Children at a Fridays for Future protest in Germany demanding climate action. Credit: Jörg Farys / Fridays for Future, CC BY 2.0

Over a billion children across the globe – or nearly half of the world’s children – are exposed to at least three overlapping climate hazards like extreme heat, drought, fires, floods, and tropical storms. And almost every child is vulnerable to at least one of these dangers.

That’s according to a new report released this week by UNICEF – “a report which should serve as a wake-up call to world leaders,” as the UN agency’s executive director Catherine Russell writes in the foreword. The Children’s Climate Risk Report maps children’s exposure to eight climate change hazards and reveals for the first time where they are most at risk and how overlapping threats are affecting them, threatening their health, safety, education, and even their lives.

“The lives of children continue to be upended by the impact of heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, and floods. Half of the world’s children are now living with at least three overlapping climate threats shaping their daily lives,” Russell said in a press release.

The impacts are not distributed equally as children in poorer countries, especially in the Global South, are generally most at risk. “In the Sahel region of Africa, one of the hardest hit, more than 4 million children face the triple threat of heatwaves, extreme heat, and sand and dust storms, while in countries across Asia, for example Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Pakistan, children are exposed to more climate hazards at once and at a higher intensity than anywhere else in the world,” the press release states.

Children in high-income countries may also be exposed to climate dangers too, of course. Nowhere on Earth is truly safe at a time of accelerating climate breakdown.

“This is not a warning of what is to come. It is a recognition of our current reality. And an acknowledgement of how much worse it could get for children,” UNICEF’s Tom Slaymaker said at a press briefing on Tuesday in Geneva. “Children have done the least to cause the climate crisis, yet they are paying the highest price.”

The report also examined children’s exposure to vector-borne diseases like malaria and air pollution, risks that are compounded by climate change. According to the data, around one billion children are vulnerable to malaria, and 2.3 billion or almost all children live in areas with polluted or unhealthy air.

So over 2 billion children, or nearly every child on Earth, is exposed to at least one climate change hazard and to detectable air pollutants. That is the reality and consequence of a global economy powered by dirty fossil fuels.

While politicians delay meaningful action to address this crisis, or in the case of the Trump administration deny that it’s even happening, “fossil-fuel pollution keeps accumulating in the atmosphere like a metastasizing cancer,” William Becker, a former Department of Energy official and executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project, writes in a recent opinion piece in The Hill.

“Our failure to get global warming under control is the greatest betrayal that any generation has ever imposed on its children,” Becker says. “We are letting oil oligarchs get rich by robbing our children’s future.”

Youth Turn to the Courts

For years, children and young people have been at the forefront of the climate justice movement. They have gone on strike and marched in the streets, lobbied elected officials and organized to change the politics on this issue, and sued their governments and campaigned to get the world’s highest court to weigh in.

The latter campaign led by Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change culminated in the International Court of Justice delivering a historic advisory opinion last year, unanimously affirming that climate action is not a political aspiration or option, but a legal obligation. All countries are required under multiple sources of existing international law to do their utmost to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to protect the climate system from further ruin. Last month the UN General Assembly voted on a resolution endorsing the court’s opinion, and an overwhelming majority – 141 countries – voted in favor of it. Only eight countries voted against it. The United States was one of them.

The US government has for decades actively supported the fossil fuel industry and its dominance over the energy system while rejecting any notions of legal responsibility or liability for being the world’s largest historical emitter of carbon pollution that is driving the climate emergency. That pattern has persisted regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican has occupied the White House. Gus Speth, a prominent environmental and systems change advocate who served as chair of the Council on Environmental Quality during the Carter administration, calls it “the greatest dereliction of civic responsibility in the history of the Republic.” As he writes in his book They Knew: The US Federal Government’s Fifty-Year Role in Causing the Climate Crisis: “And it is worse today than ever. This shocking historical conduct, government malfeasance on a grand scale, has left current and future generations enormously vulnerable to substantial danger.”

Speth’s book was published in 2021, before the disastrous trainwreck that is the second Trump administration, and it documents the actions of more than a half dozen presidential administrations to perpetuate the fossil fuel system despite their knowledge of the calamitous climate consequences. The book constitutes the expert witness report Speth submitted backing the 21 young Americans who sued the US government over climate change in the landmark Juliana v. United States case.

Juliana alleged violations of the US Constitution and was as much a civil rights case as it was a novel climate lawsuit. The case never made it to trial despite repeated rulings from the trial court judge that allowed it to proceed towards that stage. In fact, it was just days away from a trial in 2018 when the government lodged an emergency request to the Supreme Court to intervene, which the court did by temporarily pausing the case and derailing the trial.

The procedural roller-coaster of Juliana is too complex to detail here. Basically, the first Trump administration went out of its way to stop it, filing an unprecedented number of emergency appeals until the courts finally gave in; the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a 2-1 decision in January 2020 that the case should be dismissed. But after the trial court tried to revive the case, it was the Biden administration that put the final nail in the coffin in continuing the unprecedented obstruction of its predecessor.

Last year the young plaintiffs and their attorneys petitioned the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to take up their case, arguing that the US government’s longstanding conduct is a violation of international human rights law. That petition is still pending.

“Courts Cannot Keep Slamming the Doors on Us”

Meanwhile, several of the Juliana plaintiffs along with ten of the youth activists from the successful Held v. Montana climate case and other young Americans brought a constitutional climate lawsuit against the second Trump administration. But unlike Juliana which lasted for ten years, this case has been swiftly dismissed by federal courts.

Lighthiser v. Trump, filed on May 29, 2025, challenged three executive orders issued by President Trump that are intended to “unleash” fossil fuels, undermine renewable solar and wind energy, and suppress climate science. The district court judge held a hearing in September that featured live testimony from a few of the youth plaintiffs and their expert witnesses. And although the judge acknowledged the harms that the executive orders would inflict upon young people – calling climate change and fossil fuel exposure a “children’s health emergency” – he still dismissed the case because of the precedent set by Juliana (holding that courts cannot supervise government energy policy and remedy sweeping climate change injuries).

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the same court that established this precedent, unsurprisingly upheld the dismissal in a ruling earlier this month. In an unpublished opinion, the court said that the link between Trump’s executive orders and the plaintiffs’ alleged harms is “too speculative” – a statement that attorneys for the youth say ignores the evidentiary record that even the district court recognized.

“Not only is the court ignoring and turning a blind eye to the evidence before it – it’s turning a blind eye to the reality that we’re seeing every single day,” said Nate Bellinger, a senior staff attorney at Our Children’s Trust.

Given that federal courts, especially the Ninth Circuit, have repeatedly slammed the doors shut on youth bringing climate-related challenges against the government, I asked him if this pattern suggests there is a larger problem with the courts protecting the status quo and powerful interests.

“It does seem like the courts are more interested in protecting business interests than the rights of children and youth,” Bellinger answered. “It’s contrary to the very purpose of our Constitution, and I think it’s also grossly unjust.”

“We are heartbroken. We are outraged,” lead plaintiff Eva Lighthiser said in a recent commentary piece published in the Daily Montanan. “To grow up safely in a livable climate is not a political preference. It is the foundation on which every other right depends. Our government cannot treat our lives as an acceptable price for its fossil fuel agenda. And the courts cannot keep slamming the doors on us while it opens them to the fossil fuel industry to protect its profits.”

Avery McRae, a 20-year student at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, was a plaintiff in both the Juliana and Lighthiser cases against the federal government. She told me that she is feeling “pretty rageful” and frustrated. “I’m trying to use the anger to fuel my activism and to fuel my motivation to continue,” McRae said.

“With the Juliana case we were before multiple panels of judges, and we were in the courts for ten years,” she added. “Even though we didn’t go to trial, there was still for me a sense of accomplishment just with the longevity of our case. With this [Lighthiser] case it feels like it is being so strongly dismissed early on.”

Bellinger suggested that the US government is afraid to face the evidence and climate science in a court trial setting.

“The government is just fighting so, so hard to keep these cases from getting to the merits,” he said. “Because I think they know they lose once the evidence comes out. Like we saw in Held v. Montana when we got to trial and got a chance to present the evidence, it was an overwhelming win for the plaintiffs. So [defendants’] only chance to defeat these cases is to prevent the evidence from coming out.”

“We’re going to keep fighting, keep telling the stories of these courageous youth, and do everything we can to bring this evidence to the courtroom to get decisions and recognition of these youths’ rights that are being violated,” Bellinger added.

While Trump may dismiss climate change as a hoax, the harms that are already occurring and that disproportionately affect the nation’s and the world’s youth are very real. As the UNICEF report states, the climate crisis “is a child rights crisis.”

“The climate crisis is threatening children’s fundamental rights to life, survival and development; to protection and social services; and to a safe, clean and healthy environment,” the report says. And it calls for “urgent action” to reduce emissions and protect the lives of children and young people everywhere.

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Credit: fourbyfourblazer via Flickr, CC BY 2.0

June 1 marked the start of meteorological summer. It goes without saying that summers have been heating up as the concentration of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continues to rise. The planet is rapidly warming – the last three years were the three hottest years on record so far. This year could be the warmest one yet, or perhaps 2027 will rank in the top spot. Regardless, climate scientists are warning that even more perilous heating and turbulent extreme weather is in store – and on top of that, an El Niño is developing, which is poised to amplify the warming and greatly increase the risk of severe weather.

According to a recent update from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), there is an 80 percent likelihood of an El Niño forming from June through August, and a 90 percent chance that it will continue through at least November. El Niño is a natural part of the climate system and the warmer phase of a cycle known as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, fueled by above average sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. The most recent El Niño occurred in 2023-2024 and was a strong one, playing out under a baseline of anthropogenic warming that scientists warn is accelerating. That combination led 2024 to register as the hottest year on record. Now, this pattern appears likely to repeat, with man-made warming continuing and some forecasts indicating a strong or potentially very strong El Niño is on its way.

“The science is clear: El Niño is arriving on our doorstep in the coming months with 90% certainty. The world must treat it as the urgent climate warning it is,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a video message commenting on the WMO update. “El Niño conditions will pour fuel on the fire of a warming world. Impacts will hit even harder, travel even farther, and cross borders with devastating speed. The only effective response is climate action equal to the crisis – ending the addiction to fossil fuels, accelerating the shift to renewables, protecting the most vulnerable, and delivering early warning systems for all.”

During a media briefing last month on the extreme weather outlook for 2026, climate experts also called attention to the worsening climate crisis and the urgent need to curb planetary heating – caused largely by burning fossil fuels – noting that El Niño is a natural phenomenon that is beyond our control.

“While El Niño could lead to very extreme conditions later this year, it’s not the reason to freak out,” said Friederike Otto, professor in climate science at the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, and co-founder of World Weather Attribution. But climate change, she said, “gets worse and worse and worse as long as we do not stop burning fossil fuels,” and it is “already a much stronger influence on many extremes than most natural modes of variability.”

“Climate change is the reason to freak out,” Otto said.

“What is not natural is [El Niño] is now operating on a planet that human activity has fundamentally destabilized,” said Jemilah Mahmood, executive director of the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health.

“Climate change is not going away unless we do something about it,” she added. “The physics hasn’t changed, the science hasn’t changed, only the political will has wavered.”

