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"We've got to work fast to end fossil fuel operations near our homes, schools, and hospitals and trade fossil fuel infrastructure for healthy, clean energy," said one co-author.
"The evidence is clear that fossil fuels—and the fossil fuel industry and its enablers—are driving a multitude of interlinked crises that jeopardize the breadth and stability of life on Earth."
That's the first line of the abstract for an article published Monday by top scientists who reviewed "the vast scientific evidence showing that fossil fuels and the fossil fuel industry are the root cause of the climate crisis, harm public health, worsen environmental injustice, accelerate biodiversity extinction, and fuel the petrochemical pollution crisis."
The new paper in the peer-reviewed journal Oxford Open Climate Change highlights the diverse impacts of "every stage of the fossil fuel life cycle" and stresses that the "industry has obscured and concealed this evidence through a decadeslong, multibillion-dollar disinformation campaign aimed at blocking action to phase out" its deadly products.
"The fossil fuel industry has spent decades misleading us about the harms of their products and working to prevent meaningful climate action," said co-author Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science at Harvard University, in a statement. "Perversely, our governments continue to give out hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to this damaging industry. It is past time that stops."
"The most polluted communities should be prioritized for clean energy investments and removal and cleanup of dirty fossil fuel infrastructure."
While the researchers focused on the United States, "as the world's largest oil and gas producer and dominant contributor to these fossil fuel crises," their review—including proposed "science-and-justice-based solutions" for an economywide effort to "forge a path forward to sustaining life on Earth"—applies to the whole world, which is quickly heating up due to emissions from coal, gas, and oil.
The article features sections on the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis, public health harms, environmental injustice, biodiversity loss and extinction, petrochemical pollution, and industry disinformation. Each section lays out the "problem" and "solutions."
The climate emergency section includes details such as "the production and combustion of oil, gas, and coal are responsible for nearly 90% of human-caused carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and approximately 79% of total greenhouse gas emissions," and "failures in political will to implement necessary climate action have made the 1.5°C benchmark nearly impossible to achieve without overshoot," referring to a primary goal of the 2015 Paris agreement.
Although the current U.S. administration has demonstrated its alliance to the fossil fuel industry—including with President Donald Trump's recent energy emergency declaration—the scientists still emphasized what's possible in the country.
"In the USA, powerful policy levers are available to governments and civil society at the local, state, national, and international levels to phase out fossil fuels and transition to a clean, renewable energy economy," they wrote. "These levers include regulation (e.g. applying and enforcing existing laws), legislation (e.g. polluters pay laws, fossil fuel subsidy reform, land use laws limiting drilling), and litigation (e.g. holding fossil fuel companies accountable, defending existing law)."
They also warned that "last-ditch efforts to prolong the fossil fuel industry are proliferating. These include counterproductive false solutions, like carbon capture and storage (CCS), which would perpetuate fossil fuel use while capturing only some of the resulting emissions, and hydrogen made from fossil fuels."
The public health section notes that "air pollution from fossil fuel combustion accounts for 8.7 million (equaling 1 in 5) premature deaths per year worldwide and 350,000 premature deaths per year in the USA. In a single year, air pollution from oil and gas production in the USA resulted in 410,000 asthma exacerbations, 2,200 new cases of childhood asthma, and 7,500 premature deaths in 2016."
Co-author David J.X. González, an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, said Monday that "we've got to work fast to end fossil fuel operations near our homes, schools and hospitals and trade fossil fuel infrastructure for healthy, clean energy."
"Oil, gas, and coal will continue to condemn us to more deaths, wildlife extinctions, and extreme weather disasters unless we make dirty fossil fuels a thing of the past."
The paper points out that "climate change is increasing incidence of physical and mental health impacts and mortality through multiple pathways: worsening extreme events including heatwaves, severe storms, floods, droughts, and wildfires; shifting ranges of disease vectors; threats to food security; and displacement and forced migration, which restrict access to healthcare and other basic services."
"These harms, though broadly felt, also disproportionately impact marginalized communities which are already disproportionately burdened by other socioenvironmental hazards, as well as susceptible populations including young children, people with certain disabilities, people experiencing homelessness, pregnant people, people with chronic diseases, and older adults," the publication continues.
University of Montana associate professor of environmental studies Robin Saha, another co-author, said that "decades of discriminatory policies, such as redlining, have concentrated fossil fuel development in Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor white communities, resulting in devastating consequences."
"For far too long, these fenceline communities have been treated as sacrifice zones by greedy, callous industries," Saha added. "The most polluted communities should be prioritized for clean energy investments and removal and cleanup of dirty fossil fuel infrastructure."
The paper's other co-authors are Robert Bullard of Texas Southern University, Boston University's Jonathan J. Buonocore and Mary D. Willis, Trisia Farrelly of the Cawthron Institute, William Ripple of Oregon State University, and the Center for Biological Diversity's Nathan Donley, John Fleming, and Shaye Wolf.
