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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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'Time to Make Polluters Pay': Study Ties Fossil Fuel Pollution Directly to Deadly Heatwaves
"We're talking about real people who died, real crops that failed, and real communities that suffered, all because of decisions made in corporate boardrooms," said one campaigner.
Sep 11, 2025
A study published Wednesday in the journal Nature establishing "that the influence of climate change on heatwaves has increased, and that all carbon majors, even the smaller ones, contributed substantially to the occurrence of heatwaves," is fueling fresh calls for fossil fuel giants to pay for the deadly impacts of their products.
With previous "attribution studies," scientists have generally looked at single extreme weather events. The new study, led by Sonia Seneviratne, a professor at the Swiss university ETH Zurich, is unique for its systematic approach—but that's not all.
"Past studies have mostly looked at emissions from people and countries. This time, we're focusing on the big carbon emitters," explained lead author Yann Quilcaille, a postdoctoral researcher in Seneviratne's group, in a statement.
"We are now at the point where we recognize the serious consequences of extreme weather events for the world's economies and societies—heat-related deaths, crop failures, and much, much more," he said. "People are concerned about who contributed to these disasters."
The researchers found that climate change made 213 heatwaves from 2000–23 "more likely and more intense, to which each of the 180 carbon majors (fossil fuel and cement producers) substantially contributed." They also found that global warming since 1850-1900 made heatwaves 2000-09 about 20 times more likely, and those 2010-19 more likely.
"Overall, one-quarter of these events were virtually impossible without climate change," the paper states. "The emissions of the carbon majors contribute to half the increase in heatwave intensity since 1850-1900. Depending on the carbon major, their individual contribution is high enough to enable the occurrence of 16-53 heatwaves that would have been virtually impossible in a preindustrial climate."
Anybody surprised? Emissions from 14 fossil fuel giants drove 213 major heatwaves since 2000, making >50 deadly ones 10,000× more likely and adding up to +2.2°C increased intensityAll while knowing the impact of GHG emissionsCorporate negligence =Human costwww.theguardian.com/environment/...
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— Ian Hall (@ianhall.bsky.social) September 10, 2025 at 12:37 PM
While the study highlights the climate pollution of "14 top carbon majors," including the governments of the former Soviet Union, China (coal and cement), India (coal), and the companies Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, ExxonMobil, Chevron, National Iranian Oil Company, BP, Shell, Pemex, and CHN Energy, Quilcaille said that "the contributions of smaller players also play a significant role."
"These companies and corporations have also primarily pursued their economic interests, even though they have known since the 1980s that burning fossil fuels will lead to global warming," the researcher added.
In a review of the study for Nature, climate scientist Karsten Hausten from Germany's Leipzig University pointed out that "Quilcaille and colleagues' results, as well as the attribution framework that they have developed, provide a tool to continue the legal battle against individual companies and countries."
"This study is a leap forward that could be used to support future climate lawsuits and aid diplomatic negotiations," he wrote. "Finally, it is another reminder that denial and anti-science rhetoric will not make climate liability go away, nor will it reduce the ever-increasing risk to life from heatwaves across our planet."
Hausten was far from alone in recognizing how the new research could contribute to climate cases. Jessica Wentz, senior fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, pointed to the International Court of Justice's landmark advisory opinion from July that countries have a legal obligation to take cooperative action against the global crisis.
"Initially, when a plaintiff needs to show that they have standing in a case, they have to allege that they have an injury that is traceable to the defendant's conduct," she told CBC, suggesting the new study will help establish that connection.
"The methodologies that underpin these types of findings can also be used in more fungible ways to look at not only the contributions of the carbon majors, but presumably you could use a similar approach to start looking at government," Wentz said.
Christopher Callahan, a scientist at Indiana University Bloomington who has published research showing that economic damages from rising extreme heat can be tied to companies such as Exxon, said that "this study adds to a growing but still small literature showing it's now possible to draw causal connections between individual emitters and the hazards from climate change."
"There is a wealth of evidence now that major fossil fuel producers were aware of climate change before the rest of the public was and used their power and profit to undermine climate action and discredit climate science," he said, adding that it is "morally appropriate" to hold companies accountable for the emissions of their products.