Extreme heat has already made its mark in 2026. Europe recently sweltered through a heat wave that shattered temperature records; Otto said this heat event “has the fingerprints of climate change all over it.” In January a blistering heat wave that was made five times more likely by climate change gripped southeastern Australia – the area’s most severe heat wave in six years. And in March an unusually early and record-breaking heat wave impacted millions of people in the U.S., mainly out west. Researchers say this early spring extreme heat event would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change.

Heat waves are the deadliest type of extreme weather. As Mahmood explained, an estimated 546,000 people die every year from heat-related causes. And that figure is almost certainly an undercount. As long as the planet continues to heat up, more and more lives will be lost or put at risk. According to Otto, 2026 is sure to “become extremely hot because of human-induced climate change,” regardless of the impact of a potentially strong El Niño.

Wildfires are another weather-related hazard that are becoming worse with climate change. More than 150 million hectares of land burned globally from January through April this year, which is a record for this four-month period. “This year the global fire season has got off to a very fast start,” Theodore Keeping, researcher at the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, said during the media briefing. “This rapid start, in combination with the forecast El Niño, means that we’re looking at particularly severe [fire] year materializing.”

Yet despite the clear evidence of more extreme and dangerous weather supercharged by an overheating planet, the policy responses have not been commensurate with the scale of the crisis that is unfolding.

“In the last few years, we have seen a retraction from climate commitments in some countries,” said Patricia Espinosa, former executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

This retreat has been especially stark in the U.S., where the Trump administration has taken a wrecking ball to climate policies and climate science. It has gutted key scientific agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA and undermined federal disaster response through FEMA. The Environmental Protection Agency earlier this year rescinded its science-based finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare, cementing climate denial as the official policy of the federal government. And President Trump has moved to withdraw the U.S. not only from the Paris Agreement, but also the underlying bedrock global climate treaty – the UNFCCC.

It is hard not to conclude that the only beneficiaries of these actions are billionaire fossil fuel executives, because serious climate action is a threat to their profits and business model. It is why the fossil fuel industry purposefully engineered climate denial.

“Most people in the world are severely impacted by climate change, and for those [people] it is a crisis,” Otto during the media briefing. “It’s just not a crisis for those who profit from selling oil, gas, and coal, and those are unfortunately the ones who set at the moment the tone of the global debate.”

In a new report, Public Citizen’s Climate Accountability Project director Aaron Regunberg lays out the case for why Big Oil deserves to be blamed for the increasingly dangerous – even lethal – extreme weather and climate-fueled disasters that are effectively ruining our summers in the U.S.

“Summer has always been a time for fun: family vacations, beach days, block parties. But for millions of Americans, this excitement has shifted to anxiety over the threat of heat waves, hurricanes, drought, and wildfires that continue to get worse every summer. These are not natural disasters. They’re exactly the kind of climate harms that Big Oil companies predicted their fossil fuel products would cause, as climate attribution science can demonstrate in increasingly precise ways. And this summer could be dangerous on a whole new level thanks to a climate-intensified El Niño,” Regunberg said in a statement.

“Americans deserve to know that their summers haven’t simply gotten worse,” he added. “They have been made worse by specific companies that knew their conduct would cause these harms, and spent decades orchestrating fraudulent campaigns of climate denial to cover up this reality.”

With people’s health, safety, and even their lives on the line, climate action cannot wait. As Mahmood said: “We need to speak uncomfortable truths to power.”

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Milieudefensie’s legal team in court on May 22, 2026. Credit: Frank van Beek, courtesy of Milieudefensie

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Five years ago – on May 26, 2021 – a ruling from the District Court of The Hague in the Netherlands sent shockwaves through the global oil and gas industry. The court ruled that Shell, one of the biggest oil companies on the planet, had a legal duty to act on the climate crisis in line with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. In a groundbreaking climate change court case brought by Dutch environmental organization Milieudefensie (Friends of the Earth Netherlands) and supported by several other NGOs and over 17,000 citizens, Shell was ordered by the court to reduce CO2 emissions across its entire supply chain by 45 percent by 2030. It was the first time a court anywhere in the world had imposed a specific emissions reduction obligation on a large carbon-emitting corporation.

Climate activists hailed the verdict as “historic” and a “watershed decision” with significant implications for major oil and gas companies.

“This is a turning point in history,” Roger Cox, a lawyer for Milieudefensie, said at the time. “This case is unique because it is the first time a judge has ordered a large polluting company to comply with the Paris Climate Agreement. This ruling may also have major consequences for other big polluters.”

On Friday, May 22, Cox and Milieudefensie were back in The Hague facing off once more against Shell in court – this time before the Netherlands’ Supreme Court. The ruling and emissions reduction order from five years ago had been overturned by an appeals court in November 2024. Milieudefensie is now asking the country’s highest court to reinstate it, because without a binding obligation for Shell to slash its carbon emissions by a specific percentage, accountability goes out the window.

“If Shell is allowed to continue like this, we must conclude that modern society and the choices made within it have created private-law entities that are more destructive than states, yet which no one can keep in check. Not through politics, nor through the law,” Cox told the Dutch Supreme Court in his closing argument on Friday. “In that case, the democratic rule of law and the international legal order will have proved more vulnerable than we thought, and we will collectively have to pay the costs for that. That price will be high, unimaginably high.”

The consequences of the fossil fueled climate crisis are already costing society a great deal, and these costs are only getting steeper as the crisis deepens. We are all paying for the destructive climate impacts of the fossil fuel industry’s business model, whether that is through higher home insurance premiums, rising food prices or adverse health impacts. Fossil fuel companies are the only ones not paying for the consequences of the pollution generated by their products. Billionaire executives profit while consumers get squeezed - a reality that is especially salient right now given the soaring fuel prices driven by the war on Iran, which has resulted in massive windfall profits for Big Oil. Shell recently reported nearly $7 billion in first quarter earnings.

But rather than invest in the energy transition, the fossil fuel industry is working to obstruct it, or at least slow it down. In addition to expanding oil and gas supply – Shell for example plans to grow its liquefied natural gas (LNG) sales by 20-30 percent by 2030 and to spend about $100 billion on upstream oil and gas – big oil companies are actively lobbying to block or weaken regulations and climate policies. As ExxonKnews reporter Emily Sanders explained in a piece last October: “While backing away from its commitments to renewable energy and doubling down on oil and gas, fossil fuel giants have spent big to escape regulation and oversight. Oil and gas companies and trade associations have continued lobbying to weaken and kill policies to reduce emissions.”

That point about how companies like Shell work to influence demand for their products and lobby to help shape regulatory policy was brought up by Milieudefensie’s legal team during Friday’s hearing. As Sébastien Duyck, a senior attorney with the Center for International Environmental Law who attended the hearing wrote in a social media thread: “The NGOs lawyer points to the fact that Shell, along with four other major oil and gas companies, has spent 250 million Euros over an 8-year period to influence the climate and corporate policies of the European Union. The scale of this figure is mind-blowing.”

“These pleadings have sought to demonstrate that Shell is not the politically neutral actor it pretends to be, supplying a public demand for energy, but rather that the fossil fuel industry holds a stranglehold over society shaping collective choices,” Duyck added.

Court Confirmed Shell “Has an Obligation to Counter Dangerous Climate Change”

When the Court of Appeal in 2024 overturned the emissions reduction order and dismissed the lawsuit against Shell, it did not let the oil major entirely off the hook. The court explicitly stated that “Shell has an obligation to counter dangerous climate change” and to reduce its CO2 emissions. “Companies like Shell thus have their own responsibility in achieving the targets of the Paris Agreement,” the court said. It also suggested that Shell’s planned investments in new oil and gas fields “may be at odds” with this responsibility.

Where the court fell short, according to Milieudefensie, is in failing to hold Shell accountable to a specific level of emissions reduction. “Without a concrete reduction target, these obligations remain too open-ended. A concrete percentage helps to truly protect people worldwide from dangerous climate change which Shell is contributing to,” said Milieudefensie’s Winnie Oussoren. “We’re back in court to hold Shell accountable.”

In a statement, Shell said it believes that what Milieudefensie is demanding “has no basis in law and is not effective; would create conflicting rules across Europe; could have serious unintended consequences for Dutch and European competitiveness; and could hinder a balanced and secure energy transition in Europe and globally.”

“With the reduction order that Milieudefensie is seeking, they are effectively asking the courts to design climate policy,” Shell said. “We believe that policymaking and international cooperation, along with investment and action across all sectors, will drive the progress needed at a global scale in the energy transition.”

Oussoren argued that Shell is just continuing to try to evade accountability for its own role in driving the climate crisis. “Shell presented its usual excuses to avoid fulfilling its duty to combat dangerous climate change,” she said. “It is abundantly clear: Shell continues to invest heavily in polluting fossil fuels and keeps the world addicted to oil and gas, which we urgently need to move away from.”

It is now up to the Dutch Supreme Court to determine whether or not it will hold Shell accountable. According to Milieudefensie, this is the first time anywhere in the world that a country’s highest court is considering a company’s civil law obligation to reduce CO2 emissions in order to mitigate dangerous climate change.

A decision is expected sometime in 2027.

U.S. Supreme Court to Take Up Climate Case

Meanwhile, in the United States, the Supreme Court is taking up a case later this year that could result in the oil and gas industry effectively being shielded from civil liability for its role in contributing to climate change harms and lying about it. The case, Suncor Energy et al. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, involves a Colorado municipality that sued oil companies ExxonMobil and Suncor in 2018 alleging that the companies’ decades-long deception about the climate risks of fossil fuels worsened the climate crisis that is already damaging the community of Boulder; and Boulder wants to make the companies pay for this damage.

The case is among dozens of climate accountability suits filed against Big Oil in the U.S., and it was on track to head towards trial. But earlier this year the Supreme Court decided to intervene at the companies’ request, a move that could derail not only this one case but potentially others like it as well.

So, while the Supreme Court of the Netherlands decides whether Shell should be held to a concrete emissions reduction obligation, the Supreme Court of the U.S. will be deciding whether Exxon and other oil companies should have to face state law climate change claims at all. Even if the latter decides in favor of Exxon (which perhaps seems likely), Big Oil may not be able to evade climate accountability everywhere and forever. The court in the Netherlands could decide to hold Shell accountable, for example. And if it doesn’t, Milieudefensie has already filed a second climate case against Shell challenging its oil and gas expansion plans. Shell is also facing a fresh climate suit in the UK. More cases could soon be filed. Eventually, Big Oil will face a reckoning through the courts.

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Vanuatu’s climate and environment minister Ralph Regenvanu addresses the International Court of Justice in December 2024. Credit: UN Photo/ICJ-CIJ/Frank van Beek. Courtesy of the ICJ

It’s been nearly a year since the world’s highest court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), delivered a landmark advisory opinion that clarified that climate action is not optional, but is in fact a legal obligation. The unanimous ruling from the court on July 23, 2025 confirmed that all countries are required, under multiple sources of existing international law, to do their utmost to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis. Obligations are not limited to participation in the UN climate treaty regime, as customary international law principles – like the duty to prevent transboundary harm – apply to all countries regardless of whether or not (as is the case now with the U.S.) they are party to the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

In short, the court drew a line in the sand, clarifying for the first time what the law demands in terms of the global response to what is for many vulnerable populations and countries an existential threat.

