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make polluters pay
Scientists: Fossil Fuel-Driven Climate Crisis 'Directly Responsible' for Deadly European Heatwave
"Europe's savage heatwave has the fingerprints of the climate crisis all over it—it's the latest price to pay for fossil fuel pollution baking our planet," said one UN leader.
Jun 26, 2026
With at least hundreds of people dead and high temperatures persisting, scientists said Friday that the "record-shattering" heatwave devastating Europe was "virtually impossible just 50 years ago"—and climate change driven by fossil fuel emissions "is unequivocally to blame."
World Weather Attribution (WWA), an international scientific collaboration that analyzes extreme weather events, said daytime highs and overnight temperatures that have been scorching several European countries likely could not have occurred in 1976, and a similar heatwave in that historic climate would be 6.3°F cooler.
The findings followed a Monday analysis from ClimaMeter showing that weather patterns similar to those driving the current European heatwave now produce temperatures roughly 3.6-7.2°F warmer, depending on location, than they did during the second half of the 20th century, because of greenhouse gas emissions.
"The sweltering overnight temperatures keeping many people awake this week are about 100x more likely today than they were just 23 years ago during the infamous 2003 European heatwave," WWA said Friday. "The daytime peaks are about 10x more likely."
WWA found that a "staggering" 45% of 854 cities across 30 European countries have broken, or are expected to break, their records for wet-bulb globe temperatures—which incorporate temperature, humidity, wind speed, and sunlight to measure the risk to humans.
"The science of how climate change is worsening heatwaves is settled. Continued fossil fuel emissions are directly responsible for the disruption people are experiencing this week in their homes, schools, and workplaces," said Theodore Keeping, a co-author of the WWA study who researches extreme weather and wildfire at the United Kingdom's Imperial College London (ICL).
"The speed of change is startling," Keeping continued. "Every few years, we are seeing heat records shattered in Europe. This year, it has been in consecutive months. In the UK, we are used to 'snow days' shutting down schools, but this generation is now growing up with 'heat days' as well."
While the "heat dome" responsible for Europe's second heatwave in two months "was moving east on Friday, bringing marginal relief to some areas in the west and threatening parts of Central and Eastern Europe with a scorching weekend," according to The New York Times, the 97.5°F recorded in southwest England was Britain's highest temperature ever for June, breaking a record set the previous day.
A record-breaking heat wave that’s spreading eastward across Europe has revived interest in a hypothetical temperature forecast for August 2050 in France.But it turns out, it didn’t take 36 years for those imagined temperatures to be reached — and even exceeded.
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— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost.com) June 25, 2026 at 12:30 PM
France also faced more intense heat on Friday, with a 103.3°F reading in Paris. The Washington Post pointed out that two days earlier, as parts of the country endured 112.3°F, soaring temperatures exceeded hypothetical forecasts for August 2050 in 19 of 34 locations across the French mainland.
The current conditions have proven deadly. As Reuters reported:
At least 48 people have died in France from drowning since the start of the heatwave while trying to cool off, authorities said, and three young children are known to have been killed by heat in cars in two separate incidents.
Since the end of last week, more than 20 people across Germany have died in swimming-related accidents, the German Life Saving Association said in a statement to Reuters.
Spain's Mortality Monitoring System estimated that the recent heat has resulted in at least 212 deaths, mostly among people ages 65 and older. Diana Gómez, a scientist at the agency, noted that the figures are preliminary and based on statistical projections.
Acknowledging that "many people still live, work, and study in places that are not designed for the temperatures we are now experiencing," Carolina Pereira Marghidan of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center said to "follow local heat advice, seek cooler spaces where possible, drink plenty of water, and check on family, friends, and neighbors who may be most at risk."
Pereira Marghidan also highlighted the "growing gap between the pace of climate change and the pace of adaptation," and called for "greater investment in heat-resilient homes, cities, and infrastructure to keep people safe."
Right now, record-breaking, dangerous heat waves are rolling across Europe. This isn't just "summer weather". This is exactly what the climate crisis looks like 🥵
— Greenpeace International 🌍 (@greenpeace.org) June 24, 2026 at 7:57 AM
Speaking at London Climate Action Week on Wednesday, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres similarly said that "climate adaptation is no longer about preparing for a distant future. It's about managing risks in real time—as the searing heat now gripping London and far beyond makes unmistakably clear."
"Our climate is changing faster than our systems, our infrastructure, and our institutions can handle. The World Meteorological Organization confirms that the past 11 years have been the hottest on record. Scientists now expect the world to exceed 1.5°C in the coming years," he continued, citing the Paris Agreement's goal to limit temperature rise this century. "We're entering a new era of climate risk."
The heat has sparked calls to tackle the root cause of the rising temperatures—fossil fuel emissions—from Guterres and others. UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said Thursday that "Europe's savage heatwave has the fingerprints of the climate crisis all over it—it's the latest price to pay for fossil fuel pollution baking our planet."
