "We'll see an increasing number of years with severe wildfire conditions... We will also see increased risk of major flood events, either as snowmelt becomes more rapid in the spring or as winter storms drop even more rainfall more quickly."
The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen said heatwaves like this one are unfolding "just as Big Oil predicted."
"A relatively small number of major fossil fuel companies are responsible for the majority of all greenhouse gas emissions generated by humanity. Just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of all global greenhouse gas emissions generated since 1854, and just 57 companies are responsible for 80% of the emissions generated since 2016," explained a report published by the group Thursday.
"These companies didn’t just contribute to this heatwave—they did so knowingly," the report said. "For decades, Big Oil companies were internally forecasting exactly these kinds of climate disasters."
However, the report explains, the industry "developed and orchestrated a multidecade, coordinated campaign to defraud the public about the dangers of climate change, and blocked solutions that could have prevented these disasters."
A study published earlier this month by Geophysical Research Letters showed that as more carbon has been pumped into the atmosphere over the past 10 years, the rate at which the climate is warming has doubled.
Following this trend, it may be as soon as 2030 that the globe surpasses 1.5°C above preindustrial averages, at which point many climate risks, such as heatwaves, biodiversity loss, and food insecurity, are expected to be dramatically amplified, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
"Big Oil companies have, indeed, cost this country and the world," Public Citizen said. "Extreme heatwaves like the one impacting the Western US this month are one of the catastrophic disasters these companies predicted their conduct would bring about. They should be made to pay."
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Emergency Lawsuit Filed to Stop Trump Admin Meeting That Could Drive a Whale Species to Extinction
“Burgum’s Extinction Committee is immoral, illegal, and unnecessary,” said the head of the Center for Biological Diversity, which warns it could put the final nail in the coffin of the extremely endangered Rice's whale.
Mar 18, 2026
An environmental organization is suing to stop the Trump administration from illegally convening a meeting that could allow oil and gas companies to drive an extremely endangered whale species to extinction.
On Wednesday, the Center for Biological Diversity filed an emergency lawsuit against Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum in a federal district court in Washington, DC, seeking to block him from convening the Endangered Species Committee, more commonly known as the “Extinction Committee,” on March 31.
This committee is sometimes referred to as the "God Squad" because its members have the power to grant exemptions to the Endangered Species Act that can result in the extinction of imperiled species.
Led by the interior secretary, it has seven total members who can vote to override regulations. Five of them are senior executive officials: the secretaries of agriculture and the Army, the head of the Council of Economic Advisers, and the administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Each affected state also receives a delegate to the committee, but they collectively receive just one vote. Five votes of seven are needed to grant an exemption.
In the federal register, Burgum announced earlier this week that the committee would meet at the end of the month “regarding an Endangered Species Act exemption for Gulf of America oil and gas activities," referring to the Gulf of Mexico by the name preferred by President Donald Trump.
The Center for Biological Diversity said Burgum was seeking to override a requirement for oil and gas companies in the Gulf of Mexico to drive boats at safe speeds in order to protect the nearly extinct Rice’s whale from strikes.
These whales, named after the cetologist Dale Rice, who first recognized them as distinct from other whales in 1965, were not formally recognized as a new species until 2021.
According to the Center for Biological Diversity, only about 51 Rice's whales remain after BP's catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, which devastated their population.
Last May, NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service issued a biological opinion concluding that their continued existence—as well as that of other whale and sea turtle species—was under threat from boat strikes, since Rice's whales spend most of their time in the top 15 meters of water, which often puts them on a collision course with oil vessels.
The agency issued guidance requiring oil industry ships to travel at slower speeds in the eastern Gulf, saying that if they were followed, lethal collisions would be “extremely unlikely to occur” and that the species would be protected.
The Extinction Committee could override this rule, but it has only been convened three times in its history, and not since 1991, when then-President George H.W. Bush used it to open up timber harvests in the Pacific Northwest that endangered the habitats of spotted owls, which were considered threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
The Extinction Committee is invoked so rarely because the circumstances for its use, as outlined in law, are extremely narrow: It can only be convened within 90 days of a biological opinion by the US Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service concluding that a federal action is likely to jeopardize a species. They must also determine that there is no “reasonable and prudent alternative” to the action the government plans to take.
In its lawsuit, the Center for Biological Diversity says that neither of these criteria has been reached, since the Fisheries Service issued its opinion 10 months ago and already established a reasonable alternative: slowing down the boats.
