2022: The year in climate accountability

Congress members unearthed new evidence of Big Oil’s climate deception, lawsuits against fossil fuel companies marched toward trial, and a growing number of communities took polluters to court.

Oil and gas corporations have lied about fueling the climate crisis for decades — and in 2022 they continued to rake in record-setting profits while communities across the globe paid the price for their climate deception. But in courts, Congress, and beyond, the fossil fuel industry faced mounting pressure from elected officials, advocates, and communities who took action to expose Big Oil’s lies, hold these polluters accountable, and make them pay for the damage they continue to cause. The number of U.S. communities taking fossil fuel companies to court surged this year from 26 to 43 — and Vancouver took steps to become the first Canadian city to sue oil majors. 

Here, in no particular order, were this year’s biggest developments in the fight to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable.

• New Jersey became the seventh U.S. state to take Big Oil companies to court: Garden State officials filed a lawsuit to hold ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, and the American Petroleum Institute accountable for the damage that their climate deception is causing to communities across the state. Attorney General Matt Platkin is now the eighth attorney general in the country suing Big Oil. 

• Puerto Rico municipalities filed the first-ever RICO complaint against fossil fuel companies: The lawsuit from 16 Puerto Rico municipalities opened a new legal front against oil, gas, and coal corporations, charging them in federal court with carrying out a “fraudulent marketing scheme” that violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, which has famously been used to prosecute organized crime. It’s also the first time a community has sought to make fossil fuel companies pay for damages from a specific extreme weather event — the 2017 hurricane season, which was intensified by global warming. 

• Honolulu won a major victory in its lawsuit against Big Oil companies, setting the stage for a historic trial: In a watershed legal moment, a Hawai`i state court rejected three separate motions to dismiss Honolulu’s climate damages lawsuit against major oil and gas companies. The rulings marked the first time that public nuisance and other tort claims to hold oil companies accountable for the costs of climate change reached and survived motions to dismiss.

• Courts unanimously ruled against Big Oil, bringing more communities closer to putting polluters on trial in state court: Fossil fuel companies suffered an unbroken string of defeats in their efforts to avoid trials over their climate lies in state courts. Six federal appeals court panels handed major victories to the states of Rhode Island and Delaware and municipalities in California, Colorado, Hawai`i, Maryland, and New Jersey that will allow their climate accountability lawsuits to proceed in state court. Meanwhile, the District of Columbia, Oakland and San Francisco, and Annapolis and Anne Arundel County, Maryland, won key federal district court rulings to keep their cases in state court, where juries would get to hear the evidence of Big Oil’s deception. 

• The U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee released thousands of pages of new evidence of the oil and gas industry’s climate deception: The latest cache of internal industry documents, obtained through the committee’s investigation into Exxon, Shell, Chevron, BP, and the American Petroleum Institute, shined more light on oil executives’ long-term strategy to prolong the era of fossil fuels. Rep. Ro Khanna said the committee plans to share its findings with “other agencies” with additional resources to act.

• Congressional committees held four separate hearings to investigate Big Oil’s climate obstruction: Congress members and witnesses laid out in detail how the fossil fuel industry has devastated communities across the country, used PR companies to mislead the public, weaponized the law to retaliate against critics, and lied about its clean energy commitments.

• A major academic study confirmed that Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and BP are greenwashing: The oil giants’ climate pledges aren’t backed up by “concrete actions,” according to the peer-reviewed study published in the journal PLOS One, which found that oil majors have not significantly moved away from the fossil fuel products driving the climate crisis. 

• New documentaries, books, and TV specials explained Big Oil’s lies to a wider audience: From PBS/Frontline’s “The Power of Big Oil” and the Paramount+ special “Black Gold” to a European docuseries and “The Petroleum Papers” by journalist Geoff Dembecki, this year saw a surge in media projects to educate the public about the fossil fuel industry’s role in the climate crisis.

• U.S. mayors supported the right of cities to sue fossil fuel corporations for climate damages: The U.S. Conference of Mayors called efforts by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to curb court access “a direct threat to municipal and taxpayer rights” in a resolution sponsored by Richmond, California, Mayor Tom Butt, one of more than 200 public officials who have joined CCI’s Leaders for Climate Accountability program.

This year made clear that efforts to hold Big Oil accountable aren’t going anywhere. As we enter 2023, the nationwide movement is stronger and has more momentum than ever.