"Schools closing, the vulnerable dying, economies sweating: This is what the climate crisis looks like in practice, and it's just getting started," he emphasized. "Until humanity stops burning colossal amounts of coal, oil, and gas, extreme heat will keep getting worse, and other climate impacts—from megadroughts, floods, wildfires, and storms—will keep hammering every economy and population harder each year."
David Ho, a University of Hawaii at Mānoa professor, said on social media: "The heatwave in western Europe is the most severe and widespread ever, with almost half of Europe's largest cities experiencing their worst ever heat stress, a combination of high temperatures and humidity. Unless we stop burning fossil fuels, future heat conditions will become even more extreme."
I spoke with Geeta GuruMurthy of BBC World News Television about the record European heat wave and it's link to human-caused warming:youtu.be/d8vqO2J8WV0
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— Michael E. Mann (@michaelemann.bsky.social) June 25, 2026 at 2:17 PM
Although some natural phenomena can contribute to high temperatures, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced earlier this month that El Niño, the warm phase of a recurring climate pattern in the Pacific Ocean, had formed, WWA found that it "had no role in driving the heat" in Europe.
"Scientists like me are beginning to sound like a broken record. We put out similar quotes year after year, reacting to heat extremes that climb ever higher. Yes this is climate change, yes it's us, no it's not El Niño, yes we have the solutions, no we're not implementing them fast enough," said study co-author and ICL climate science professor Friederike Otto. "It's really now a question of what kind of future we want for ourselves, and whether we're willing to do what it takes to secure it."
On the heels of a French court's ruling against TotalEnergies, Lisa Rose, a campaigner at the global climate group 350.org, argued Friday that "it's time to turn the heat on the fossil fuel giants that caused this heatwave but are doing nothing to cover the costs."
"Both science and the law are clear: Polluters must answer for climate damage. Now it's up to our leaders to make them pay," Rose said. "Forcing fossil fuel companies to cut emissions and pay their fair share is the only effective lasting response. Half-measures won't cool this crisis, only a faster shift to renewables can."
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Join the National Push to Make Polluters Pay
From January 26 to 30, advocates, lawmakers, students, workers, and faith and community leaders across the country are coming together for a week of action to stop the fossil fuel industry from passing the bill for the climate crisis onto the rest of us.
Jan 26, 2026
Climate change isn’t looming somewhere down the road. For millions of families, it’s already showing up as higher insurance bills, higher utility costs, flooded roads, closed schools, and budgets stretched past the breaking point. And for others, it’s far worse—lost homes, lasting health impacts, and lives cut short. The damage from the climate crisis isn’t a distant projection. The bill is real, and it’s already due.
The problem is who’s paying it.
Right now, American families and state governments are picking up the tab for climate disasters while the fossil fuel companies that knowingly caused the damage keep raking in record profits. Every storm that wipes out a neighborhood, every heatwave that overwhelms hospitals, every wildfire that shuts down a school adds another line item to public budgets, and another cost pushed onto taxpayers and our families.
That imbalance is why, from January 26 to 30, advocates, lawmakers, students, workers, and faith and community leaders across the country are coming together for a Make Polluters Pay Week of Action. It’s the opening push of the 2026 legislative session and a clear signal that polluter accountability is no longer a fringe idea, but a governing priority.
Big Oil accountability is coming. The only question is how much longer taxpayers will be left holding the bill.
The logic is simple: If you caused the harm, you should help pay for the repair.
This is how we already handle toxic waste, oil spills, and industrial contamination. We don’t send the cleanup bill to families who live nearby. We send it to the companies that made the mess. Climate superfund laws apply that same common-sense principle to the climate crisis, and voters understand it.
In fact, support is growing fast. Recent polling shows that 77% of voters now support making oil and gas companies pay their fair share for climate damages, including majorities of Republicans and Independents. Support has jumped more than 10 points in the past year as the real-world costs of climate damage become impossible to ignore.
In 2024, Vermont and New York became the first states in the nation to pass climate superfund laws, requiring fossil fuel companies to contribute billions toward disaster recovery and climate resilience. In 2025, nearly a dozen more states introduced similar legislation. In 2026, that momentum is only accelerating.
The Week of Action reflects that reality. Across the country, states will introduce new climate bills, hold lobby days and town halls, deliver petitions, publish op-eds, walk out of classrooms, and rally public support—all aimed at starting the year with one message: Taxpayers shouldn’t be the default insurer for fossil fuel pollution anymore.
This push is happening now because delay has a cost. Every year we fail to act, the damage compounds and the bill gets bigger. A recent study found that climate costs to the US economy likely topped $1 trillion in 2025. That’s money coming out of household budgets, local tax bases, and already stretched state services.
This is also happening as federal accountability collapses. Agencies meant to protect communities and prepare us for disasters, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Weather Service, are being gutted, with another 1,000 FEMA jobs reportedly on the chopping block just as disasters intensify. At the same time, President Donald Trump is cozying up to fossil fuel executives, helping them dodge accountability and fight efforts to make polluters pay.