"Slowing boat speeds is not just reasonable, it’s easy, and it’s the absolute minimum the oil and gas industry can do to save Rice’s whales from extinction,” said Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity.
The group said Burgum is also flouting other requirements of the law, including that the meeting be presided over by an administrative judge and have a formal hearing with public comment. No judge has been appointed by Burgum, and the meeting is only scheduled to be livestreamed on YouTube, with no forum for public input.
“Burgum’s Extinction Committee is immoral, illegal, and unnecessary,” Suckling said. “There’s no emergency, no legal basis to convene the committee, and no legal way to approve the extinction of Rice’s whales. This sham is nothing more than Burgum posturing for Trump and saving the fossil fuel industry a few dollars by allowing its boats to drive faster and more recklessly.”
If Rice's whales were to go extinct, they could be the first ever large whale species to be driven out of existence by human activity in recorded history. Earthjustice says that the rollback of boat speed restrictions and other activities by the Trump administration—including the approval of the first BP oil field in the Gulf since the 2010 spill—are putting other species at risk too.
The scheduled March 31 meeting, said the group, "could kick off a months-long process to decide whether to give special treatment to the oil industry by allowing offshore drilling to go forward even if it would lead to the extinction of Gulf species."
“The marine species in the Gulf are our natural heritage. There’s no imaginable justification to sacrifice them,” said Steve Mashuda, Earthjustice's managing attorney for oceans. "It’s beyond reckless even to consider greenlighting the extinction of sea turtles, fish, whales, rays, and corals to further pad the oil industry’s pockets at the public’s expense. Giving carte blanche to industry also takes us further away from renewable energy that is cleaner, cheaper, more reliable, and more efficient than ever before.”
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Average US Electric Bill Up $110—or 6.4%—Under Trump in 2025
"American families don't need a report to tell them that the president has broken his campaign promise to slash energy costs."
Mar 17, 2026
Over two weeks into President Donald Trump and Israel's illegal war on Iran, which is driving up oil prices around the world, Democrats on the congressional Joint Economic Committee revealed Tuesday that the average annual US electric bill increased by $110, or 6.4%, last year.
The Democratic JEC staff compared monthly data from the federal Energy Information Administration for 2024, when Trump was campaigning to return to office against then-Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, and 2025, when the Republican returned to power, having repeatedly promised to cut electric bills in half.
The JEC report highlights that last year's national average was "even higher than the increase the committee projected last November," plus "annual electricity costs were higher in 2025 in nearly every state, and were at least 10% higher in 12 states and DC."
The states with the highest annual bills were Connecticut and Hawaii, which each had an average of $2,490 for 2025. They were followed by Alabama at $2,230, Maryland at $2,220, Massachusetts at $2,190, Texas at $2,080, and Florida at $2,010.
In terms of the largest increases last year, the District of Columbia saw the biggest jump: a 23.5% rise from $1,360 to $1,680. New Jersey led all states with a 16.9% hike from $1,540 to $1,800, followed by Illinois at 15.9%, Pennsylvania at 12.1%, Kentucky at 11.8%, Maryland and Tennessee at 11.6%, New York at 11.4%, Ohio at 11.1%, and Missouri at 11%.
"American families don't need a report to tell them that the president has broken his campaign promise to slash energy costs; they already feel the impact of President Trump's actions every single day," said Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH), the panel's ranking member. "But this report is yet another indication that sky-high costs are continuing to rise—and are continuing to hurt American families."
Throughout last year, lawmakers and other experts warned of various policies expected to drive up utility bills, including the Republican budget package, or so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which eliminated tax credits for solar and wind energy.
"Trump and Republicans are accelerating their self-inflicted energy crisis with continued project cancellations," the group Climate Power declared in a December report that blamed the administration for hurting "projects that would have produced enough electricity to power the equivalent of 13 million homes."
The Trump administration is also advocating for the construction of artificial intelligence data centers, despite warnings that the unregulated buildup of such facilities is causing local electricity costs to soar, plus threatening nearby communities and the global climate.
There's also US liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, which are not only exacerbating the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency but also pushing up energy prices for Americans, as Public Citizen detailed in a December report. The watchdog noted that "1 in 6 Americans—21 million households—are behind on their energy bills," which "are rising at twice the rate of inflation."
"Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum have acted as global gas salesmen, traveling to Europe to push exports and gut European methane regulations while attacking mainstream climate science," Tyson Slocum, report author and director of the Public Citizen's Energy Program, said at the time. "Meanwhile, Trump has done nothing to keep prices down at home."