Now, it is up to UN member countries to decide what to do with the court’s opinion. This week the United Nations General Assembly is expected to vote on a resolution spearheaded by the small island Pacific nation of Vanuatu that endorses the opinion and calls upon countries to act on it. Experts and climate justice advocates say the resolution is a key step towards implementing the court’s guidance, and the vote – scheduled for May 20 – will be a major test of countries’ commitment to international diplomacy (or in UN parlance, multilateralism) and the rule of law.

“This resolution is such a critical piece of the implementation puzzle,” Joie Chowdhury, senior attorney and climate justice and accountability manager at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), said during a March 9 webinar. Now that the court has spoken, what remains is the “political will to act” on the ruling, she noted, adding that it’s “very much about reaffirming faith in multilateralism and the rule of law.”

“We celebrated last year’s ICJ Advisory Opinion as an unparalleled moment of legal consensus on the climate crisis,” said Vishal Prasad, director of Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change. “This resolution is a call for all countries to turn that legal consensus into political action. The Pacific did not campaign for years to win legal clarity only to watch it sit on a shelf.”

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How We Got Here

Pacific Island Student Fighting Climate Change initiated the campaign to, as they described it, take the world’s biggest problem to the world’s highest court. For many communities in the Pacific region, especially small island nations like Vanuatu, climate change threatens their long-term survival. Climate justice is therefore a top priority for young Pacific Islanders, and their campaign gained the backing of the government of Vanuatu and other countries in the region. These countries lobbied other UN member states to support their initiative to request an advisory opinion on climate change from the ICJ – the principal judicial body of the United Nations.

On March 29, 2023 the UN General Assembly took up a resolution that would formally make this request and begin the ICJ advisory opinion process. The resolution, backed by 132 countries as co-sponsors, passed by consensus or general agreement without an official vote. Not all countries supported it – the U.S. for example abstained – but no country tried to block its adoption.

The court proceeding that followed saw a record level of participation; representatives of nearly 100 countries gave oral statements during a two-week hearing in December 2024. It was the biggest case, in terms of engagement, in the court’s history.

The court’s opinion was unanimous, and was hailed as a historic moment for climate justice. The opinion itself is nonbinding, but experts say it carries authoritative weight and could be used as persuasive guidance in domestic climate court cases and in diplomatic fora like the annual UN climate negotiations.

Will the Resolution Pass by Consensus?

Since the ICJ’s climate advisory opinion arose from a UN General Assembly resolution, it is therefore standard practice to follow up in the UNGA with another resolution endorsing the opinion, according to Lee-Anne Sackett, Vanuatu’s special envoy on climate justice. “The purpose of bringing it back to the UNGA is to get the political-level endorsement and to also look for ways for it to be operationalized,” she said.

Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh, associate professor of sustainability law at the University of Amsterdam, who served as co-counsel for Vanuatu in the ICJ proceedings, said that the resolution does not create new obligations and that the “General Assembly is not turning itself into a court.” Instead, it is “doing what a political organ should do, supporting compliance, cooperation, and coherence.”

“Participation in the ICJ climate advisory opinion proceedings before the court was unprecedented, and the court responded unanimously,” Wewerinke-Singh added. “Moments like this are rare. Legal clarity was delivered with unanimity on an issue that touches every state. The question is now whether UN Member States can respond with the same seriousness and unity.”

Although the original resolution requesting the advisory opinion passed by consensus, it is not clear whether the current resolution will pass with the same level of support. Sackett noted that some countries’ positions and governments have changed since 2023, and the current geopolitical climate is even more fractured. “If it’s not possible to pass it by consensus, at the very least we need to make sure that it’s broadly supported by a large number of states,” Sackett said.

Some major fossil fuel producing countries like the U.S. and Saudi Arabia not only oppose the resolution, but have tried to block it. As reported in February, the U.S. had been pressuring other countries to demand that Vanuatu withdraw its draft resolution, claiming that it threatens U.S. industry. This pressure campaign was just one example of how the Trump administration has been attempting to sabotage global climate action.

While Vanuatu did not withdraw the resolution, it did have to compromise on some of the language and contents. The initial draft included a call for countries to phase out fossil fuels, for example, but this was replaced in the updated version with a reference to transition away from them, using phrasing that countries had already agreed upon in the outcome document of the COP28 UN climate summit in Dubai in 2023. Another contentious item in the initial draft was the establishment of an International Register of Damage that would have allowed for a transparent record of climate-related loss and damage, in order to help strengthen accountability efforts. The U.S. in particular aggressively pushed back against this, and it was dropped from the final version of the resolution in what Sackett said was a “really significant compromise and concession from Vanuatu’s side.”

“A Critical Moment”

The resolution, like the advisory opinion itself, does not assign responsibility or liability to any particular country. It simply welcomes the court’s opinion, calls upon UN member states to act in accordance with their international obligations as clarified by the court, and requests the UN Secretary-General to follow up with a report exploring ways to advance compliance.

“This is a critical moment, not just for the climate but also for the future of international cooperation. The entire postwar, post-colonial multilateral order is under significant pressure…In this context, reaffirming the role of institutions like the ICJ would be a shot in the arm for multilateralism,” Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s climate and environment minister, wrote in a new opinion piece titled “International Climate Law Needs Teeth.”

Speaking at a UN briefing on the resolution on May 1, Regenvanu reiterated the stakes. “For Vanuatu, and for many other climate-vulnerable states, this is ultimately about survival,” he said. “But it is also about something wider – whether multilateralism can still respond to reality with unity.”

The science on climate change is clear. And now so too is the law. The vote on May 20 will be a test on whether countries are willing to act on it, or whether they will continue defying science and the law, as the U.S. under the Trump administration is intent on doing.

“It’s an invitation for countries to show they uphold the rule of law, at a time when it is under pressure globally, I’m sorry to say including in one particular important country,” said former president of Ireland and climate justice advocate Mary Robinson, (obviously referring to the U.S. here).

“Standing with Vanuatu means standing with the international rule of law, with science, and frankly with solidarity,” Robinson added. “Backing this resolution is a reaffirmation that international law matters, that multilateralism matters, that justice matters.”

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Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) speaks during an Earth Day press conference on Capitol Hill calling for passage of a windfall profits tax on Big Oil. Credit: Screen shot from recording of the event on April 22, 2026.

Last month, Republicans in Congress unveiled a legislative proposal that would shut down efforts to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for its role in fueling the accelerating climate crisis. The bill’s champions described it as a move to “defend American energy” and protect U.S. energy and national security. But critics say that it would shut the courthouse doors on Americans and communities harmed by climate pollution and would effectively place Big Oil above the law.

Introduced by Representative Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), the “Stop Climate Shakedowns Act” would, if enacted, grant sweeping legal immunity to the fossil fuel industry, which is facing dozens of climate-related lawsuits and the prospect of billions of dollars in liabilities. The bill would make that liability risk go away, full stop. It would block any new climate lawsuits from being filed in federal and state courts and require that all pending suits against the oil industry be immediately dismissed. Climate superfund laws like the ones enacted in Vermont and New York, and all other versions of polluter pays legislation, would be prohibited. And the bill establishes, under a federal preemption clause, that regulation of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change is “governed exclusively by federal law,” potentially threatening most if not all state climate laws and related actions.

In short, it would shield Big Oil from accountability for the widespread death and destruction its products and conduct unleash – much like how the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act shielded gun manufacturers from civil liability (though that law did include some exceptions; the fossil fuel immunity proposal has no exceptions).

Last year a group of Republican state attorneys general wrote to then-U.S. AG Pam Bondi explicitly encouraging her to recommend liability shield legislation that could “stop activist-funded climate lawsuits,” similar to the 2005 PLCAA. Earlier this year during a House Judiciary Oversight hearing, Hageman revealed that she was working on crafting such legislation, which the American Petroleum Institute had spent months lobbying for.

It is unclear whether this bill will get any traction. It has been referred to the Judiciary committees in both the House and Senate and has so far not seen further movement. Climate advocates who are closely monitoring it say that it will not be able to garner 60 votes in the Senate, so it would have to be sneaked into a reconciliation package or some other must-pass bill to have any chance of passage.

I reported on the bill in a story that ran this week in Sierra. The story was among the first news articles to report on-the-record statements from Democrats in Congress responding directly to the Republicans’ immunity proposal for Big Oil. Some of the statements in that article were condensed. But I wanted to provide the statements in full here, so there can be a more complete record of what Democrats are saying about this extreme bill (as climate journalist Emily Atkin accurately described it) to shield polluters from climate accountability. Additionally, I am including a few statements that were either reported by other news outlets or that were posted publicly on social media.

Responses from Democratic Senators

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island is one of the leading voices in the Senate advocating for climate action and calling out fossil fuel industry corruption. Here is what he said about the immunity proposal:

“In the United States alone, the fossil fuel industry enjoys a $700-plus billion dollar per year pollute-for-free subsidy, the biggest in world history. Any idea that government is unfair to fossil fuel is ridiculous. Now they want not just to pollute for free but to operate outside the civil law, free of consequences. Everyone should be disgusted. It is a grotesque signal of the extent to which fossil fuel dark money influence controls Republican sock puppets.”

Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts is another stalwart climate champion. His response:

“Big Oil has long known of the danger it poses to our democracy and to our climate, and we need to protect our ability to hold these companies accountable. We shouldn’t be shielding Big Oil—we should be shielding communities from climate harm.”

Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut had this to say:

“Big Oil should have to face the music for knowingly deceiving consumers about the impact of fossil fuels on our communities and environment. These companies are just taking a page out of Big Tobacco’s playbook—attempting to skirt regulation and stop us from bringing enforcement actions against their specific industry. We do not need, nor should we ever have, any immunity for fossil fuel companies from litigation that seeks to hold them accountable.”

Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who has sponsored a federal polluter pays climate superfund bill, said:

“While we’ve put forward proposals – like my Polluters Pay bill – to hold Big Oil accountable and make them pay for the harm their actions have caused to communities across the country, Republicans are hell-bent on doing the opposite. Republicans want to give Big Oil a license to pollute with impunity and leave it to taxpayers to pay the costs. This is exactly the kind of special interest grift that the American people are sick of. We should be requiring Big Oil to pay up – not shielding them from ever facing their day in court or being held responsible.”

Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) speaks during a press conference announcing his Polluters Pay Climate Fund Act. Credit: Screen shot from event recording in September 2024.

New York Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand have vowed to block the legislation, according to Newsday.

“This bill would slam the door on holding fossil fuel polluters accountable and shift the burden onto New Yorkers. Polluters should pay for the climate damage they caused, not taxpayers,” Schumer told Newsday in a statement.

Responses from Democrats in the House

The couple of House Democrats I reached out to or have seen public statements from are all part of the House’s Sustainable Energy & Environment Coalition. Former Congressman and Washington governor Jay Inslee, one of the co-founders of this coalition, has also been an outspoken opponent of attempts to shield Big Oil from climate accountability. In late March he briefed some members of Congress about the oil industry’s push to secure a liability shield. “I am playing the role of Paul Revere here. The British aren’t coming but the oil and gas industry is,” Inslee told members of the coalition.

