The most important climate accountability stories of 2021

From deadly heat waves and storms to destructive floods, wildfires, and droughts, fossil fuel-driven climate catastrophes caused untold damage across the United States in 2021. 

At the same time, a growing movement of governments, officials, and advocates advanced separate actions in courts, Congress, and communities to hold accountable the oil and gas corporations that knew their products would cause these climate disasters and that continue to deceive the public in order to protect their profits.  

Here, in no particular order, were the most important climate accountability stories in 2021. 

Four new lawsuits were filed against fossil fuel companies for climate deception. The latest cases — from New York City, Annapolis and Anne Arundel County, Maryland, and the attorney general of Vermont — bring the current number of communities turning to the courts to hold companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP accountable to 26 and counting. 

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey won an important legal battle in her consumer protection lawsuit against ExxonMobil. A Massachusetts court rejected ExxonMobil’s motions to dismiss the Commonwealth's lawsuit, which seeks to hold the oil giant accountable for using deceptive advertising to mislead consumers and investors about risks posed by fossil fuel-driven climate change. Healey’s lawsuit is now the first climate accountability case to reach and survive that hurdle in state court, bringing it one step closer to becoming the first climate liability lawsuit against Exxon to reach trial in state court. 

Powerful members of Congress put Big Oil executives in the hot seat and issued subpoenas as part of an ongoing investigation into the industry’s work to spread climate disinformation. Top executives from ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP America, the American Petroleum Institute, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — the #SlipperySix — were called to testify at a historic congressional hearing, “Fueling the Climate Crisis: Exposing Big Oil’s Disinformation Campaign to Prevent Climate Action.” For the first time ever, oil and gas executives faced questions under oath about their industry’s work to deceive the public and obstruct climate action. All six executives refused to commit that their companies would stop spending money to oppose efforts to reduce emissions and combat climate change. The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform has now issued subpoenas to the companies “for key documents they have failed to produce in the Committee’s investigation into the fossil fuel industry’s climate disinformation campaign.”

Exxon’s lobbyist got caught on tape spilling the beans about the company’s climate deception. During an undercover interview with a film crew from Greenpeace UK, now-former ExxonMobil federal lobbyist Keith McCoy openly bragged about the company’s use of “shadow groups” to attack climate science and obstruct government action. The revelations confirmed Exxon’s work to deceive the public about climate change, leading House Oversight committee members to seek an interview with McCoy, and CCI and partners to cite his comments in a legal brief. 

The U.S. Supreme Court handed Big Oil a narrow procedural win, but the justices declined the industry’s requests to go further. In a highly technical 7-1 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a federal appeals court to consider additional arguments from fossil fuel companies for why Baltimore’s climate damages lawsuit against them should be heard in federal court, rather than state court, where it was filed. The ruling has created a procedural delay for some communities seeking to hold Big Oil accountable in state court, but it may not ultimately change the final outcome, as virtually every court to consider the issue has agreed that climate accountability suits filed in state court belong in state court. Crucially, the justices did not grant two separate industry requests — in the Baltimore lawsuit and in another from San Francisco and Oakland — for the high court to consider and rule on the jurisdiction question outright. 

Four federal courts rejected the oil and gas industry’s arguments to escape accountability in state court. District court judges in Hawaiʻi, Minnesota, Connecticut, and New Jersey all ruled that climate accountability lawsuits filed against fossil fuel companies in state court belong in state court. The courts rejected a series of arguments that Exxon, Chevron, BP, Shell, and others made for lawsuits to be heard in federal court, where the industry hopes it will be easier to escape accountability. In one ruling, U.S. Judge Derrick Watson wrote that Big Oil’s arguments “misconstrue” the claims made by Honolulu and Maui, which focus on “alleged concealment of the dangers of fossil fuels, rather than the acts of extracting, processing, and delivering those fuels.” 

More than 120 state and local elected officials across 25 states became Leaders for Climate Accountability. The new nationwide network of public officials supports holding corporate polluters accountable for their outsized role in creating and perpetuating the climate crisis. Officials in the group, which is facilitated by CCI, are committed to holding the fossil fuel industry accountable, defending local democracy and access to the courts, and putting constituents and their safety and security at the forefront of policy solutions.

Chevron was slapped with a first-ever Federal Trade Commission complaint. Three nonprofits filed a first-of-its kind complaint with the FTC that charges Chevron with misleading consumers through deceptive advertising that greenwashes the polluter’s environmental record, in violation of the FTC’s Green Guides, which regulate environmental claims in marketing and advertising.

State and federal officials called on the Justice Department to support climate accountability lawsuits. Nine U.S. Senators and six attorneys general wrote letters urging the new U.S. attorney general, Merrick Garland, to end the federal government’s “misguided” Trump-era support of fossil fuel companies in climate accountability cases. The officials also cited President Biden’s campaign pledge to order the attorney general to “strategically support ongoing plaintiff-driven climate litigation against polluters.” During Garland’s confirmation hearing, U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said that “nothing could be so important” as the U.S. Department of Justice taking action to hold Exxon and other oil and gas companies accountable “for lying to the American public about the devastating effects of these products on climate change.” Garland’s DOJ has not yet weighed in on either side of the issue. 

Big Oil’s enablers — from lawyers to PR companies — faced growing scrutiny. Leading law and public relations firms that help the fossil fuel industry do its dirty work were met with boycotts and calls to drop their fossil fuel clients. Edelman, the world’s largest PR firm, was called out for its work helping Exxon, Shell, and other fossil fuel interests create misleading ad campaigns, and a public petition from more than 100 creators, experts, and advocates organized by the group Clean Creatives called on the firm to drop them as clients.  Law Students for Climate Accountability launched its #DoneWithDunn campaign against Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, the firm that represents Chevron. Gibson Dunn’s Ted Boutrous and other Big Oil lawyers were also subjects of critical and unflattering media coverage, while activists (successfully) called on the Biden administration to keep David Frederick, a lawyer for Shell, out of the federal government.  

More New Jersey communities called on state leaders to take legal action against Big Oil. From the mayor and city council of Atlantic City to the Hudson County Board of Commissioners, a growing number of Garden State governments passed resolutions encouraging the state’s governor and attorney general to take legal action to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for climate costs and deception. 

A peer-reviewed study showed that Exxon uses tobacco industry tactics to blame consumers for climate change. After analyzing hundreds of internal and external Exxon communications from 1972 to 2019, Harvard researchers Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes found that the oil giant downplayed the dangers of climate change and sought to shift blame for the damages caused by its products to consumers. As described by E&E News, the findings “could bolster efforts to hold the oil giant accountable in court for its alleged deception about global warming.” 

News outlets stepped up their climate accountability reporting. From unprecedented cable coverage of the congressional hearing into Big Oil’s climate disinformation that Media Matters for America said “should mark a new beginning for accountability journalism” to new series like Drilled and Earther’s the “ABCs of Big Oil” and the Guardian’s “Climate Crimes,” media outlets presented in-depth investigations into industry deception and efforts to hold polluters accountable. 

As we enter 2022, the movement for climate accountability is stronger than ever — and working for many more victories in the new year.