"The science can't be any clearer that fossil fuels are killing us," declared Wolf, the paper's lead author and the center's climate science director. "Oil, gas, and coal will continue to condemn us to more deaths, wildlife extinctions, and extreme weather disasters unless we make dirty fossil fuels a thing of the past. Clean, renewable energy is here, it's affordable, and it will save millions of lives and trillions of dollars once we make it the centerpiece of our economy."
"With this latest denial, the fossil fuel industry's worst nightmare—having to face the overwhelming evidence of their decades of calculated climate deception—is closer than ever to becoming a reality," said one advocate.
Climate campaigners and scientists on Monday welcomed the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to reject attempts by fossil fuel giants to quash the Hawaii capital's lawsuit aiming to hold the major polluters accountable for the devastating impacts of their products.
"This is a significant day for the people of Honolulu and the rule of law," Ben Sullivan, executive director and chief resilience officer at the City and County of Honolulu's Office of Climate Change, Sustainability, and Resiliency, said in a statement.
"This landmark decision upholds our right to enforce Hawaii laws in Hawaii courts, ensuring the protection of Hawaii taxpayers and communities from the immense costs and consequences of the climate crisis caused by the defendants misconduct," he added.
Honolulu first sued companies including BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Shell, and Sunoco in March 2020. The companies have fought to shut down the case—like dozens of other climate liability lawsuits that states and municipalities have filed against Big Oil at the state level.
Shell and Sunoco led a pair of appeals to the Supreme Court, arguing that Honolulu's suit was "a blueprint for chaos" because it could inform other legal actions against fossil fuel companies and such cases "could threaten the energy industry." Similar to three previous decisions, the justices declined to intervene.
Center for Climate Integrity president Richard Wiles connected Monday's victory to the other cases, saying in a statement that "Big Oil companies keep fighting a losing battle to avoid standing trial for their climate lies."
"With this latest denial, the fossil fuel industry's worst nightmare—having to face the overwhelming evidence of their decades of calculated climate deception—is closer than ever to becoming a reality," Wiles continued. "Communities everywhere are paying dearly for the massive damages caused by Big Oil's decadeslong climate deception. The people of Honolulu and communities across the country deserve their day in court to hold these companies accountable."
Delta Merner, lead scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists' Science Hub for Climate Litigation, similarly celebrated the decision, which she called "a resounding affirmation of Honolulu's right to seek justice under state law for the mounting climate impacts caused by fossil fuel companies' deceptive practices."
"For more than 50 years, fossil fuel companies have conducted sophisticated disinformation campaigns to obscure their own research showing that burning fossil fuels would drive climate change," Merner highlighted. "This case lays bare how these actions have contributed to rising seas, intensified storms, and coastal erosion that are devastating Honolulu's people, infrastructure, and natural resources."
"Scientific evidence is unequivocal: The human-caused emissions from fossil fuels are the primary driver of climate change," she stressed. "Honolulu's case stands as an example of how communities are using both science and the law to challenge corporate misconduct and demand accountability for climate damages."
Merner added that "the people of Honolulu are demonstrating remarkable leadership in standing up to powerful fossil fuel companies whose disinformation campaigns have directly contributed to the climate harms they now face. Their efforts serve as a powerful example for communities around the world. This decision is one step in a larger effort to seek accountability and justice."
The Supreme Court's latest blow to the oil and gas industry came just a week before the second inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, who courted Big Oil executives on the campaign trail and pledged to "drill, baby, drill" if he won the November election.
The high court—which has a right-wing supermajority that includes three Trump appointees—had asked the Biden administration to weigh in. Last month, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar
urged the justices not to intervene. Merner said at the time that her briefs "represent an important step in the pursuit of climate accountability."
Their fortunes are the result of poisoning you, me, our children and grandchildren, every other living thing on Earth, and destroying the temperature stability of our atmosphere. This week it's horrifying to look out and see the world they are creating for the rest of us.
Public Citizen would like you to know that there are killers among us.
They wear $2,000 suits and travel in private jets, unbothered by the TSA or the teeming masses. Their children attend the finest universities in the world, and they vacation on private islands and yachts. Many “earn” more in a day than most Americans take home in a year; their positions ensure their heirs will never have to work a day in their lives.
Their fortunes are the result of poisoning you, me, our children and grandchildren, every other living thing on Earth, and destroying the temperature stability of our atmosphere. This week they’re arguably responsible, in part, for billions of dollars in losses, numerous deaths, and thousands of shattered lives in Southern California.
Illegitimate president-elect Trump is trying his best to cover for them, claiming that the fires ripping through the Los Angeles area are the fault of California’s Democratic governor, calling Gavin Newsome by a childish name to draw more attention to Trump’s efforts on behalf of the Republican Party’s most generous donors.
