'Big Oil's Reckless Conduct' Caused Milton—And Now They Should Pay, Say Advocates

As Hurricane Milton's 145 mile-per-hour winds began closing in on Southwest Florida on Wednesday and people crowded into makeshift shelters across the state, climate advocates and other observers said the life-threatening storm and massive disruption to millions of people's lives should make Americans "furious" at those who have helped make extreme weather more frequent and dangerous.

As Nathan J. Robinson wrote in Current Affairs, climate scientists and meteorologists have unequivocally told oil companies and policymakers that fossil fuel extraction is causing planetary heating, which has led to higher temperatures in oceans and bodies of water including the Gulf of Mexico, where the rapidly strengthening hurricane formed.

But despite the knowledge that fossil fuel giants like ExxonMobil and Shell had decades ago that drilling for oil and gas would cause "violent weather" and "potentially catastrophic events," the industry's profits have only grown as the U.S. has continued to subsidize their pollution-causing activities.

"The failure by our political class to deal with this completely solvable issue is staggering and shameful," wrote Robinson. "Many of them have children and grandchildren. Presumably they would like their descendants to inherit a world worth living in. And they could make that happen. Unfortunately, it would require challenging the power and profits of some of America's most influential corporations."

In the Substack newsletter Heated, Arielle Samuelson explained on Wednesday how fossil fuel extraction and planetary heating "mutated" Hurricane Milton, which stunned weather experts this week as its wind speeds grew at a record-breaking pace, from 60 miles per hour to 180 miles per hour in just 36 hours.

It was the second time in recent weeks that a hurricane in the region has intensified quickly; areas that are expected to take a direct hit from Milton are still overwhelmed by the destruction left by Hurricane Helene.

Hot temperatures in the planets' oceans and gulfs fuels hurricanes, and as Samuelson noted, scientists say the "extremely hot" Gulf of Mexico "was made far more likely by heat-trapping pollutants from the fossil fuel, agriculture, chemical, and cement industries."

She continued:

In the past two weeks, ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico were about 30-31° Celsius (86-88°F)—about 1 to 2° Celsius above average. The climate crisis made these extraordinarily high ocean temperatures at least 400 to 800 times more likely over the past two weeks, according to a rapid attribution study from Climate Central.

[...]

The science is also extremely clear that heat-trapping pollution causes sea-level rise and heavier rainfall, both of which make hurricanes more dangerous. Rainfall rates for tropical cyclones are expected to rise with the planet's temperature, causing deadly flash floods like those found in Asheville, North Carolina. Sea level rise also means that coastal communities, and communities further inland, are more likely to be flooded during a storm.

That's an objectively scary reality. But we know the primary source of greenhouse gas pollution, scientists note, so we also know how to slow the problem.

The lingering destruction of Helene and the impending landfall of Milton come, noted Fossil Fuel Media director Jamie Henn, weeks after three Democrats in Congress introduced legislation to require fossil fuel companies and oil refiners that do business in the U.S. to pay into a $1 trillion Polluters Pay Climate Fund, with their contributions based on a percentage of their global emissions.

The fund would be used to finance climate adaptation and other efforts to confront the impacts of the climate crisis.

In a press briefing on Wednesday, President Joe Biden noted how the damage done by Helene and the rapidly evolving news about Milton has left overwhelmed Americans vulnerable to misinformation, with some urging them to direct their anger at the White House or the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has made baseless claims that FEMA funds were spent on funding for immigrant shelters, while U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) wrote on social media that an unnamed "they" can control the weather and suggested the federal government is deliberately keeping emergency aid from people in states controlled by Republicans.

As fossil fuel firms and political leaders march "us toward the tipping points," wrote Robinson, "many people won't understand what is happening to them."

"In a chaotic information environment filled with endless falsehoods, they'll conclude that the president is manipulating the weather, or FEMA is trying to kill people," he wrote. "The real story, however, is straightforward: We have a political class that is vastly more committed to sending weapons to war criminals than funding emergency management, and which will not acknowledge the basic facts of the problem (and the known solutions) because some large economic actors benefit in the short run from the destruction of the planet."

"Truly, it's revolting," he added. "What an absolute disgrace our failure to deal with climate change is."

Candice Fortin, U.S. campaigns manager for 350.org, said that fossil fuel executives and the politicians that support them have "blood on their hands" and called on Biden to unequivocally stand on the side of hurricane victims by declaring a climate emergency.

"This is a climate emergency," said Fortin. "Every time we repeat that, countless more lives have been lost or upended by the fossil fuel industry. How many more times will it take? We call on President Biden to use his executive power to declare a climate emergency so we can finally protect frontline communities."

At Newsweek, organizer and attorney Aaron Regunberg wrote that oil companies' contributions to the climate emergency have been compounded by their vast efforts to spread misinformation and hide their knowledge that fossil fuel extraction was heating the planet.

Exxon CEO Darren Woods, he wrote, pushed for a surge in the company's extractive activities while "overseeing a substantial portion of the company's climate deception efforts," and received $198.9 million for his "climate crimes" from 2015-23, as well as owning Exxon shares worth $371.1 million.

"Regular people are paying the ultimate price for this sociopathic greed," wrote Regunberg. "The families made homeless, the wives and husbands and parents and children who lost loved ones to Helene—these victims deserve justice no less than victims of street-level crimes, and the companies and corporate executives responsible for their pain and suffering deserve criminal punishment at least as much as, if not far more than, the average street-level offender."

"Climate victims have paid so much for Big Oil's reckless conduct," he added. "It's time to make the polluters pay."