Rep. Paul Tonko (NY-20), co-chair of the House SEEC, said this about the “Stop Climate Shakedowns” bill:

“Once again, Republicans are prioritizing polluters over our planet and the wellbeing of the American people. Shielding Big Oil from facing accountability for the damage they have caused is a slap in the face to the very concept of justice and to the countless who have been harmed by the fossil fuel industry. I’ll fight against this cruel bill that gives polluters a free pass. Any member of Congress who cares about accountability, our environment, and public health must do the same.”

Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (OR-01), a vice-chair of the coalition, said this:

“It is abundantly clear that the priority of Republican lawmakers is to protect corporate polluters at the expense of people who pay higher bills, breathe dirtier air, and confront more climate-induced extreme weather events. Carbon emissions are contributing to disease and damaging the environment. Granting immunity to oil and gas companies is immoral and would further harm people across the country who are already burdened by surging electricity bills, higher property insurance, and unaffordable health care costs. The companies and individuals who created this crisis must be held accountable, and that means giving injured parties their day in court. I will do everything I can to block this legislation and any other attempt to create a liability shield for polluters.”

And Rep. Mike Levin (CA-49), also a vice-chair of the SEEC, had this to say:

“The Stop Climate Shakedowns Act is a bailout for an entire industry that spent decades lying to the American public about the damage its products were causing. They funded the science to understand that damage, they saw the projections, they spent millions burying it, and now they want Congress to guarantee they never pay a dime for the consequences. Fossil fuel companies are begging for a liability shield because they know they are guilty of breaking the law. I am firmly opposed to this bill, and I will fight to ensure that the communities bearing the costs of climate change retain every legal tool available to hold oil and gas corporations accountable.” (Levin also posted a video clip where he made some of these same remarks).

Rep. Dan Goldberg (NY-10) also posted a short video clip where he called out the Republicans’ fossil fuel immunity proposal:

“Right now, 22 state attorneys general from around the country are suing New York to overturn this [climate superfund] legislation. And worse yet, Republicans in Congress are trying to pass a law that would preempt it, yet again trying to come to the defense of Big Oil…We must stand up for the New York law that makes polluters pay for their pollution, not New York taxpayers.”

In March I reported for Inside Climate News on the brewing effort, at federal and state levels, to immunize polluters from climate liability. A federal liability shield bill had not yet been introduced, but a spokesperson for Rep. Jamie Raskin (MD-08) and House Judiciary Democrats said that they would oppose any immunity efforts:

“Fossil fuel companies are apparently continuing to lobby for legislation that would absolve them of any accountability for their role in endangering people’s health and safety. We rejected these efforts in 2020 and will continue to defeat them if they are proposed in the future.”

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Chicago, Illinois was the host city for the 2026 Society of Environmental Journalists conference. Credit: Dana Drugmand

I recently returned home from Chicago where I attended the 2026 Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) conference, an annual gathering of reporters and other professionals engaged in environmental work. It goes without saying that these are incredibly challenging times to be working in the environmental sphere; the same goes for working in the journalism field, which is currently in a state of turmoil. Working at the intersection of these two fields, then – being an environmental journalist – is doubly tough in this moment. The conference did not shy away from this reality.

Its concluding plenary session, for example, titled “Protecting Environmental Journalists, Protecting the Planet: Safety, Support and Resilience,” featured an important and candid discussion about some of the challenges – including emotional distress – facing journalists who cover the state of the planet. Rebecca Weston, co-executive director of the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America and co-founder of the CARES media initiative, highlighted a new report from the initiative that surveyed the emotional and mental wellbeing of environmental journalists. “In short: Many journalists who cover climate change and the environment are not fine. The survey found high levels of anxiety, stress, depression, and climate distress among the 188 journalists who responded,” the executive summary explains.

Another one of the panelists, Nepali journalist Kunda Dixit, discussed some of the broader trends affecting journalists like democratic backsliding and restrictions on press freedom. Protecting journalism, he said, is essential for protecting the planet.

Dixit authored a chapter speaking to that very message in a 2025 UNESCO report, World trends in freedom of expression and media development: global report 2022/2025. “Press freedom is under attack worldwide… In an era when support for traditional media is dwindling amid economic uncertainty, political pressure and techno-logical shifts, defending free, independent journalism must be recognized as a development priority,” UNESCO assistant director-general for communication and information Tawfik Jelassi writes in the report’s foreword. And as Dixit writes in his chapter: “As the triple planetary crisis endangers all life on the planet, the mass media’s capacity to draw attention to the urgency of the issues is seriously undermined by the crisis in journalism and in democracy itself.”

Today, May 3, is World Press Freedom Day, so it seems particularly appropriate to reflect upon this crisis in journalism generally and specifically what it means for climate and environmental journalism. And while the overall picture may seem grim, there are solutions or ways that the situation can be improved (like funding this work!).

Tip Jar (Pay what you can)

But first, the bad news (no pun intended). The journalism industry in general is going through a period of mass layoffs; nearly 10,000 journalists have been laid off in the past three years, according to a 2025 article in Nieman Reports. “CBS, CNN, NBC and other broadcasters cut newsroom staff,” Climate Rights International’s Felix Horne wrote in a February article in Climate Home News. Even the Guardian, he notes – which does some of the best news reporting especially on the climate crisis – “has acknowledged sustained financial strain and has reduced or consolidated reporting capacity in recent years.”

As newsrooms shrink, climate journalists are getting tossed aside. Mainstream news outlets have been eliminating or slashing their climate desks. “The Washington Post gutted its climate team amid a larger set of layoffs. So did CBS News… ABC News and NBC News also all but eliminated their climate teams,” Covering Climate Now, an initiative that aims to improve climate coverage worldwide, noted in its new white paper titled “A Burning House, A Quiet Media, a Silenced Majority.”

CBS News layoffs last October essentially eliminated the team that supported its climate news coverage. In axing these newsroom positions, CBS’s new pro-Trump chief executive David Ellison “has effectively told CBS News it’s no longer responsible for keeping the public informed about climate change,” climate reporter Emily Atkin wrote in her HEATED newsletter. (Atkin recently brought one of those ex-CBS News journalists, senior climate producer Tracy Wholf, on board with HEATED to produce podcasts).

In early February, The Washington Post (owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos) nixed most of its climate journalists – more than a dozen altogether – as part of a round of mass layoffs that affected nearly one-third of the company with hundreds of journalists losing their jobs. “The climate team was one of many casualties,” climate journalist Sammy Roth (formerly with the Los Angeles Times) wrote in his Substack publication Climate Colored Goggles. “But the sad loss of another dozen jobs only adds to a sad trend of legacy media organizations pulling back from climate coverage, even as global warming accelerates.”

“We hear a lot about people who are being laid off, about people who are moving out, people who are being squeezed out. And to be frank, the picture’s not good right now,” Covering Climate Now’s Kyle Pope said during a webinar last December. “A lot of climate journalists are losing their jobs at a very difficult time for journalism in general.”

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recently announced a deep downsizing, slashing jobs that will shrink the newsroom to just under half its current size.

Unsurprisingly then, news media coverage of climate change is decreasing. Climate coverage declined globally by 14 percent in 2025 compared to the prior year, and was down 38 percent from its peak in 2021, according to CU Boulder’s Media and Climate Change Observatory. In the U.S., climate change coverage by the big broadcast networks has fallen by 35 percent, the Covering Climate Now report, which was released during the SEJ conference in Chicago, notes.

Newsroom staff cuts are of course one reason for this decline in climate coverage. Corporate and billionaire owners of mainstream news outlets are largely silencing reporting on the climate crisis, prioritizing profits over the public’s right to know. As Covering Climate Now wrote in its February 19 Climate Beat newsletter: “The people who own much of the world’s media do not regard coverage of climate change to be in their economic interest. As a result, the rest of us are left in darkness.”

This is part of a bigger trend known as “climate hushing,” where political leaders like U.S. President Donald Trump refuse to talk about the climate problem, except (in the case of Trump) to deny that it’s happening. “That denial has emboldened others — in business, in politics, and in media — to downplay the climate threat,” the Covering Climate Now report states.

Climate has also fallen off the news agenda given the “firehose” of other news items to report on any given day. Trump’s chaos and “flood the zone” strategy has the effect of overwhelming the news media and distracting coverage away from issues that really matter.

What is happening to our planet and its critical life-support systems matters. The journalism industry is in turmoil and climate and environmental coverage is declining at precisely the time when the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution is rapidly worsening. The science is clear that we are in the midst of a climate emergency. And mitigating it at a level that our civilization can survive, as Covering Climate Now’s Mark Hertsgaard said during a recent webinar discussing the new white paper, requires phasing out fossil fuels. The climate story, and the stakes, are “literally that existential.”

Support Independent Climate Journalism

This is important and meaningful work. But, like any public service, it needs support to be able to survive and thrive. “We need journalism funded as critical infrastructure,” journalist Maria Ressa, co-founder and CEO of Rappler and winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, said during the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 2026 Doomsday Clock Announcement virtual panel earlier this year.

Ressa warned that the rise of Big Tech, AI and social media threatens democracy and truth itself, noting that a “predatory, extractive business model is corrupting our shared sense of reality.” She echoed the call to support independent journalism.

“Independent platforms, newsletters and Substack writers now produce some of the best climate coverage anywhere. They matter deeply,” Climate Rights International’s Horne wrote in his February commentary piece. “Supporting climate journalism is an investment in truth, accountability and a livable planet for our children and future generations.”

Truth, accountability, and a livable planet are the essence of what drives this newsletter, One Earth Now. It is journalism that tells the truth about the climate emergency, and covers actions and efforts to hold accountable the powerful interests that are fueling the fire. The title reflects the urgency of this fight for a livable Earth, the only planet that all of humanity and all living beings collectively call home.

There are lots of climate newsletters out there, many of them on Substack, so it is not easy to build a readership in an increasingly crowded space. I value each and every one of my subscribers, and I understand that a lot folks are likely not in a position financially to pay for a subscription right now. But paid subscriptions are what really makes a difference for me and other independent journalists on Substack. It is literally what allows us to keep going.

Lack of funding is probably the biggest challenge and constraint on doing this work. Reader support through paid subscriptions certainly helps. But greater institutional or philanthropic funding is also needed. “We think that funders could make more support available for journalists covering climate and environment. Funders should prioritize supporting climate and environmental journalism now, particularly given the urgent nature of the issues,” Gabi Mocatta, senior research fellow in climate science communication at the University of Tasmania and lead researcher on a 2024 report called Covering the Planet: Assessing the State of Climate and Environmental Journalism Globally, said during an October 2024 webinar discussing the report.

That’s really the bottom line (again, no pun intended). Speaking during the recent April 16 webinar discussing the new Covering Climate Now report, SEJ executive director Aparna Mukherjee echoed the call for more financial support for this critical work: “Fund environmental journalism and climate coverage.”

Tip Jar

Santa Marta, Colombia. Credit: J@YGS via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0

In the Colombian port city of Santa Marta, a landmark global climate conference in underway with discussions around phasing out fossil fuels front and center on the agenda. Co-hosted by the governments of Colombia and the Netherlands, the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels marks, as Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative founder and chair Tzeporah Berman put it, “a historic moment.” With global fossil fuel energy markets in disarray and scientific warnings that planetary heating is accelerating, the need to work out an exit strategy away from reliance on oil, gas, and coal has never been greater. And now, for the first time, countries and stakeholders who understand this and are committed to the transition to cleaner, more sustainable alternatives are coming together to begin to lay the groundwork to make that transition happen.

