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climate damages
Helene and Milton Prove It's Time to Make Polluters Pay for Climate Disasters
Recent polling shows that 70% of US voters support making oil and gas companies pay their fair share for these fossil fuel-driven catastrophes. What are we waiting for?
Oct 10, 2024
“There would be much more violent weather – more storms, more droughts, more deluges.”
That prophecy isn’t from the Book of Revelation, but from a confidential 1989 Shell Oil memo the company commissioned to better understand what global warming could mean for their business in the decades to come.
Today, the sentence reads like a daily weather report. In the last few weeks, we’ve seen the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene, a “deluge” that wiped out entire towns and sent homes and semi-trucks spiraling down rivers of mud, and now Hurricane Milton, one of the strongest hurricanes ever recorded. In Nepal, extreme flooding there has claimed over more than 200 lives and left parts of the capitol underwater. Meanwhile, the Amazon is facing its “worst drought on record,” further endangering what scientists have referred to as the “lungs of the world.”
“Civilisation could prove a fragile thing,” wrote the authors of the 1989 Shell memo. Indeed. As we’ve seen over the last few months, even supposed climate havens, like Asheville, NC, have been undone by extreme weather. We’ve entered an age where our civilization, no matter where we live, will likely be in need of constant upkeep and repair in the face of ever worsening climate disasters. Rebuilding our communities, and strengthening them for the challenges ahead, will be an ongoing struggle for generations to come.
For more than 70 years the fossil fuel industry has continued to rake in profits without paying a single dollar for the damage they knew their product was causing to our climate and communities.
Which raises the question: how are we going to pay for all of this? Early estimates put the damage of Hurricane Helene at over $200 billion and Hurricane Milton at $175 billion, astronomical figures that still can’t begin to calculate the cost of the lives lost and communities upended. That’s on top of the more than $150 billion a year the US government estimates Americans are already paying for extreme weather events. And that’s a low end estimate. According to a study released earlier this year in Nature concluded that the cost of climate damages to the global economy could reach $38 trillion a year by 2050.
Right now, those costs are coming out of one place in particular: our pockets. Even if your home hasn’t been washed away by a flood, you’re likely paying more for your home insurance due to others that have. Even if your farm hasn’t been wrecked by drought, you’re now paying more for your groceries at the supermarket. The dollars your town had set aside for a new school? They’re now being spent to rebuild roads or repair a bridge that got wiped out by yet another “100-year” flood.
Faced with these ever mounting costs, some local leaders are turning to a different solution: making polluters pay their fair share for the damage they’ve done. After all, that 1989 Shell memo isn’t the only example that fossil fuel companies knew exactly the consequences of the ongoing use of their product. As early as the 1950s, oil and gas companies knew about the dangers of global warming, but instead of warning the public and moving to clean energy, they went on to spread lies and disinformation to protect their profits.
Put another way, for more than 70 years the fossil fuel industry has continued to rake in profits without paying a single dollar for the damage they knew their product was causing to our climate and communities. Instead, they’ve very intentionally “externalized” those costs onto the rest of us, not only in the form of climate impacts, but in terms of our health, local environments, and more.
Now the bill is coming due. This May, Vermont became the first state in the country to pass a Climate Superfund Act that will make oil and gas companies pay into a fund that can be used for climate adaptation and disaster response. Five other states are debating similar legislation, including in New York, where legislators passed a climate superfund bill in June and are now waiting on Governor Kathy Hochul’s signature (last week, activists delivered more than 127,000 signatures to the Governor’s office demanding she stop dragging her feet and sign the bill into law). In September, Senator Van Hollen and Representative Jerry Nadler introduced a federal Climate Superfund bill that would collect $1 trillion from oil and gas companies to be used for relief and resiliency efforts nationwide.
The push for state and federal climate superfund bills is running in parallel to the now dozens of city, state, county, and Tribal governments who have filed lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry for climate lies and damages. These lawsuits could recoup even more money from oil and gas companies for damages, as well as uncover yet more evidence of their ongoing fraud and deception. In addition to these civil cases, some experts and attorneys are now proposing bringing criminal charges against oil companies for the “wrongful deaths” associated with extreme weather events (expect to hear more about climate homicide in the months ahead).