Callahan also gathered some of the relevant research in a series of posts on Bluesky, noting that on the same day that this new study was published, another team "quantified the thousands of heat-related deaths in Zurich, Switzerland that can be attributed to climate change—and showed that dozens of these deaths are due to the emissions from these individual firms."
"Together, this science—and the broader attribution science that preceded it—are building a clear scientific case for climate accountability," he concluded.
Several US states and municipalities in recent years have launched lawsuits and passed legislation designed to make Big Oil pay for driving the deadly climate emergency—and earlier this year, drawing on an essay in the Harvard Environmental Law Review, an American woman filed the first climate-related wrongful death suit against fossil fuel companies.
In a Wednesday statement to The Guardian about the new study, Cassidy DiPaola, a spokesperson for the Make Polluters Pay campaign, said that "we can now point to specific heatwaves and say: 'Saudi Aramco did this. ExxonMobil did this.'"
"When their emissions alone are triggering heatwaves that wouldn't have happened otherwise," she added, "we're talking about real people who died, real crops that failed, and real communities that suffered, all because of decisions made in corporate boardrooms."
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As Trump and Cabinet Thrash Climate, Coalition Demands Dems Hold the Line Against Big Oil Immunity
"What's at stake here isn't just who pays for climate disasters—it's whether our democracy allows powerful industries to simply rewrite the rules when justice catches up to them," said the communications director at Make Polluters Pay.
Mar 13, 2025
Over 190 groups are urging Democrats in Congress resist any attempts by Big Oil to evade potential legal liability amid the growing number of legal and legislative efforts aimed at holding major polluters accountable for their role in the climate crisis.
In a Thursday letter addressed to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the groups urge Democratic lawmakers "to proactively and affirmatively reject any proposal that would shield fossil fuel companies" from those efforts.
A quarter of U.S. residents live in a state or locality that is "taking ExxonMobil and other major fossil fuel companies to court to hold them accountable for this deception and make them pay for the damage their climate lies have caused," according to the letter. Maine, for example, became the eighth U.S. state to sue major oil and gas companies for deceiving the public about their products' role in the climate crisis.
The letter signatories include a long list of green groups such as the Center for Biological Diversity and Extinction Rebellion US, as well as the American Association of Justice and other nonprofits.
The Supreme Court on Monday denied a request by a coalition of Republican state attorneys general aimed at preventing oil and gas companies from facing these types of lawsuits. Trump has also vowed to block climate litigation aimed at Big Oil.
In their letter, the groups also point to a number of efforts, some successful, to pass what are known as "superfund laws," which force privately owned polluters to help cover the costs of protecting public infrastructure from climate-fueled threats. Oil and gas companies have lobbied against the passage of these laws.
"What's at stake here isn't just who pays for climate disasters—it's whether our democracy allows powerful industries to simply rewrite the rules when justice catches up to them," said Cassidy DiPaola, communications director of Make Polluters Pay—one of the letter's signatories—in a Thursday statement.
"Lawmakers must decisively reject any attempt by the fossil fuel industry to evade accountability and ensure both justice today and the right of future generations to hold polluters responsible for decades of deception," DiPaola continued.
The letter references episodes when "fossil fuel companies and their allies" tried to "secure a blanket waiver of liability for their industry."
In 2017, a carbon tax plan spearheaded by a group of Republican statesmen and economists proposed stopping potential lawsuits against oil companies and other corporations that release greenhouse gases, and in 2020, the fossil fuel industry tried to quietly include a liability waiver for itself in a government Covid-19 relief package, according to the outlet Drilled.
The letter also highlights that 60 Democratic House members urged leadership to categorically oppose efforts to "immunize polluters" in response to the latter effort.
"We have reason to believe that the fossil fuel industry and its allies will use the chaos and overreach of the new Trump administration to attempt yet again to pass some form of liability waiver and shield themselves from facing consequences for their decades of pollution and deception," the letter states. "That effort—no matter what form it takes—must not be allowed to succeed."
The demand from these groups comes amid broader attacks on climate and environmental protections from the Trump administration
On Wednesday, the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a series of actions to roll back environmental regulation impacting issues ranging from rules on pollution from power plants to regulations for vehicles.
On his first day in office, Trump signed executive orders withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement and initiated plans to open up Alaskan wilderness to drilling and mining.
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As Trump Takes Office, It’s Time for a Mass Climate Movement
Not only do we know that there is opportunity in how we meet this moment, but there are sparks suggesting that we may actually be on our way.