“Everyone coming to Santa Marta agrees that the transition away from fossil fuels must happen. The key question now is how do we make it succeed, and how do we accelerate it?” Stientje van Veldhoven, minister of climate policy and green growth for the Netherlands, said during a public briefing on the conference last month.

So what exactly is this conference in Santa Marta, why is it so significant with everything else that is happening in the world (wars, cost of living crisis and inflation, etc.), and what can we expect will come out of it?

One Earth Now is a 100% reader-supported publication - no billionaire backers or corporate owners here. And we just turned two years old! Launched on Earth Day in 2024, this publication is dedicated to covering the most important story of our time, and to telling the truth about the climate emergency. If that mission resonates with you, please consider supporting this vital work by upgrading to a paid subscription. Thank you!

All About Implementation

Colombia and the Netherlands announced their plan for the first international conference on the just transition away from fossil fuels during the COP30 UN climate conference in Belém, Brazil last November. The annual UN gatherings are supposed to be the forum where the world discusses how it will tackle the defining challenge of our time – the climate emergency – but swarms of fossil fuel lobbyists and petrostates have largely prevented any meaningful dialogue on addressing the root cause of the problem. Petrostates like Saudi Arabia, for example, blocked the adoption of plan for phasing out fossil fuels at COP30, despite more than 80 countries backing calls to develop such a roadmap. The UN climate conferences are run under UN rules of consensus, meaning that any decisions made require unanimity, which allows one country or a small handful of them to obstruct proposals that have majority support.

The conference taking place right now in Santa Marta is not following UN rules, specifically for that reason. According to Covering Climate Now executive director Mark Hertsgaard, the decision to not adhere to UN rules is one reason why this conference could be a “game changer.”

It is the first international convening of its kind aiming to discuss the nuts and bolts of how to transition away from fossil fuels. According to the conference website, its objective is to “initiate a concrete process through which a coalition of committed countries, subnational governments, and relevant stakeholders can identify and advance enabling pathways to implement a progressive transition away from fossil fuels creating sustainable societies and economies.” In other words, it’s all about implementation.

“The conference is not a negotiating space,” said Daniela Duran, head of international affairs of the Ministry for Environment and Sustainable Development for Colombia. “We are seeing Santa Marta as a dedicated platform for implementation.”

The participants represent what has been referred to as a “coalition of the willing.” There will be no skeptics or obstructors. Fossil fuel lobbyists are not allowed in the door.

Nearly 60 countries are taking part in this historic conference. They include both fossil fuel producers and fossil fuel importers, and large and small economies. The host country of Colombia is a fossil fuel producer; Santa Marta, the host city, is a hub for coal exports. Canada, Australia, Norway, and Nigeria are some of the other producer countries that are participating.

Other stakeholders represented include scientists and academics, civil society, Indigenous leaders, subnational governments, and businesses.

The conference is taking place from April 24 to April 29. During this time there are several sub-conferences and gatherings happening, designed to engage specific stakeholder groups. On April 24-25, climate scientists and energy transition experts are leading an academic dialogue discussing concrete pathways for advancing a fossil fuel phaseout. As Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a leading Earth system scientist, told global media platform We Don’t Have Time in an interview, “It will be an independent, international panel with energy experts doing updated pathway analysis on what needs to be accomplished sector by sector, country by country, from now until 2030. But also focusing on mapping policy options.”

There is also a People’s Summit happening on April 24-26 where civil society organizations are huddling to discuss their visions and demands, which will be communicated to state delegates in an Assembly of the People on April 27.

The final two days, April 28-29, will be the high-level segment featuring country delegates and government ministers engaging in dialogue with representatives from academia and civil society.

Three thematic pillars are guiding the discussions. First, how to overcome economic dependency on fossil fuels. Second, transforming fossil fuel supply and demand. And third, strengthening international cooperation and climate diplomacy.

“The conference can be a turning point where a coalition of doers or coalition of the willing takes steps towards ending new licensing for fossil fuel exploration, addressing fossil fuel subsidies while protecting the most vulnerable, and working toward a managed transition away from fossil fuel production and consumption,” Natalie Jones, senior policy advisor at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, said during an April 21 media briefing ahead of the event.

“Fossil Fuel Dependence is a Trap”

The Santa Marta conference comes at a particularly fraught time geopolitically, and when international diplomacy and the international rule of law are under incredible strain.

“The United States and Israel have waged an illegal war against Iran, and the consequences have been felt around the world. Not just the erosion of the rule of international law, but also economic impacts far beyond the Middle East, showing why a just transition to renewable energy is now a security imperative,” Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and founding member of The Elders, said during the recent media briefing.

The Iran war and closure of the Strait of Hormuz has created what the International Energy Agency says is the biggest disruption to global oil supply in history. This has driven up prices at the pump and, since so much of our economies are built around oil and gas, costs on most other things are also rising.

“I don’t know that we could put it into any clearer terms that fossil fuel dependence is an economic liability and a growing security risk,” said Catherine Abreu, director of the International Climate Politics Hub.

“This global energy crisis that we are facing today with its price shocks and geopolitical instability painfully proves our point on a devastating scale - fossil fuel dependence is a trap,” Maina Talia, Minister of Home Affairs, Climate Change and Environment for Tuvalu, said during an April 9 webinar hosted by Climate Home News.

The conference of course was already planned before the US and Israel started bombing Iran sparking a global fossil fuel crisis, but the conflict only further illustrates the urgency of charting a course away from volatile fossil fuels.

“At a time of escalating military conflicts and mounting planetary crises, it has never been more urgent to move off fossil fuels than it is today,” Nikki Reisch, director of the Climate and Energy program at the Center for International Environmental Law, said in a statement. “Continued dependence on oil, gas, and coal is a colossal vulnerability and a growing liability that only deepens human suffering.”

A Scientific Imperative – And a Legal Obligation

The need to transition away from fossil fuels is firmly grounded in science. And the science is very clear. As Covering Climate Now’s Hertsgaard explained: “There is no dispute, zero, within the scientific community that humanity must phase out fossil fuels rapidly if we are going to limit global temperature rise to an amount that our civilization can survive.”

In a 2024 paper published in the journal BioScience, for example, top climate and Earth systems scientists warned that we are facing “a global emergency beyond any doubt” and a “dire situation never before encountered in the annals of human existence.” The top priority, they said, should be rapidly phasing down fossil fuel use.

Last year in a review published in the journal Oxford Open Climate Change, scientists issued another urgent warning that fossil fuels and the fossil fuel industry are driving interlinked crises threatening human health, biodiversity, ecological integrity and the stability of our planet. “The science can’t be any clearer that fossil fuels are killing us,” Shaye Wolf, climate science director at the Center for Biological Diversity and lead author of the study, said in an accompanying statement. “Oil, gas and coal will continue to condemn us to more deaths, wildlife extinctions and extreme weather disasters unless we make dirty fossil fuels a thing of the past.”

That is why the discussions happening currently in Santa Marta matter. The science tells us that phasing out fossil fuels is an urgent necessity. It is also a matter of justice and a legal obligation.

The International Court of Justice – the world’s highest court – affirmed this in its historic advisory opinion on climate change issued last July. The court clarified that all countries are required under multiple sources of international law to protect the climate system, including by addressing the core drivers of greenhouse gas emissions – fossil fuels being at the top of the list. The court even suggested that continued fossil fuel activities, like licensing, production and consumption, and subsidizing, could be considered “internationally wrongful acts.”

“Breaking free from fossil fuels is no longer just a political obligation. It’s a legal one, because of the ICJ’s advisory opinion,” Robinson said.

She and over 250 other legal experts signed an open letter, released on the opening day of the conference, explaining the legal foundations for a fossil fuel phaseout. The signatories argue that the phaseout is not optional, but rather legally mandatory.

“The phaseout of fossil fuels is not just scientifically necessary to prevent catastrophic and irreversible harm to the climate system, all peoples and ecosystems; it is legally required,” the letter concludes.

“Courts and tribunals around the world have articulated States’ significant legal obligations to address climate change. States can only meaningfully address climate change by phasing out fossil fuel energy sources. Thereby, States are legally required to transition away from fossil fuel use. It’s as simple as that,” said Paul Rink, associate professor of law at Seton Hall Law School and one of the letter’s signatories.

A Critical Starting Point

Once the conference in Santa Marta wraps up on April 29, what happens next? Will the discussions and momentum carry forward into other spaces and upcoming climate conferences? Will the “coalition of the willing” expand to include even more countries, and will any pledges or commitments announced during the event translate into real action?

That all remains to be seen. What we do know is that the main outcome of the conference will be a published report summarizing the key points and input gathered. Organizers also intend for there to be a second conference to take place hopefully next year, to build upon the groundwork laid during this initial gathering.

What the Santa Marta conference represents, therefore, is a starting point. There is no expectation that all of the thorny issues will get resolved in a matter of days. The transition away from fossil fuels is complex, and it is hard. But progress has to start somewhere. As Bastiaan Hassing, the Netherlands representative for climate policy and green growth, explained during a recent Covering Climate Now press briefing about the conference: “This is hopefully the start of a longer running process where we can get together in an atmosphere where we don’t negotiate, but talk about what we can do together to speed up this transition.”

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Credit: Tony Webster via Wikimedia, CC BY 2.0

Jenny Sebold, a single mother of three children, put her “whole heart and soul” into renovating a space in downtown Montpelier, Vermont that she turned into a clothing store and flower shop called Rebel Heart Collective. On July 11, 2023, unusually heavy rains caused the Winooski River that runs through Vermont’s capital city to overflow its banks, inundating the community with several feet of water. This extreme flooding episode, Vermont’s worst in nearly a century, impacted much of the state, drowning homes, farms and small businesses. As Sebold described: “It was devastating.”

The trauma and hardship did not end once the flood waters receded. Sebold’s shop remained closed for over seven months, and during that time she had to make some difficult choices and sacrifices since the shop was her sole source of income. “I had to often wake up in the morning and decide, am I gonna feed myself today, or am I going to send my kid off [to hockey camp] to support his dream?” Sebold said during a 2024 press conference featuring stories of extreme weather survivors. “Meanwhile the rich oil execs get to keep making piles of money. It’s wrong. They’ve got to be held accountable and help rebuild the communities that have been impacted.”

Like Sebold, Roishetta Ozane is a single mom who has directly experienced climate-intensified disasters. As a resident of Sulphur, Louisiana, her community is choked by fossil fuel and petrochemical industry pollution, making the air toxic to breathe. Those same industrial facilities generate greenhouse gas emissions that are fueling the climate emergency, manifesting in the form of superstorms, extreme floods, deadly heat and wildfires, and other damaging impacts. In 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, two major hurricanes hit southwestern Louisiana, displacing Ozane and her six children from their home. “Climate-induced disasters, such as tornadoes and hurricanes, caused by fossil fuel companies’ pollution and negligence cannot go unnoticed any longer,” Ozane said. “It is high time we hold these companies accountable for their actions and demand that they pay for the climate crimes they have committed.”

