In a year defined by multiple, intertwining global crises, it can be hard to find bright spots. But amid our accelerating climate crisis, there were a string of victories and promising developments in the work to hold accountable the fossil fuel companies who knowingly caused and lied about catastrophic climate damages.
Here, in no particular order, are the climate accountability stories that gave us hope for the year ahead.
Eight new lawsuits were filed to make Big Oil pay for deceiving the public about climate change. The nationwide momentum of litigation against the oil and gas industry is now impossible to ignore, as communities from the Midwest to the South to Hawaii took action in 2020 to hold climate polluters accountable. Four new attorneys general — in Minnesota, the District of Columbia, Delaware, and Connecticut — sued Exxon and other industry majors for lying to consumers about the harms they knew their products would cause. Meanwhile, Hoboken, New Jersey; Charleston, South Carolina, and the counties of Maui and Honolulu in Hawaii filed their own lawsuits to hold Big Oil accountable for the enormous costs of surviving climate change. The list of defendants grew as well, as the American Petroleum Institute and Koch Industries were sued for the first time for their role in fueling climate deception.
President-elect Joe Biden pledged to support lawsuits against climate polluters. The movement for climate accountability is poised to have an ally in the White House for the first time since climate damages lawsuits were first filed against major oil and gas companies in 2017. In a major reversal from the Trump administration, which sided with the oil industry in climate cases, President-elect Biden pledged to order his Department of Justice to “strategically support ongoing plaintiff-driven climate litigation against polluters.” On the debate stage during the Democratic primary, then-candidate Biden said of fossil fuel companies and executives, “if you demonstrate that they, in fact, have done things already that are bad and they’ve been lying, they should be able to be sued, they should be able to be held personally accountable.”
Members of Congress fought to protect access to the courts for communities seeking justice against Big Oil. In May, 60 House members, led by Representative Jamie Raskin (Maryland), sent a letter urging House leaders “to categorically oppose any attempt to confer immunity on the fossil fuel industry or to limit its liability for the damages it causes to people or property” in COVID-19 relief. In June, a report from the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis firmly stated that Congress should not grant legal immunity to polluters in exchange for a price on carbon. And another report from the Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis exposed the role of dark money in fueling Big Oil’s deception.
Big Oil suffered one court defeat after another. Oil and gas companies fought tooth and nail to remove the growing number of climate damages and fraud lawsuits brought against them to federal court, but courts across the country consistently rejected their arguments. In 2020, four different appeals courts, as well as a district court in Massachusetts, ruled that climate damages cases belong in state court, where they were originally filed and where the industry is terrified of being held accountable.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a climate damages case. The justices will hear arguments in January over a key procedural issue in Baltimore’s climate lawsuit against BP, Exxon, and others. The Supreme Court’s decision will set a nationwide precedent that will clarify what issues are subject to appeal in similar cases. Big Oil and its allies are trying to smuggle in additional questions the justices did not agree to consider, but the court has historically opposed such efforts.
New campaigns were launched to hold accountable law firms and ad agencies that help Big Oil deceive the public. Law students brought pressure on major law firms like Paul, Weiss to #DropExxon as a client, while Law Students for Climate Accountability, a new student-led group committed to “hold[ing] the legal industry accountable for its role in the climate crisis,” released a climate scorecard of the nation’s top law firms. Another new campaign, Clean Creatives, took aim at the PR and ad industry’s role in supporting fossil fuel companies.
Leaders across New Jersey called for the state to take Big Oil to court. From floods and sea-level rise to supercharged storms, the Garden State faces some of the most expensive climate damages in the country. After Hoboken became the first city in the state to sue Big Oil, a growing number of state and local officials called for statewide action to hold the industry accountable. A bipartisan Senate resolution urging New Jersey to sue climate polluters was approved by a state Senate committee, and the New Jersey League of Municipalities, two county boards of Chosen Freeholders, and three boroughs all passed similar resolutions demanding accountability.
“Greentrolling” made the Internet unsafe for Big Oil’s B.S. It’s getting harder than ever for climate polluters to launder their reputations online through deceptive posts that misrepresent the true impact of their products. 2020 was the year that activists popularized the use of “greentrolling” to expose Big Oil’s lies in the companies’ own mentions.
Journalists shined light on Big Oil’s continued work to deceive the public. Reporters from The New York Times to Mother Jones exposed the fossil fuel industry’s ugly propaganda tactics, from using PR firms to invent phoney “grassroots” campaigns and fake online personas, to directing pro-industry websites that attack accountability efforts and depicting themselves as allies of the communities their products most harm. Journalists also explained why Big Oil’s tactics are so similar to those previously used by Big Tobacco: because in many instances they employ the exact same lawyers and propagandists.
From the courts of law and public opinion to the halls of Congress and even the Oval Office, these stories show that the movement for climate accountability is more powerful than ever. As we close out this horrendous year, we are committed to making sure 2021 sees even more victories in the fight to hold Big Oil accountable.