Jan 20, 2025
This is a jarring time for our country: A far-right autocrat is taking office on a holiday many misrepresent and trivialize as vacation day, obscuring the revolutionary actions of one of the historical greats of the civil rights movement, while whole communities of Black and Brown people in Los Angeles are burning to the ground. Instead of talking about the lives lost and how to support those who will have the most trouble rebuilding, and instead of connecting the dots of these fires to climate change, the incoming administration is intent on spreading disinformation. They are threatening to undo decades of hard-fought progress with lies and deregulation.
Yet, it is often when things seem most bleak, amid grief and heartache, that we reevaluate on the scale the moment demands. That is where the climate movement is right now: The status quo is not working. We are rapidly surpassing many of the planetary thresholds, including the threshold of 1.5°C. As our climate changes, we continue to see an increasing number of catastrophic weather events, as witnessed over the last week in Los Angeles. And despite these climate disasters and massive advances in renewable energy, fossil fuel use also continues to increase; this was true even under former President Joe Biden’s more progressive presidency. Data centers for artificial intelligence and logistics have only added to this increased demand.
We urgently need to change our orientation to how we affect change and what is required. Survivors on the Titanic talked about why they didn’t move: Electricity was still functioning; it didn’t feel like the ship was going down. Being in power can feel like that. But losing power feels different—and we have to be clear-eyed that we will not succeed by lobbying President Donald Trump or his administration, or finding the right words to plead with them. So we must evaluate the levels of power that are available to us, and how we can collectively accept and redistribute the heightened risk that comes in resisting the far-right and their fossil-fueled agenda on the scale we need to.
Rather than a patchwork of different issue-based fights where each issue area elbows the other out of the way to be heard by the administration, we will see the power that is possible through a coordinated movement protecting each other.
There’s hopeful news: Not only do we know that there is opportunity in how we meet this moment, but there are sparks suggesting that we may actually be on our way.
First, we will see, and are already seeing, an increase in exciting local organizing efforts. Groups in the 350 network have been doubling down on organizing against the power of utility companies. Many of our utilities are hurting the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels, while simultaneously gouging customers in the realm of profits. Many groups are holding utilities accountable by banning them from using ratepayers money for lobbying, intervening in hearings, and running bold corporate campaigns to get them to change their practices.
We are also seeing organizers in more and more states pass Make Polluters Pay legislation, which forces the corporations responsible for the climate crisis to pay for its cleanup.
Second, once we’ve accepted that we cannot change the initial moves Trump will make to gut climate progress, we can move into action to create the kind of reaction that might prevent further moves and bolster the local governments and courts’ ability to have an impact. We have seen this work: When Trump issued his infamous “Muslim Ban” order, tens of thousands of people disrupted business as usual at the airports, creating the popular dissent to allow the courts to throw the order out. I suspect we will see similar moves around potentially leaving the Paris accords, mass drilling on public lands, or the overturning of regulations.
The sad reality is that, no matter what Trump does, we know we will see more climate impacts that bring the climate crisis to more and more of our front doors. Amid the grief at all we have lost in the process, we have also seen people rise to the occasion in ways they’d previously been unwilling. In response to the Los Angeles fires, we have seen rapid, creative, and far-reaching mutual aid organizing spreading rapidly: a little ad hoc window into the social protections we are calling for. Data shows that most people now know that fossil fuel companies are responsible for climate change, so alongside strengthening our mutual aid infrastructure, we suspect that we will see an uptick in calls for accountability for those responsible.
Finally, the key to a broad-based movement is, quite simply, a broad base of people. As people think about the climate conditions in LA that caused fires and displacement, we can help them connect the dots to similar conditions that people faced in their home countries, causing them to migrate. We will see support for the immigrant struggle from the climate movement, support for labor rights and government workers for all sectors. In short, rather than a patchwork of different issue-based fights where each issue area elbows the other out of the way to be heard by the administration, we will see the power that is possible through a coordinated movement protecting each other.
None of this will be easy. As befits the true Martin Luther King Jr. who, along with many of his co-organizers, spent countless weeks in jail and braved white supremacist violence which killed so many during the civil rights movement. But we collectively know that this level of organizing and intensification of our struggle is necessary. Conditions change, and we change, and so, we are optimistic that out of what is hard right now, we will finally build something beautiful.