Extreme weather survivors across the U.S. are echoing these calls for major polluters to be held accountable and to pay for the damage that stems from their fossil fuel products and activities. These calls come as climate disasters continue to ravage communities across the country, in red states and blue states alike. But while the physical reality of climate change doesn’t care about partisan politics, the policy response in terms of whether and how to address it is unfortunately divided along partisan lines. That is the case not just with regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (climate mitigation), but also with climate adaptation and accountability initiatives.

Vermont, for example, passed a groundbreaking “climate superfund” law in 2024 that aims to make large fossil fuel producers help pay for some of the climate adaptation costs incurred by the state. The 2023 floods compelled state legislators to act with urgency in passing this first-in-the-nation polluters pay law. New York followed by enacting its own version, and nearly a dozen other states (most with Democrat-controlled legislators) have seen similar climate superfund bills introduced.

Louisiana, by contrast, is considering legislation that would shield the fossil fuel industry from any legal accountability for climate change harms. A bill called the Louisiana Energy Protection Act, which essentially prohibits liability for climate damage in the state, is working its way through the legislature. Similar bills are advancing in Oklahoma and Iowa, the latter of which is awaiting the governor’s signature. And Utah and now Tennessee have already passed climate liability shield bills into law.

Utah, where Republicans have a supermajority in the state legislature, became the first state in the U.S. to enact such a law last month – when the southwest region was literally baking under an extreme heat wave that scientists say would have been “virtually impossible” absent climate change.

“In Utah we’ve just had the warmest winter we’ve ever had,” Brian Moench, president of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, told me. “Salt Lake City normally has 34 inches of snow fall on the valley floor in an average winter. This year we had 2.5. We have virtually no snowpack in our mountains. Temperatures have been on and off 25 to 30 degrees above average for this time of year.”

Moench said the state lawmakers’ passage of a bill that immunizes polluters from facing any legal consequences for climate change damage is an outrage. “The bottom line is, at a time when we need to be doing absolutely everything we can to avert catastrophe, instead of calling the fire department, they’re pouring gasoline on the fire.”

Utah does not currently have any climate liability lawsuits filed against industrial polluters, nor has it seen any climate superfund bills introduced, but the new law does foreclose the possibility of any of this litigation or legislation in the future in that state. Tennessee, which enacted its climate liability shield law on April 16, did have a superfund bill introduced, though it did not see much traction in the Republican-controlled legislature. Iowa is poised to become the next state to immunize polluters – including agribusiness and ethanol producers – from climate accountability, and there is also no imminent liability threat to these companies in that state. But climate advocates are concerned that the trend still sets a dangerous precedent at a time when climate impacts are becoming increasingly harmful and costlier as time goes on.

“Forty years from now it’s going to be so much more severe. And if they are able to pass this legislation now, that means there is no recourse for future generations who will experience so much worse,” said Cassidy DiPaola, communications director with the Make Polluters Pay campaign.

At the national level, Republicans in Congress have just introduced legislation that would put an end to all attempts to hold the fossil fuel industry liable for the climate emergency that it played a large part in causing. Representative Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) announced on Friday that she has filed a bill called the “Stop Climate Shakedowns Act of 2026” that “shields America’s energy producers” from what she refers to as “leftist legal crusades”, primarily climate liability suits and superfund laws. Senators Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Ted Budd (R-NC), and Mike Lee (R-Utah) are sponsoring a companion bill in the Senate.

DiPaola said this federal immunity bill is a “sweeping attempt to rig the system for some of the most powerful companies in the world at the expense of everyone else.”

“Across the country, communities are facing rising costs from extreme weather, higher insurance premiums, and strained public budgets. At the same time, evidence continues to show that major oil companies knew about the risks of their products for decades and misled the public. Lawsuits and climate superfund laws are about making sure those costs don’t fall entirely on taxpayers,” she explained. “What this bill would do is shut all of that down. It would dismiss ongoing cases, wipe out laws passed by states, and tell Americans they no longer have the right to take these companies to court. And not because the companies are innocent, but because they are powerful.”

“Such corporate impunity would twist the knife of the climate crisis that is already directly harming people across the country,” Kathy Mulvey, climate accountability campaign director with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement. “Congress must not capitulate to wealthy special interests. Communities deserve the right to hold polluters accountable for the deadly and costly harms they are causing.”

The liability shield bills at the state and federal levels are part of a larger, escalating campaign by the fossil fuel industry and its political allies to put an end to all climate liability initiatives and to evade any and all accountability for their role in driving climate breakdown. And the campaign might ultimately end up succeeding to some degree, at least here in the U.S.

The climate superfund laws in Vermont and New York are currently tied up in legal challenges that are likely to take years to resolve, with the Supreme Court having the final say. Bills in other states to make polluters pay, meanwhile, have mostly stalled.

And the fate of climate liability lawsuits seeking damages under state law is more uncertain than ever now that the Supreme Court has decided to intervene in one of the cases at the request of the oil company defendants. The court is expected to hear the case (filed by Boulder, Colorado against ExxonMobil and Suncor) during its upcoming term later this year, on the question of whether federal law precludes state law claims pertaining to global GHG emissions and climate change. If the court rules in favor of the oil companies, it could be the end of many of the climate cases against the industry and potentially the climate superfund laws as well.

According to James May, distinguished professor of law at Washburn University Law School, such a negative ruling has become even more likely now with the court issuing a decision on Friday in favor of oil major Chevron in another case about coastal environmental damage to Louisiana parishes (their equivalent of counties). One of these parishes has already won a $745 million verdict against the company in state court, but that is now in question as the Supreme Court ruled that these coastal damage lawsuits should be moved to federal court, which is seen by industry defendants as a friendlier venue.

Whether it is coastal environmental degradation in Louisiana or climate-related damage in communities across the country, the operations and business model of the fossil fuel industry inflict real harm and steep costs – impacts that the industry has long known about, but has deliberately chosen to lie about and externalize in order to inflate its profits. The question now is whether it will ever be held accountable and forced to pay for the mess it has caused, or whether it will continue to enjoy complete impunity.

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Hugues Falys, a peasant farmer from the Belgian province of Hainaut, speaks outside the courthouse on March 18, 2026. Credit: Eric de Mildt

During the summer of 2022, record-breaking monsoon rains dumped massive quantities of water that submerged entire fields and villages across Pakistan. The unprecedented, “biblical-style” floods inundated roughly one-third of the country and displaced millions of people; 33 million Pakistanis were affected by the disaster and more than 1,700 lost their lives, while 2.2 million homes were damaged or destroyed.

The province of Sindh, a predominantly agricultural region, was hit especially hard. The floods submerged 4.8 million acres of farmland and wiped out more than a year’s worth of crops. “That was a very big tragedy for us,” Abdul Hafeez Khoso, a Pakistani farmer from the Sindh province, said during a virtual press conference last October. “Our crops were destroyed, and agriculture is the main source of income for people living in the villages,” he explained.

With crops destroyed and market access disrupted, the floods triggered a food crisis since the Sindh province accounts for nearly one-quarter of Pakistan’s agricultural output. Farmers were pushed into debt or poverty, and the impacts continue to be felt to this day.

“Three years on, recovery remains incomplete. Many communities continue to struggle with displacement and economic hardship,” said Dr. Shaikh Tanveer Ahmed, chairman of HANDS Welfare Foundation, a Pakistani humanitarian organization.

Smallholder farmers whose livelihoods are deeply tied to the environment are on the frontlines of the climate emergency. From extreme flooding to scorching heatwaves and devastating drought, the impacts of a rapidly warming planet are undeniable for farmers who literally make their living off of the land. They are facing rising hardship with damaged crops and fields, sickened or dead livestock, and increasingly unpredictable and erratic weather patterns that threaten their operations and make it difficult to plan around. And with damages mounting, some farmers are looking to the law in the hopes that it can be leveraged to make major carbon polluters and fossil fuel companies pay compensation for climate-related losses and adaptation needs.

Khoso said the flooding disaster was clearly linked to climate change, which is happening largely due to “big companies” that are “damaging the environment.” Now, he along with 38 other farmers from Sindh are turning to the courts seeking some relief and accountability from several of these big companies.

In December the 39 Pakistani farmers filed a lawsuit in Germany against two of the largest generators of carbon pollution in that country – the energy utility company RWE and the cement producer Heidelberg Materials. The farmers are seeking partial compensation for their losses stemming from the 2022 floods.

Their case builds upon a landmark climate lawsuit brought by a Peruvian farmer and mountain guide, Saúl Luciano Lliuya, against RWE that tested the question of whether a corporation that has historically been a significant contributor to the carbon emissions driving climate change – the so-called ‘carbon majors’ – can be sued by an individual suffering from climate-related damage in another country. The German courts say the answer is yes. Lliuya’s case was ultimately dismissed last year because the evidence of an imminent flood risk to the plaintiff’s home wasn’t strong enough, but the court did affirm the principle that major polluters could be held liable for their contributions to climate change.

In the new case brought by the Pakistani farmers, the damage has already occurred, so the evidence of harm might be strong enough to overcome dismissal.

“For [these farmers], damage caused by the climate crisis means destroyed crops, homes, and livestock, declining yields, poverty, debt, and losing dignity,” Karin Zennig, climate policy officer at medico international – an NGO supporting the farmers’ case – said during an online briefing held in January. “The Pakistani farmers are opening now a new chapter in the fight for climate justice.”

Belgian Farmer Takes Oil Giant to Court

In Belgium, Hugues Falys practices ecologically sustainable farming in the Hainaut province. Since 1993 he has cultivated vegetables, strawberries, cereals, and legumes and raised grass-fed livestock for organic beef production. A “pioneer of the agroecological transition,” Falys has experienced firsthand the impacts of extreme weather such as heatwaves and drought. Scorched pastures have left him having to source feed from elsewhere for his livestock, while heat stress has also reduced yields for his cash crops. In recent years he has had to downsize his herd to adapt to decreased forage production.

With support from NGOs FIAN, Greenpeace Belgium, and Human Rights League, Falys brought a lawsuit two years ago against the French multinational oil company TotalEnergies. Dubbed “the farmer case,” the suit aims to hold the company responsible for its role in contributing to the climate crisis. It is the first lawsuit of its kind in Belgium and part of a growing wave of climate accountability litigation worldwide targeting the carbon majors. In bringing the legal action, Falys is seeking compensation for damages he has suffered; he is also asking the court to order TotalEnergies to implement a credible transition plan that includes sharp cuts to its greenhouse gas emissions and a swift phase out of its oil and gas production.

The court held hearings late last year, and in March it issued a ruling on a preliminary procedural matter, finding the case to be justiciable (able to be handled by the judiciary). The court held off on deciding the merits of the case for now, since a court in France is due to rule on a similar case against TotalEnergies in June. Still, the decision allowing the case to advance was a positive sign for Falys.

“The court recognizes today that agriculture is directly affected by the climate crisis, that farmers are its victims (8 out of 10 farmers in Belgium are suffering from climate change), and that the justice system has a role to play in holding those responsible for this crisis accountable,” Falys said in a March 18 press release, commenting on the court’s ruling. “Things are starting to change!”

The Belgian court is expected to issue its decision on the merits in September.