The report preceded Big Oil-backed Trump launching a war on Iran without congressional authorization. While causing oil prices to skyrocket, his Operation Epic Fury is expected to boost the US LNG industry, with one expert projecting earlier this month that American companies could see up to $20 billion per month in windfall profits if the global market is deprived of Qatari gas until the summer.
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Climate Group Says Rich Nations 'Must Tax Fossil Fuel Windfall Profits' Tied to Iran War
"If G7 countries are serious about stabilizing the market, they need to stop protecting profits and start taxing companies which fuel the climate crisis."
Mar 10, 2026
Campaigners with the global climate movement 350.org argued Tuesday that Group of Seven countries "must tax fossil fuel windfall profits" from price hikes related to the US-Israeli war on Iran.
"Wars expose a deep flaw in our energy system: When prices spike, fossil fuel companies stand ready to cash in while households and businesses struggle," said the group's global campaigns manager, Clémence Dubois, in a statement. "That's not just market volatility, it's the result of governments allowing fossil fuel companies to keep the power to shape the energy system and pass the costs onto everyone else."
In addition to the US, the G7 includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Dubois declared that they all "must stop reinforcing this model with fossil fuel tax cuts that only inflate corporate earnings. Cutting fossil fuel taxes during a crisis is not a relief for families, it's a subsidy for companies that are already enjoying windfall profits."
"The right response is a strong windfall tax, which should be redirected to support households and accelerate the transition to clean energy that reduces our dependence on the very fuels driving both climate disruption and global instability," she stressed, just days after new research revealed that the pace of global heating from fossil fuels has accelerated over the past decade.
While advocates have long called for taxing oil and gas companies to pay for a swift transition to clean power and the impacts of the climate emergency on communities around the world, the Trump administration and Israel's assault on Iran has generated fresh demands for an urgent transition away from dirty energy.
The US and Israel have bombarded civilian infrastructure, including Iranian oil facilities, sending clouds of smoke and black droplets falling over Tehran. Iran has threatened to fire upon ships crossing through the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial pathway for both oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.
The shutdown of both the key waterway and Qatari liquefied natural gas facilities damaged by Iranian attacks has sent oil prices soaring and led to estimates that US LNG companies could soon see $20 billion in monthly windfall profits, as they direct exports to the highest bidders.
As Politico reported: "News early Monday that the United States and other G7 countries were discussing a possible coordinated release of oil from their strategic petroleum reserves halted a panic-driven market spike that briefly pushed US oil to nearly $120 a barrel overnight. The French government later in the morning walked that back, saying the G7 was 'not there yet' as far as tapping oil stockpiles."
Speaking in Cyprus on Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron said that "we are in the process of setting up a purely defensive, purely escort mission, which must be prepared together with both European and non-European states, and whose purpose is to enable, as soon as possible after the most intense phase of the conflict has ended, the escort of container ships and tankers to gradually reopen the Strait of Hormuz."
Meanwhile, Fanny Petitbon, 350's France country manager, said Tuesday that "releasing emergency oil reserves is just a Band-Aid on a gaping wound. If G7 countries are serious about stabilizing the market, they need to stop protecting profits and start taxing companies which fuel the climate crisis."
"Working people shouldn't be paying the price while oil majors treat the war in the Middle East like a winning lottery ticket. We need the G7 to step up and establish a windfall tax now to put those profits back into the pockets of the people," Petitbon asserted. "The French government, as president of the G7, must also confront the elephant in the room—the urgent phaseout of fossil fuels. It can no longer look away from the reality, which is that we cannot stay addicted to oil and gas."
Among the countries significantly impacted by the Strait of Hormuz closure is Japan, which relies on the route for around 70% of its oil and 6% of its LNG imports, according to Reuters. Masayoshi Iyoda, a 350 campaigner for the country, said that "Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has moved to calm fears over rising energy and food prices, but reassurances and stopgap measures like releasing oil reserves are not enough."
"Fossil fuel companies are cashing in on this crisis. A windfall tax on polluting industries would make them pay by taking responsibility, not ordinary families already stretched by years of stagnant wages and price surges due to climate impacts," Iyoda continued, before looking toward Takaichi's planned meeting with US President Donald Trump next week.
"We urge her to reconsider Japan's alignment with the Trump administration's fossil fuel agenda," the campaigner said. "The attack on Iran has shown, once again, how that agenda means prosperity for oil and gas corporations, and higher bills for everyone else. Accelerating a just transition to renewable energy and phasing out fossil fuels is Japan's best option to secure affordable and sustainable energy based on democracy and peace."
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