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COP29: A Long Way to Go
Despite what was and was not agreed in Baku, meaningful climate action will only become more urgent than ever.
Nov 24, 2024
After extra time of exhausting negotiations, the 29th U.N. Conference on Climate Change is over.
First, a quick refresher of what COP29 was meant to achieve: dubbed a ‘finance COP,’ countries were expected to come to Baku, Azerbaijan ready to present in good faith various finance deals to strengthen the global response to climate change.
Signs call for for the Global North to "pay up" during a COP29 action in Baku, Azerbaijan. (Photo: Marie Jacquemin/Greenpeace)
The final agreement
After two slow-moving weeks of climate talks, COP29 ended with a woefully inadequate agreement on a new annual public climate finance goal of US$300 billion by 2035, a dismaying offering. The final agreement overall also included disappointing loopholes on carbon markets and little climate action, but no backsliding on the COP28 decision to transition away from fossil fuels. The final outcome in Baku removed the references to the Make Polluters Pay principle at the last hour, further disheartening civil society and countries already bearing the brunt of the climate crisis.
A Greenpeace projection Photo Booth in the Civil Society Hub at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan with portraits and images of climate impacts sends a message to country delegates that the time for action is now. (Photo: Marie Jacquemin/Greenpeace)
COP29 was an opportunity to agree on a significant climate finance goal and follow up on what was promised at COP28 and the Biodiversity COP16. But that did not exactly happen. Despite what was and was not agreed in Baku, meaningful climate action will only become more urgent than ever.
A moment of hope
Not all is lost though. The final outcome fell short of what was hoped for, and what is needed to battle the climate crisis. But the people power in Baku made its presence felt. Navigating tight guidelines and pushback on peaceful protest for a third year in a row, civil society got creative to still make its demands heard, and will return even more determined next year. The time for debate is over; decisive action is the demand of the hour.
A close-up of hands with "pay up" written on them at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. (Photo: Marie Jacquemin/Greenpeace)
What comes next for climate action
COP30 will return next year, in the Amazon city of Belem, Brazil, with high expectations for renewed climate action.
A sign of "persistir," Portuguese for "to persist," sends a signal that the work must continue onto COP30 in Brazil. (Photo: Marie Jacquemin/Greenpeace)
But climate justice will only be delivered when there is adequate, and then some, finance for climate-vulnerable communities, and not just distributed for loss and damage, but for adaptation and mitigation too. A future with climate justice means the production and consumption of oil and gas has been ended, forests protected, and polluters paying for the damage, destruction, and deaths the climate crisis is causing.
Baku might have stumbled on climate justice, but we will persist in the fight for our future.
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Endless Stream of Climate Disasters Bolsters Demand to 'Make Polluters Pay'
"Ordinary people shouldn't pay for disasters they couldn't prevent," said one group. "But Big Oil should"
Sep 30, 2024
In the wake of one of the hottest summers ever recorded in the United States and the deadly destruction wrought by Hurricane Helene, climate defenders on Monday urged Congress to pass recently introduced legislation that would make polluters pay into a $1 trillion fund to finance efforts to combat the planetary emergency.
"Emissions from burning oil, gas, and coal are cooking the planet and super-charging deadly heatwaves, floods, and storms," the international NGO Global Witness said in a statement. "Several major fossil fuel firms knew for decades about the climate impacts of their products, but they ignored scientific advice and denied the climate crisis was happening."
"The Polluters Pay Climate Fund Act can help redress this injustice by making fossil fuel companies pay for some of the damage they're doing to America," the group added. "This would create a $1 trillion fund that would pay for climate disaster relief and efforts to help keep us cool and safe. They can afford it—in 2023 the top five oil and gas producers in the U.S. made over $74 billion in profits."
Introduced last month by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Reps. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Judy Chu (D-Calif.), the Polluters Pay Climate Fund is backed by dozens of climate and environmental justice groups.
"From sweltering heat waves to rising sea levels to ever more intense storms, our planet is screaming out every day for us to take action on global warming," Van Hollen said at the time of the bill's introduction. "And after fueling the climate crisis for decades, big polluters can no longer run from their responsibility to address the harm they have done."
"The principle behind this legislation is simple but very powerful—polluters should pay to clean up the mess they made and build a more resilient future, and those who have polluted the most should pay the most," the senator added.