Every dollar collected from polluters is a dollar that doesn’t come from taxpayers. Climate superfund funds can build flood protections, harden the grid, prevent wildfires, create lifesaving cooling centers, and keep hospitals and schools functioning during disasters. It also supports good jobs, since rebuilding roads, bridges, and energy systems requires skilled labor. For families, stronger grids mean fewer outages and repairs, and ending fossil fuel subsidies and loopholes can free up billions to lower utility costs, expand clean energy access, and invest in communities instead of corporate giveaways.
The fossil fuel industry wants this conversation to feel radical. It isn’t. What’s radical is a system where companies profit while the public pays, where disasters are treated as unavoidable acts of nature rather than the predictable result of decades of pollution.
Big Oil accountability is coming. The only question is how much longer taxpayers will be left holding the bill. The Make Polluters Pay Week of Action is about answering that question with action. Not someday. Not after the next disaster. Now.
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Make Polluters Pay for the Poles and Wires
The companies that made billions selling the fuels that destabilized the climate can afford to help fix the grid that’s collapsing under it.
Oct 29, 2025
We talk a lot about the cost of energy, but not enough about what’s actually driving it. Across the country, electricity bills are climbing not because of regulation, as the industry claims, but because of the growing costs of the climate crisis itself. The storms, the fires, the floods, and the heat are battering an electric grid that was mostly built half a century ago, and the costs of repairing it are being quietly folded into our monthly bills.
The other side wants you to believe it’s “climate” that’s driving up prices, and they’re right, just not in the way that they mean. It isn’t climate mandates or clean-energy standards. It’s climate disasters. And the truth is, the fastest way to lower costs isn’t to slow down the energy transition, it’s to speed it up. Clean energy brings cheap, reliable power online faster and protects families from the kind of fuel price spikes that come with oil and gas dependence.
That’s where climate superfund laws come in. New York and Vermont have already passed versions that require the biggest polluters to chip in for climate damage. These laws follow the same principle that governs toxic-waste cleanup. If you made the mess, you help pay to clean it up. States are starting to realize that the funds from a climate superfund could cover part of the cost of hardening the grid, things like replacing wooden poles with steel, elevating substations that flood every few years, building microgrids so hospitals and schools can stay open during blackouts, and funding new and more reliable clean energy projects. These projects would help to ease the pressure on ratepayers while making the systems themselves more resilient.
For years, utilities and regulators treated big storms as one-off emergencies. A few poles went down, they rebuilt them, everyone moved on. But the “one-off” has now become, dare I say, the “new normal.” In Maine, the cost of storm recovery has risen more than 30 fold since 2020. Every time a nor’easter slams through the state, Central Maine Power spends millions to replace equipment and clear lines, and then regulators approve a new rider or adjustment that gets added to customer bills. It’s the same story across the country.
The next time a storm knocks out your power or a bill arrives higher than expected, that’s the climate crisis arriving as a tab in your mailbox.
In California, billions have gone toward wildfire mitigation after blazes sparked by utility equipment destroyed entire towns. To prevent future fires, power companies are burying lines, trimming trees, insulating wires—all necessary, and all very, very expensive. According to state filings, utilities’ wildfire-related costs are contributing to 7-12% bill increases for residential customers. What began as infrequent emergency response spending has become a permanent part of doing business for utility companies across the country.
A new national analysis from the Center for American Progress and the Natural Resources Defense Council shows how big this problem has gotten. Utilities in 49 states and Washington, DC have already raised rates or proposed to raise within the next two years. By 2028, those hikes will add nearly $90 billion to household energy bills. That’s billions with a b. And for many families, that means another $30 or $40 a month on top of everything else they’re already struggling to afford.
The reasons are tangled together. The grid is old and failing faster under stress. The price of natural gas has spiked again, partly because exports of natural gas have linked American prices to volatile global markets. And new power-hungry data centers are popping up so quickly that utilities are scrambling to build the power plants to feed them. But one of the biggest single drivers remains extreme weather. Each storm and heatwave adds another layer of cost to a grid that was never built for this world.
The Government Accountability Office has warned that climate change will stress every part of the energy system and that failing to adapt will cost billions of dollars more in the long run. Yet the way we pay for that adaptation hasn’t changed at all. Utilities rebuild, regulators sign off, and the public pays. Fossil-fuel companies whose emissions are fueling the disasters that make all this necessary contribute all of nothing.
It’s tempting to think of this as just another utility issue, a problem for regulators and accountants and not us. But to me, it’s really a measure of how far the climate crisis has crept into our daily life. The next time a storm knocks out your power or a bill arrives higher than expected, that’s the climate crisis arriving as a tab in your mailbox. We can keep pretending it’s inevitable, or we can start sending the bill to the companies that profited from creating the problem.
Climate superfunds won’t solve everything. But they’d at least start to balance the scales. The companies that made billions selling the fuels that destabilized the climate can afford to help fix the grid that’s collapsing under it.
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