CCI staff highlight accountability progress and threats at Climate Week NYC

Center for Climate Integrity staff joined several discussions at this year’s Climate Week NYC to shine a light on the latest efforts to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for its decades-long climate deception campaign and sound the alarm for growing threats to accountability efforts. 

CCI Managing Attorney Corey Riday-White joined the Union of Concerned Scientists for a discussion about the fossil fuel industry’s decades of deceit and why dozens of communities are suing major oil and gas companies to hold them accountable for their climate lies. 

“These lawsuits are premised on the same theory as the tobacco litigation from 30 years ago and, more recently, the opioid litigation where you have a powerful industry with inside knowledge that widespread use of their products would cause crises impacting our public health and property, but instead of sharing that knowledge they lied and deceived their consumers and policymakers,” Riday-White said. “Another way to say it is: they knew, they lied, they should be held accountable.”
 

In a discussion moderated by NPR’s Michael Copley, CCI Political Director Iyla Shornstein called out Big Oil’s shift from outright climate denial to lying about its commitment to climate solutions.

“When you have an industry that has spent so much time lying about the problem, until the point where they actually can’t any more because we’re all [experiencing climate change], they start lying about the solutions,” Shornstein told an audience at Columbia University. “That’s what we’re seeing so much of in greenwashing and algae and carbon capture and things they are citing as part of their climate target programs. There is this hypervigilance that we need to have with the kinds of solutions that they are saying address the problem.” 
 

Both panels raised the concern of Big Oil companies' latest efforts to lobby the Trump administration and Congress for a liability shield that could deny communities their right to take the companies to court when they cause harm. Recent reporting from the New York Times confirmed that securing the liability shield is a priority for the fossil fuel industry this Congress.

“This sort of shield would remove our right to hold the oil and gas industry accountable, even for their most egregious acts,” Riday-White said. “It is a blatant assault on our legal rights, and runs counter to everything in our democracy and our notion that no one is above the law.”