With an eye on next month's U.S. presidential election, campaigners demanded a president who will make polluters pay for fueling the climate crisis. With former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, running on a "
drill, baby, drill" platform and previously calling climate change a "Chinese hoax," activists have focused on imploring Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris to make fossil fuel companies pay for their damages.
"We need a president who is willing to take on Big Oil. A president who will make polluters pay for the damage they've done to our climate," the Make Polluters Pay campaign said in a video posted last week on social media.
"As California's attorney general, Kamala Harris prosecuted big polluters like BP and Chevron and launched an investigation into ExxonMobil's climate lies," the video continues. "As vice president, she cast the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, helping lower energy costs and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels."
"Kamala Harris says she'll take on corporate price gouging and hold Big Oil accountable. Donald Trump? He's asking the oil companies for bribes," the video adds, referring to his promise to fossil fuel executives that he would gut the Biden administration's climate regulations if they donated $1 billion to his campaign.
Fossil Free Media director Jamie Henn cited a December 2023 survey conducted by his group and Data for Progress that found 64% of U.S. voters—including 89% of Democrats, 58% of Democrats, and 42% of Republicans—are more likely to vote for a candidate "who will make polluters pay for climate damages."
The campaigners' calls come as extreme weather fueled by the burning of fossil fuels
wreaks havoc around the world, including in the United States, where Hurricane Helene and its remnants tore a deadly path of destruction from the Florida Gulf Coast to the mountains of North Carolina. The storm has claimed at least 121 lives across the Southeast.
"It's obscene that communities across North Carolina are suffering and dying from the reality of the climate emergency while Donald Trump denies that it even exists," Brett Hartl, political director at the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, said in a statement.
"While roads, bridges, and entire towns are being washed away, Trump and Project 2025 plan to gut [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] and roadblock every agency from confronting the climate crisis," he said, referring to the right-wing blueprint for overhauling the federal government. "Vice President Harris will act on climate change, and she'll hold the polluters that caused it accountable for their willful destruction."
Responding to Helene's devastation, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said on social media Monday that "I'm heartsick for the families who lost their homes and their loved ones."
"It's a sad reality that this hurricane rapidly intensified into a powerful Category 4 storm because of climate change," she added. "We must do more to confront the climate crisis as we rebuild."
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Big Oil's Un-American Scheme to Price-Gouge Consumers
From ExxonMobil's long-running climate denial to Pioneer's recent price-fixing, it's clear this rogue industry's business model is deny, deceit, and delay.
May 09, 2024
You know how the oil industry is always saying the U.S needs to drill more to lower gas prices and protect energy independence? Well it turns out they've actually been scheming behind the scenes with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to do the exact opposite.
A bombshell complaint filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last week reveals that Scott Sheffield, the former CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources—one of the largest oil producers in the Permian Basin—colluded with OPEC officials in an attempt to artificially limit supply and jack up prices.
The FTC's complaint alleges that Sheffield exchanged private WhatsApp messages with leaders at OPEC, assuring them that Pioneer and other Permian companies would pump the brakes on output in order to keep prices high. He even threatened to "punish" any companies that dared to ramp up production. I don't know about you, but to me it's hard to imagine anything more un-American and anti-competitive than that.
The FTC complaint is the latest proof: The fossil fuel industry will always put their greed above American consumers and fair competition.
This private coordination with OPEC glaringly contrasts with Big Oil's public rhetoric blaming the Biden administration for constraining U.S. production and raising energy costs—a bogus talking point that Republicans have been parroting for months now. The bad faith has been laid bare: Oil executives themselves are colluding with a foreign cartel to throttle supply and price-gouge American consumers to pad their own pockets.
These revelations fit into a broader pattern of the fossil fuel industry's deception and abuse. Just one day before the FTC filing, the Senate Budget Committee held an explosive hearing detailing how oil giants have waged a decades-long, industry-wide disinformation campaign to downplay the catastrophic climate damage that they knew their products would cause, all while raking in record profits. From ExxonMobil's long-running climate denial to Pioneer's recent price-fixing, it's clear this rogue industry's business model is deny, deceit, and delay.