Major Flooding Threatens Small Farms in Vermont

Meanwhile, farmers and other stakeholders in the U.S. state of Vermont are now awaiting a decision from a federal court about whether Vermont’s landmark Climate Superfund Act is constitutional and can survive legal challenges, at least for now. The court held a hearing on Monday, March 30 in which the plaintiffs challenging Vermont’s law – the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute along with 24 Republican state attorneys general plus the Trump administration – argued that the state law conflicts with federal law and runs afoul of the Constitution. The plaintiffs want Vermont’s superfund law – which the legislature passed (with tri-partisan support) in 2024 – to be overturned by the courts.

Vermont’s law is the first law of its kind in the world that holds the world’s largest fossil fuel producers strictly liable for their climate pollution and requires them to help pay for climate adaptation costs in the state. It is grounded in the “polluter pays” principle and modeled after the federal Superfund program that authorizes regulators to charge polluters for clean-up costs associated with remediating hazardous waste sites. But this is the first time that the concept has been applied to climate change.

State lawmakers in Vermont quickly passed the climate superfund bill in just one legislative session, spurred into action after the state experienced its worst flooding in nearly a century in July 2023. Heavy downpours caused rivers to overflow their banks, inundating the capital city of Montpelier and temporarily submerging farms and villages across the state.

Intervale Community Farm in Burlington, for example, lost 99 percent of its crops during that summer flood. The 55-acre organic farm is situated within a floodplain, so some flooding is expected. But typically in the past the floods would occur outside of the peak summer growing season and would be more manageable. The July 2023 floods destroyed $200,000 worth of crops, according to farm manager Andy Jones.

The following year, in 2024, major flooding occurred once again on the same day in July, inundating the Intervale Community Farm and neighboring farms in the area. As Jones wrote in a declaration filed last year with the court: “These floods threaten the farm’s survival.”

Flooding at Intervale Community Farm in July 2023. Credit: Intervale Community Farm

Small farmers all over the state are already struggling to make a living with increasing economic pressures, and climate change further compounds the stressors, Grace Oedel, executive director of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont (NOFA-VT), explained.

“This marketplace of consolidation and corporate ownership of the food system means it’s really hard to survive already. And then layer onto that just climate devastation caused by extreme, erratic weather events that are increasingly common. Those are the conditions we are facing in Vermont, which is part of why we need a climate superfund,” Oedel told me.

“We know that over the last couple years of the floods, climate impacts caused at least $60 million in losses to Vermont’s farms,” she added. “Farms are going out of business. For some farms, climate impacts along with the rising land costs they face are creating a really depressed economic situation. And we need, for long-term food security, farms to be able to survive.”

NOFA-VT has intervened as a defendant backing the state in the court cases challenging Vermont’s climate superfund law. Oedel told me that the organization’s member farms “are very affected by the climate crisis” and want to see Vermont’s law be upheld, because the funding it would secure could help the organic farming community as it tries to adapt to a climate crisis that it did not cause.

“Every year on our farm we make significant infrastructure investments to protect our crops, and every season we face significant crop-destroying challenges from weather extremes: frosts, excessive heat damage, wind, tornadoes, flooding, soil saturation, and overall impossibly hot work conditions,” Scott Greene, a farmer at Singing Cedars Farmstead, a vegetable and livestock farm in Orwell, Vermont, said in a statement following the March 30 court hearing.

“Farmers globally have been, and will continue to be, enormously impacted by the climate crisis,” Oedel said in the statement. “We know what’s behind the worsening extreme weather affecting our farms, and it’s fair for fossil fuel companies to bear some of the cost of critical climate adaptation projects.”

Further Reading

Check out my latest published articles:

“As Vermont Defends Its Law to Make Fossil Fuel Firms Pay for Climate Adaptation, the Bill Is Already Coming Due” (co-authored with Nathaniel Eisen), Inside Climate News, https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05042026/vermont-defends-climate-superfund-law/

“Affordability and Race Play a Major Role in Whether People Live in Nature-Deprived Areas,” Sierra, https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/affordability-and-race-play-major-role-whether-people-live-nature-deprived-areas

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In 2024 the state of Vermont passed a groundbreaking new law modeled after the federal Superfund program that holds major fossil fuel producers liable for their past greenhouse gas emissions and requires them to help pay for climate change adaptation projects in the state. The law was the first of its kind and its passage marked a breakthrough for climate accountability efforts. New York then followed Vermont’s lead and passed a similar law just months later. As One Earth Now previously reported in its debut article, this strategy of using state legislation to hold Big Oil financially accountable for the devastating and costly impacts of the climate crisis it largely (and knowingly) created could be a real game changer.

Now, two years after Vermont enacted its landmark Climate Superfund Act, the law is facing its first major test in court. On March 30 a federal district court judge will hold a hearing at the federal courthouse in Rutland, Vermont addressing motions in two related legal challenges to Vermont’s novel statute. One of the challenges was filed at the end of 2024 by the US Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute as representatives of big oil companies. Twenty-four Republican-led states have joined this suit as intervenor plaintiffs. The other challenge was brought last year by the Trump administration. Both cases broadly assert that the climate superfund law is unconstitutional and precluded by federal law, and both aim to have it stricken down immediately before Vermont proceeds further with implementing it.

Next week’s hearing will address the challengers’ request for a swift judgment on the contested legal issues in their favor – called a motion for summary judgment – as well as Vermont’s ask for the same (cross motion for summary judgment) and the state’s bid to dismiss or toss out the suits. It will then be up to the court to decide whether or not the Climate Superfund Act survives, at least for now.

The stakes are significant on both sides of this battle. Should Vermont ultimately lose, it would mean that the state’s taxpayers and residents continue having to foot the entire bill for responding and adapting to climate disasters. It would also likely mean the end of similar climate superfund laws or proposals in other states. Fossil fuel polluters would enjoy continued impunity and exorbitant profits while the costs of climate-fueled extreme weather balloon and further burden already-strained municipal and state budgets. If the fossil fuel industry and its allies lose this fight, then companies like BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and others would be subject to billions of dollars in liability under not only Vermont’s law but other states like New York’s too.

Legal experts say this litigation will take years to play out, and it could very well end up before the US Supreme Court. The initial challenges and arguments made before the district court are just round one, and whichever side loses is almost certain to appeal. If Vermont wins this first round, though, it may encourage other states to push forward with passing their own versions of climate superfunds. Nearly a dozen other states have seen such bills introduced, and many of them are surely watching Vermont’s legal battle closely.

In Massachusetts, for example, climate activists are continuing to rally grassroots support behind the state’s proposed climate superfund bill that will be refiled next session after legislators – perhaps wary of expected legal challenges – quietly sent it to study (killed it) last month. One of the lead sponsors of the bill, state representative Steve Owens, explained during a legislative hearing last September that this is an especially important time for states like Massachusetts to advance climate accountability and resiliency policies given the backsliding happening at the federal level. “We have the opportunity,” he said, to enact legislation “that fuels the movement to hold companies accountable and fund climate adaptation efforts at the same time as the federal government is rolling back policies that would combat climate change and leaving us to deal with the costs and the public health externalities ourselves.”

The question of who shoulders the costs of responding and adapting to the climate crisis is at the heart of this legislative approach and the litigation that will determine whether or not it succeeds.

“The costs of climate change are real, and are currently being born by taxpayers,” Vermont state representative Amy Sheldon said on the House floor two years ago as the legislative body contemplated passing the climate superfund bill. “It’s only fair that the companies that have made tremendous profits at our expense help clean up the mess they knowingly made by paying their fair share.”

“The fossil fuel industry’s polluting products are damaging our climate and our communities, and its attempt to avoid accountability is an insult to Vermonters,” said Elena Mihaly, vice president at Conservation Law Foundation’s Vermont office. “The Climate Superfund law protects Vermont’s families and businesses who are forced to shoulder the skyrocketing costs of storm damage, recovery, and climate adaptation. It’s time for fossil fuel corporations to stop escaping responsibility for the cost of climate adaptation—communities shouldn’t be left to pick up the tab alone.”

Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) along with the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont (NOFA-VT) are backing the state defendants as intervenors in the legal challenges to the climate superfund law. “Our community has been enormously impacted by the climate crisis,” said Grace Oedel, executive director of NOFA-VT. “And we are committed to defending this law that will help so many of our farmers and community members navigate these extreme challenges.”

Vermont certainly anticipated that it would face lawsuits upon enacting its climate superfund law. “We studied this pretty carefully, and we relied on legal scholars’ commentary and some of them testified as witnesses. Our own legislative counsel certainly weighed in,” Vermont state representative Martin LaLonde told me during an interview in 2024 after the law passed.

“I’m a lawyer by training and worked at the Department of Justice in the Environment & Natural Resources division for 12 years,” LaLonde added. “So I was also able to on my own evaluate our defenses. And we feel pretty good about that. Are we ultimately going to win? That’s hard to tell.”

The industry groups, states, and Trump Justice Department suing Vermont over its law say that it is unfairly and unconstitutionally punitive and would effectively function as a regulation on energy producers and on global greenhouse gas emissions. “Vermont’s Superfund Act attempts to usurp the power of the federal government by regulating national and global emissions of greenhouse gases, violating federal law in multiple ways,” the US government argues in its complaint. The plaintiffs also claim the climate superfund law, by forcing fossil fuel companies to pay, will hamper oil and gas production and raise energy costs for consumers.

“Vermont’s flagrantly unconstitutional statute threatens to throttle energy production, despite this Administration’s efforts to unleash American energy. It’s high time for the courts to put a stop to this crippling state overreach,” Acting Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson of the DOJ’s Environment & Natural Resources division said last September in a press release.

Vermont counters by saying that its climate superfund law is an exercise of its traditional state authority to protect its citizens and raise revenue. The state argues its law creates a cost recovery mechanism and does not regulate emissions, nor is it punitive. And allegations about potential economic impacts beyond Vermont are entirely speculative at this point, Vermont notes, arguing the legal challenges are premature since the state is still several years away from issuing payment demands to fossil fuel companies.

The hearing next week is also expected to address the challengers’ federal preemption argument – basically that the federal Clean Air Act’s authorization of the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions means that states cannot regulate or impose liability on such emissions. But the Trump EPA in repealing the greenhouse gas endangerment finding is now disclaiming its regulatory authority for controlling greenhouse gases from motor vehicles. As CLF and NOFA-VT point out in a recent filing with the court, that position from the Trump administration “contradicts its litigating position in this case.” The Trump DOJ responded by claiming there is no inconsistency in its position, and that federal preemption under the Clean Air Act still applies to state laws pertaining to global greenhouse emissions. Whether the court will be persuaded by that claim remains to be seen.

And it remains an open question as to whether large fossil fuel corporations – the so-called ‘carbon majors’ responsible for generating the majority of industrial carbon emissions that are causing the climate crisis – will ever be held accountable for the damages wrought by their products’ emissions, at least in the US. The climate superfund laws enacted in Vermont and New York are an attempt to bring about some accountability, but their fate in the courts right now is uncertain.

There is also a growing backlash to climate accountability efforts as the fossil fuel lobby and its political allies look to leverage all three branches of government to shield the industry from any legal liability. Utah just became the first state to enact a law prohibiting liability for climate damages; similar liability shield legislation is advancing in at least four other states. And Republicans in Congress are working on draft legislation that would block state and municipal climate lawsuits against Big Oil as well as state climate superfund laws.