The devastation caused by Hurricanes Helene and Milton, and similar climate disasters around the world, demands more of a response than the “thoughts and prayers” offered by politicians still in the pocket of Big Oil. Recent polling shows that 70% of US voters support making oil and gas companies pay their fair share for climate damages. It’s time for our leaders to answer that call and make polluters pay.
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Big Oil Needs to Be Held Accountable for Its Climate Deception
Ultimately, the future of accountability for the fossil fuel industry is up to us.
May 02, 2024
Oil companies knew since the 1950s that their product was causing catastrophic climate damage. The industry never supported the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, despite their many public statements to the contrary. Companies like BP and Shell understood the dangers of methane emissions from ‘natural’ gas, but marketed it as a clean energy solution anyways. Over the last decade, the industry has spent over $700 million on university research to promote a lasting role for fossil fuels in our energy future. ExxonMobil’s security chief is “tracking” climate activists’ whereabouts, while the American Petroleum Institute monitors their social media feeds.
Those are just some of the revelations from a 65-page report released by the Senate Budget committee ahead of a hearing on Wednesday into Big Oil disinformation. The report is the culmination of a three-year investigation into the industry’s “denial, disinformation, and doublespeak,” an inquiry which the industry tried to stymie at nearly every turn, withholding information, resisting subpoenas, and then swamping the committee with over 100,000 pages of meaningless documents.
Despite the industry’s efforts, the report is a damning portrayal of Big Oil’s decades-long crusade to simultaneously block meaningful climate action while extracting more government support for false solutions like ‘natural’ gas (aka methane) and carbon capture and sequestration. Over the course of thousands of emails, top executives, lobbyists, and PR advisors debate how to lobby against important regulations, greenwash the industry’s reputation, shape university research agendas, and mislead the public about the threat of fossil fuels.
The fossil fuel industry isn’t going to give it up willingly. Which means that the next phase of the effort to hold Big Oil accountable is going to have to pursue the industry with sharper teeth.
And that’s all from the content they were willing to share, which begs the question: what did they decide to redact? If these are the documents the industry felt best represent their harmless day-to-day operations, what sorts of bombshells are they covering up? The committee’s report reads like the flickering of a flashlight in a dark basement, giving us a snapshot of the subterranean world of Big Oil deception, while raising the question, what else hides in these dark corners?
Whatever it is, the fossil fuel industry isn’t going to give it up willingly. Which means that the next phase of the effort to hold Big Oil accountable is going to have to pursue the industry with sharper teeth.
At the federal level, that means getting the Department of Justice to launch an investigation into Big Oil disinformation. Twenty members of Congress have already sent a letter to DOJ urging such an investigation and after this week’s hearing and report, pressure will only grow. What’s needed now is for President Biden and the White House to throw their weight behind the idea. Congress can also pay their part by pursuing a more aggressive “make polluters pay” agenda, taking up bills like a windfall profits tax, which would go after Big Oil profiteering, and the Polluter Pays Climate Fund, which would make the industry pay their fair share to deal with climate damages.
At the city and state level, we need to see more lawsuits to prosecute the industry for climate damages and disinformation. Over 30 cities and states have already filed suit, but with thousands of communities already paying the costs of extreme weather, sea level rise and other climate impacts, we could see hundreds of new cases in the years to come. Lawsuits aren’t the only tool at our disposal: five states are now pursuing “climate superfund” bills that would make Big Oil pay for climate impacts by contributing to a fund based on their share of historic emissions. Vermont could pass its version as early as this summer.
Ultimately, the future of Big Oil accountability is up to us. The fossil fuel industry has spent billions on its efforts to lull us to sleep with fairy tales about ‘algae fuels’ or ‘natural’ gas. This week’s hearing was another wake up call to the reality of their deception and lies. Let’s not let it go to waste.
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