Here's the kicker: Big Oil is about to get a whole lot more powerful. With it looking like the Exxon-Pioneer merger is going to move forward (without Scott Sheffield), and Chevron pursuing a $50 billion takeover of Hess, a few mega-corporations are rapidly consolidating to control our energy grid. Studies show that mergers like these are pretty certain to squash competition, send prices soaring, and concentrate massive political influence to block necessary climate action.
That's the grim future we face if we let them get away with it: A world where a handful of greedy oil oligarchs collude with OPEC to bleed us dry at the pump while knowingly burning our planet. Fortunately, cities and states are fighting back with lawsuits and legislation to make polluters pay for their lies and damages.
Last year, California joined the fight, suing Exxon, Shell, BP, Chevron, and their lobbying arm for deliberately deceiving the public about fossil fuels' climate impacts, aiming to force them to cough up billions for disaster recovery. And right now, states like Vermont are advancing bills to create climate "superfunds" funded by Big Oil's ill-gotten gains. In fact, New York just passed their polluter pay bill in the Senate this week, bringing New Yorkers and the nation one step closer to accountability for Big Oil.
But in order to truly rein in this reckless industry, we need help at the federal level. At a minimum, Congress should eliminate fossil fuel subsidies and strengthen antitrust laws. At the Department of Justice, leaders must investigate the industry's long history of spreading disinformation. And in the White House, President Joe Biden should declare a climate emergency and wield his powers to rapidly increase the production of clean energy resources.
For decades, Big Oil has ransacked our wallets, ravaged our environment, and rigged our democracy. The FTC complaint is the latest proof: The fossil fuel industry will always put their greed above American consumers and fair competition. It's time to make polluters pay.
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Supreme Court Rejects Bid by API, Exxon, and Koch to Kill Climate Case
"Big Oil companies will continue fighting to escape justice, but for the third time in a year, the U.S. Supreme Court has denied their desperate pleas," said one campaigner.
Jan 08, 2024
For the third time in less than a year, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday allowed a key case against the fossil fuel industry to proceed in state court, delivering a win for the movement to make polluters pay for driving the climate emergency.
"This decision is another step forward for Minnesota's efforts to hold fossil fuel giants accountable for their climate lies and the harm they've caused," said Center for Climate Integrity president Richard Wiles, pointing to the previous denials of other cases last April and May.
" Big Oil companies will continue fighting to escape justice, but for the third time in a year, the U.S. Supreme Court has denied their desperate pleas to overturn the unanimous rulings of every single court to consider this issue," he continued.
"It's time for these polluters to give up their failed arguments to escape state courts."
As legal leaders of dozens of U.S. states and municipalities have launched climate lawsuits in recent years, the fossil fuel industry has attempted to evade accountability by shifting the cases to federal court—a strategy that's proven unsuccessful.
Wiles argued that "after three strikes, it's time for these polluters to give up their failed arguments to escape state courts and prepare to face the evidence of their climate deception at trial."
The U.S. Supreme Court's Monday decision came in a case filed in 2020 by Democratic Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison against ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute (API), based on the state's consumer protection laws.
"The fraud, deceptive advertising, and other violations of Minnesota state law and common law that the lawsuit shows they perpetrated have harmed Minnesotans' health and our state's environment, infrastructure, and economy," Ellison said at the time.
The justices declined Big Oil's request to review the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' March decision that the case belongs in state court. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, an appointee of former GOP President Donald Trump, would have taken the case, in line with his position last year.
"I appreciate the court's consideration and decision," Ellison said in a statement Monday. "It aligns with 25 federal court decisions across the country, all of which have found that cases like ours rest on these defendants' failures to warn and their campaigns of deception around their products' contributions to the climate crisis. The court's decision confirms these cases are properly filed in state courts."
"Taken together, the defendants' behavior has delayed the transition to alternative energy sources and a lower-carbon economy, resulting in dire impacts on Minnesota's environment and enormous costs to Minnesotans and the world," he stressed. "Now, the case can move forward in state court, where it was properly filed, and we can begin to hold these companies accountable for their wrongful conduct."
Cassidy DiPaola, communications director for Fossil Free Media and the Make Polluters Pay campaign, declared Monday that "today's decision is an important step forward for accountability and justice."
"The Supreme Court has now laid out an unmistakable path forward," she added, "for not only Minnesota's consumer protection case against ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and API, but the dozens of cases against the fossil fuel industry popping up across the county."
This post has been updated with comment from Keith Ellison.
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