Oil industry executives and fossil fuel billionaires are the hands holding the smoking gun of climate change that have directly or indirectly caused tens of thousands of deaths and millions of people displaced worldwide over the past two decades. And now the fires in southern California.
Mainstream media is largely going along with Trump’s charade, choosing not to even mention — in the vast majority of their reports on the crisis — the role of climate change in the fires. And never, G-d forbid, mentioning the role of the fossil fuel industry in the climate change that has turned these fires from an annual nuisance into a hellscape.
It’s as frankly absurd as a TV news person reporting on a plane crash and, instead of asking aviation experts what caused it, simply lifting their collective shoulders with a helpless “shit happens” shrug.
But these fires — and the droughts and changing weather patterns that made them so severe — aren’t something that just happens by random happenstance, any more than an airliner crash.
And the oil industry has known for decades this day was coming.
In November, 1959, the famous scientist Edward Teller — the “Father of the H-Bomb” — was the keynote speaker at a conference on “The Energy of the Future” in New York, organized by the American Petroleum Institute and the Columbia Graduate School of Business. The news he conveyed to the assembled oil industry executives was stark:
“Whenever you burn conventional fuel, you create carbon dioxide. ... The carbon dioxide is invisible, it is transparent, you can’t smell it, it is not dangerous to health, so why should one worry about it? Carbon dioxide has a strange property. It transmits visible light but it absorbs the infrared radiation which is emitted from the earth. Its presence in the atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect ...
“It has been calculated that a temperature rise corresponding to a 10 per cent increase in carbon dioxide will be sufficient to melt the icecap and submerge New York. All the coastal cities would be covered, and since a considerable percentage of the human race lives in coastal regions, I think that this chemical contamination is more serious than most people tend to believe.”
This shocking news apparently provoked a scramble in the oil industry, probably similar to when the asbestos industry learned in the 1930s that their product caused lung cancer (the mesothelioma that killed my father), or in 1939 when the tobacco industry learned that smoking also killed people.
They set out to determine if Teller’s prediction was true. He’d predicted that CO2 levels would reach the point where they’d begin to seriously melt the polar and Greenland ice caps and alter weather patterns within a few decades, telling the oil executives at that 1959 meeting:
“At present the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by 2 per cent over normal. By 1970, it will be perhaps 4 per cent, by 1980, 8 per cent, by 1990, 16 per cent [about 360 parts per million, by Teller’s accounting], if we keep on with our exponential rise in the use of purely conventional fuels. By that time, there will be a serious additional impediment for the [heat] radiation leaving the earth.”
For the next decade, industry scientists went to work along with studies commissioned by major universities. One of the most well-known was a 1968 report the American Petroleum Institute hired the Stanford Research Institute to conduct. Its findings corroborated Teller’s prediction:
“Significant temperature changes are almost certain to occur by the year 2000, and these could bring about climatic changes. ... there seems to be no doubt that the potential damage to our environment could be severe. ... pollutants which we generally ignore because they have little local effect, CO2 and submicron particles, may be the cause of serious world-wide environmental changes.”
It was the first of dozens of studies the industry paid for or knew about, all predicting pretty much exactly what’s happening right now in Los Angeles, including major reports in 1979, 1982, and 1991.
And then the “climate denial” began.
Fossil fuel billionaires and their oil companies funded think tanks to promote skepticism, pushed frontmen onto radio and TV to claim that climate scientists and people like Al Gore were “in it for the money,” and began funding the campaigns of politicians willing to exchange the future habitability of the planet for a few decades of power and wealth.
In 2015, the Union of Concerned Scientists documented decades of internal industry memos and strategy sessions that were organizing, funding, and detailing roughly three decades of lies foisted on the American Public. The industry and its executives’ efforts were all, apparently, in the service of preserving their income stream and avoiding any liability for the deaths they knew would one day come as a result of their product poisoning our atmosphere.
And now that day is here. Oil industry executives and fossil fuel billionaires are the hands holding the smoking gun of climate change that have directly or indirectly caused tens of thousands of deaths and millions of people displaced worldwide over the past two decades. And now the fires in southern California.
Two-thirds of voters, according to a 2024 poll, believe the fossil fuel industry and its pampered executives should be held civilly responsible for the damage climate change is causing, and a plurality want them to face criminal charges.
Public Citizen published a 2023 report titled “Charging Big Oil with Climate Homicide,” including legal rationales and possible strategies for holding the killers in suits accountable by state and local prosecutors.
Will Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman or California Attorney General Rob Bonta have the courage to hold these companies and/or their executives accountable for the lies and deceptions they’ve funded that this week are killing Angelinos?
Will enough people call their members of Congress at 202-224-3121 to provoke investigations that could lead to congressional action?
Will our media ever begin to call out Trump and the alleged climate lies and deceptions of the industry that owns him?