News & Analysis
December 19, 2024
More than one in four Americans now live in a community suing Big Oil, underscoring the rapidly growing wave of calls to hold the oil and gas industry accountable for its decades-long climate deception and the harms it has caused. As cases move closer to trial and newly uncovered documentation of the industry’s lies adds to the compelling body of evidence, let’s take a look at some of the climate accountability wins we saw in 2024.
The wave of climate accountability cases against Big Oil continued to grow.
Maine, Chicago, Puerto Rico, and a Pennsylvania county became the newest communities to take fossil fuel companies to court for climate lies and damages — and Michigan’s attorney general announced plans to follow suit. Chicago, the nation’s third largest city, cited worsening air pollution threats, massive flooding, dangerous heat, and other harmful climate impacts in its lawsuit against Exxon, Chevron, and other fossil fuel majors early this year, arguing that the industry’s deception delayed the transition to lower-carbon energy sources. Maine became the 9th state to take oil companies to court over their climate deception, accusing Exxon, Shell, BP, and other industry giants of “failing to warn Mainers and concealing their knowledge about the devastating consequences of the increasing use of fossil fuels on Maine’s people, economy, and environment.” Bucks County, Pennsylvania, filed the first climate accountability lawsuit against Big Oil in Pennsylvania following a report from CCI that found municipalities across the state face nearly $16 billion in climate adaptation costs by 2040. Puerto Rico’s lawsuit cites the devastation of Hurricanes Irma and Maria that was made worse by the climate crisis that fossil fuel companies knowingly fueled. As the wave of climate accountability lawsuits swells, there are even more on the horizon: Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel indicated that she intends to sue Big Oil companies for climate deception — which would make her the 12th attorney general to do so.
Communities continued to prevail against Big Oil’s legal arguments.
Fossil fuel defendants attempted to stop cases throughout the country from advancing toward trial, only to have judges in California, Colorado, Connecticut, and Maryland reject their arguments. Federal appeals courts also denied Big Oil’s attempts to stop climate accountability cases in Oregon, New York, Vermont, and Maryland from proceeding in state court, with one judge going as far to call some of the oil industry’s arguments “ridiculous,” “unpersuasive,” and “absurd.” The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Big Oil’s requests to reconsider lower court rulings in favor of keeping Minnesota’s climate accountability case in state court — a move that the Department of Justice is urging the justices to make again in 2025 as Big Oil seeks to stop Honolulu’s climate deception case from going to trial.
Utilities faced lawsuits for their deception.
With growing evidence that major utility companies also knew the climate harms of burning fossil fuels decades before the public, communities have started to demand accountability from their regional utilities in addition to Big Oil companies. Multnomah County, Oregon, added gas utility NW Natural to its ongoing climate deception lawsuit against Exxon, BP, and other oil majors for fueling the deadly 2021 heat dome in the Pacific Northwest. Carrboro, North Carolina, also filed a novel lawsuit that seeks to hold major utility Duke Energy accountable for climate deception.
Big Oil’s plastic recycling lies are being called out and met with lawsuits.
Big Oil and the plastics industry have spent decades telling the public that recycling could solve the plastic waste crisis, despite knowing that the practice is not economically or technically viable. CCI’s report “The Fraud of Plastic Recycling” laid out new evidence of this deception, providing the legal foundation for communities to demand accountability from plastic producers that knowingly fueled the plastic waste crisis. CCI’s Davis Allen underscored key findings of the report on CBS Sunday Morning, telling reporter Ben Tracy that “the plastics industry understands that selling recycling sells plastic, and they’ll say pretty much whatever they need to say to continue doing that, that’s how they make money.” In September, California filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against ExxonMobil, claiming the company “deceived Californians for almost half a century by promising that recycling could and would solve the ever-growing plastic waste crisis.” In November, Ford County, Kansas, filed a similar lawsuit against Exxon and other petrochemical companies. Both lawsuits cited evidence first uncovered in CCI’s report.
Congress members exposed more of Big Oil’s ongoing climate lies.
Following a years-long investigation into fossil fuel majors’ climate deception, the Senate Budget Committee and House Committee on Accountability and Oversight released a joint report on Big Oil’s climate deception, concluding that the fossil fuel industry has “evolved from denying climate science to spreading disinformation and perpetuating doublespeak about the safety of natural gas and its commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.” During a hearing on the findings, former director of the Justice Department’s Tobacco Litigation Team, Sharon Eubanks, told Congress members that there is a “solid evidentiary basis” to support further investigation of the oil industry through the DOJ, similar to the historic Big Tobacco investigations. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Representative Jamie Raskin formally referred the findings of their investigation to the Justice Department, calling for a federal investigation into Big Oil’s lies.
Evidence of Big Oil’s decades of deception keeps piling up.
This year brought even more evidence of the fossil fuel industry’s commitment to deceiving the public about the reality of climate change. Not only did oil companies know as early as 1954 that their products were causing real and measurable climate change — they were the ones who funded the research to prove it, according to documents uncovered this year by researcher Rebecca John. The fossil fuel industry was also warned about their products’ influence on the climate in the 1950s through trade associations such as the Western States Petroleum Association, only to then admonish their allies for bringing too much “attention” to those findings and instructing them to be more "protective" of the industry. Newly exposed Shell documents also revealed that in 1989 a Shell executive wrote, “Global warming could challenge the very fabric of the world’s ecological and economic systems,” underscoring why dozens of communities are suing Shell for continuing to publicly deny the reality of climate change for years to come. CCI also published a guide on five ways Big Oil is still lying, highlighting common lies the industry uses to promote themselves as partners in the clean energy transition while, in reality, they continue to double down on fossil fuels and block climate solutions.
The costs of climate change became clearer.
From deadly hurricanes like Helene and Milton, to destructive floods, heat waves, and wildfires, climate disasters wreaked havoc on communities this year, with two dozen weather-related disasters causing more than $1 billion each in damage. CCI is helping communities calculate their climate adaptation costs. This year we released detailed reports showing that Los Angeles County and the State of Wisconsin face at least $12.5 billion and $16.7 billion in costs through 2040, respectively, to protect residents and infrastructure from extreme weather events and other climate-induced threats to public health.
Big Oil and its allies continued fighting to escape accountability.
Oil industry allies launched an unprecedented dark money media campaign calling on the Supreme Court to help shield fossil fuel companies from climate accountability lawsuits by overturning a Hawai`i Supreme Court ruling that allowed Honolulu’s lawsuit against Big Oil to keep moving closer toward trial. In a separate and “highly unusual” request, 19 Republican attorneys general asked the Supreme Court to block five states — California, Connecticut, New Jersey, Minnesota, and Rhode Island — from continuing their own lawsuits to hold Big Oil accountable for climate lies and damages, prompting the targeted attorneys general to call the move “absurd,” “pure partisan theater,” and a “desperate stunt.” This escalation shows how desperate the fossil fuel industry is to avoid facing the evidence of its climate deception in courtrooms across the country. The U.S. Justice Department urged the Supreme Court to deny both pending requests, saying there was no legal basis for the high court to intervene.
As we enter 2025, the calls for climate accountability have never been stronger and cases throughout the nation have never been closer to trial. Now more than ever, it’s time to hold Big Oil accountable.