But if one thing is clear, it is that the escalating costs and impacts of the climate crisis are not going away. “It’s going to be unaffordable for Vermont to be able to deal with the consequences of climate change,” LaLonde told me. “And this [climate superfund] will help us to be able to afford to have that resilience.”

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Credit: Dana Drugmand

In New England, two commercial-scale offshore wind farms reached important milestones on Friday in a significant step forward for clean, renewable energy at a time when the conflict in Iran is upending global energy markets and exposing once again the painful costs of fossil fuel dependency.

Revolution Wind, a 704-megawatt offshore wind development located roughly 15 miles off the Rhode Island coast, began delivering power to the grid for the first time on March 13, according to an announcement from the developer Ørsted. The project, now over 90 percent complete, is designed to generate enough electricity to power the equivalent of more than 350,000 homes across Rhode Island and Connecticut. It is expected to strengthen grid reliability by bolstering supply at a time of rising demand, and the power will be delivered under a fixed price, 20-year contract with utility companies. A preliminary analysis from Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection estimates that the project, once fully operational, will save ratepayers up to $500 million per year in wholesale energy costs.

“This project is key to diversifying our energy supply and lowering utility costs for families and businesses,” Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont said in a statement.

“As we’ve seen from the harsh winter we’ve had, and the impacts to fossil fuel prices as a result of the Iran war, having diverse sources of stable, reliable power that both perform strongly in the winter and are insulated from geopolitical events is beneficial to Connecticut ratepayers,” said Katie Dykes, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. “These first power deliveries are an important milestone, with greater benefits yet to come as the project heads to completion and full operation later this year.”

Also late on Friday, workers completed the finishing touches on construction of Vineyard Wind – an 806-megawatt offshore wind project located about 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard. The project is designed to power the equivalent of 400,000 homes across Massachusetts. Some of the project’s 62 turbines had already been generating power, and as WBUR notes, the completion of construction “is a milestone for the project and the U.S. offshore wind industry, which has faced years of economic and political headwinds.”

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey applauded the news of the project completing construction, saying in a statement (as reported by WBUR): “The affordable, homegrown power it delivers to Massachusetts residents and businesses will bring costs down as President Trump throws global markets into disarray.”

As Trump wages a new war in the Middle East that is having severe consequences for global oil markets – the International Energy Agency labeled it the “largest supply disruption” in the market’s history – he has also effectively waged war here at home against renewable energy, especially wind power. His escalating attacks on wind energy culminated in a blanket stop work order issued in December on five offshore wind projects under construction along the East Coast, including Vineyard Wind and Revolution Wind as well as Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind offshore of Long Island, New York and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind off the Virginia coast. All five projects sued the administration over the move and won preliminary relief that allowed construction to resume.

Now the projects are reaching key operating and construction milestones. The Virginia project, which at 2.6-gigawatts would be the country’s largest yet, is slated to start generating initial power by the end of this month, according to the project’s developer.

In November I had an opportunity to see an offshore wind project up close – South Fork Wind, the first fully operational large-scale offshore wind farm in the US located south of Rhode Island adjacent to the Revolution Wind project. The 132-megawatt project has been delivering clean power to the Long Island grid for more than a year now, and performance data shows that it is working splendidly, particularly during the cold winter months when wind speeds tend to be highest. In January, for example, South Fork Wind reported a capacity factor of 52 percent, which is on par with New York state’s most efficient gas plants. And during January’s Winter Storm Fern, Vineyard Wind, which was partly operational, had a 75 percent capacity factor according to reporting by Canary. “America’s two utility-scale offshore wind farms performed as well as gas power plants and better than coal in January,” the news outlet said.

In short, offshore wind works.

But the Trump administration is not giving up in its bid to quash this clean power source. It continues to claim that offshore wind poses a national security risk. This unexplained risk was the primary justification the administration used for its blanket stop work order. In commenting on the Revolution Wind project’s milestone of its first delivery to the grid, White House spokesperson Taylor Rodgers told the AP that the administration “looks forward to ultimate victory on this issue.”

“No Embargoes on the Wind”

While the Trump administration points to vague, supposedly classified national security concerns in its war against wind energy, Trump’s inexplicable and illegal war in Iran only further demonstrates that it is actually fossil fuels – not renewables – that pose the greatest threat to global and national security, including energy and economic security.

“Fossil fuels fuel wars,” Nina Lakhani, global climate justice reporter for Drilled, said during a recent press briefing on the topic of the Iran war and climate change. The US Department of Defense (rebranded under Trump as the “Department of War”) is the largest institutional consumer of fossil fuels in the world. And if the global military sector - which the US represents nearly 40 percent of spending – were a country, it would be the fourth largest emitter of planet-heating pollution in the world, responsible for approximately 5.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

These emissions, as Covering Climate Now’s Mark Hertsgaard explained during the briefing, “drive deadlier heatwaves, droughts, storms and other impacts that wreck livelihoods, that destabilize economies, and spur migration. And all of that makes armed conflict more likely.”

In addition to climate pollution that military operations unleash, the Iran war – like Russia’s war on Ukraine – is disrupting global energy markets and causing price spikes on everything from fuel to fertilizer and food.

As the climate action group 350.org notes: “The price of crude oil has already risen 20% this year, and is expected to spike even more now. In 2022, energy and food price shocks triggered by the war in Ukraine pushed over 70 million people into poverty in the space of only three months, according to the United Nations Development Program.”

“Once again, families will pay the price through fossil fuel-driven inflation: higher fuel costs, rising energy bills, and more expensive groceries as a consequence. All because of a system tied to a volatile, conflict-driven industry,” 350.org managing director Olivia Langhoff said in a statement. The group says these price shocks should serve as a wake-up call on the urgency of transitioning away from volatile fossil energy and toward more affordable and secure renewable power.

“Renewable energy provides home-grown power that remains secure and affordable regardless of geopolitical shocks,” Langhoff said.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres delivered a similar message, calling on countries to accelerate the energy transition as a matter of security.

“The turmoil we are witnessing in the Middle East makes it evident that we are facing a global energy system largely tied to fossil fuels, where supply is concentrated in a few regions and every conflict risks sending shockwaves through the global economy, particularly to the most vulnerable people,” Guterres said in his statement.

“Homegrown renewable energy has never been cheaper, more accessible, or more scalable,” he added. “The resources of the clean energy era cannot be blockaded or weaponized. There are no price spikes for sunlight and no embargoes on the wind.”

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Chevron corporate offices in Houston, Texas. Credit: Jonathan McIntosh via Flickr, CC BY 2.0

Amidst all of the other terrible things happening in the US and beyond – a new war in the Middle East, federal immigration agents terrorizing communities, the collapse of democratic checks and balances – the climate crisis marches on. A new study warns that the heating of the planet is accelerating, with the rate of global temperature rise over the past 10 years registering as the highest since instrumental recordkeeping began in 1880. As Stefan Rahmstorf, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-author of the study, wrote in a social media post, the analysis “shows that global heating is significantly gathering speed. Our efforts to overcome fossil fuel addiction should do the same.”

Just as drug companies and cartels profit from people’s addiction to their products, fossil fuel companies have built a business model around our society’s dependency on what they are producing. “Taylor Sheridan’s hit West Texas oil show ‘Landman’ opens with an oil industry crisis manager, played by Billy Bob Thornton, tied to a chair as he negotiates with a Mexican drug cartel. To save his life, he describes the scale of his business. Oil, he says, is as addictive to the world order as drugs are to people,” journalist Antonia Juhasz writes in a January New York Times piece about the Paramount TV show and the ugly reality of the oil and gas business that it depicts.

“America’s fossil fuel dependency is not an inevitability or a lost cause,” Juhasz argues, adding that the “obstacles to transitioning off fossil fuels are political, not technical.”

The fossil fuel industry is one of the wealthiest and most politically powerful industries on Earth, and it is using its vast profits and grip over politicians to protect its business interests, climate change consequences be damned.

But the industry is facing mounting pressure. Calls for accountability and efforts to make climate polluters pay are continuing. Big Oil’s legal risk has not subsided. At the same time, renewable energy has for the most part become cheaper than fossil fuels, and the energy transition is well underway. At the international level, some countries will be gathering at the end of April to finally begin to discuss charting the course away from fossil fuels. Together, these initiatives and trends represent a direct threat to the “Big Carbon cartel” that remains the biggest obstacle to addressing the climate emergency with the urgency that science demands.

Ongoing Accountability Efforts

In the US, dozens of lawsuits have been filed against major oil and gas companies and their chief trade associations seeking accountability for climate damages or for misrepresenting climate change risks and solutions to consumers and engaging in other deceptive behavior to stymie climate action. Municipalities and states have been at the forefront of bringing these suits under a range of legal theories, from nuisance and trespass, to consumer fraud and racketeering. While industry defendants have been successful in getting some of the cases tossed out (most of those dismissals are being appealed), other suits were advancing towards trial and new ones are being filed.

The most recent lawsuit against Big Oil was brought by the state of Michigan in January, alleging violations of federal and state antitrust law. Michigan’s case is less about climate damages and more about alleged marketplace manipulation and anticompetitive conduct – essentially arguing that big oil companies colluded to suppress competition from electric vehicles and renewable energy technologies. “Defendants have conspired with each other to forestall meaningful competition from renewable energy and maintain their dominance in the energy market. They have done so as a cartel,” Michigan asserts in its complaint.

It is too early to know whether this case will go anywhere, but one climate law expert said that it has considerable potential and that it stands apart from other climate suits brought against the industry. “Renewable energy is central to the fight against climate change, and this suit alleges that the companies have stood squarely in the way. Michigan has opened up a whole new battleground in the climate fight,” Michael Gerrard, faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change at Columbia Law School, told me. He said he thinks the case could also be insulated from a forthcoming Supreme Court ruling on the question of whether federal law bars all state law climate change claims. “As an antitrust case, it is based on entirely different theories than the rest of these cases,” Gerrard explained.

The litigation and the potential for liability that it presents is enough of a risk that big oil companies are disclosing or acknowledging it in their annual reports to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. In Chevron’s latest 10-k filing, for example, Chevron states: “there can be no assurance that the cases will not have a material adverse effect on the company’s results of operations and financial condition.”

In addition to bringing lawsuits, some states are adopting or considering legislation that would directly impose liability on large fossil fuel producers and require them to help pay for climate change adaptation costs. Vermont and New York enacted so-called climate superfund laws in 2024. A handful of other states have seen analogous bills introduced. Most recently, Minnesota unveiled its legislative proposal to make big polluters pay.

“We can’t continue forcing average, hardworking Minnesotans – family farmers, small business owners, and working families – to subsidize climate damage created by multinational corporations who have made billions of dollars in the fossil fuel industry,” Minnesota state representative Athena Hollins said at a March 4 press conference. “The cost of inaction is staggering,” she continued. “But the cost of accountability is fair. Our bill says clearly, the era of privatized profits and socialized damages is over.”

Calls for climate accountability and initiatives to hold big polluters liable extend beyond the US. In Europe, for example, several oil majors are facing lawsuits aiming to make them pay for climate damage or to align their business with global goals for curbing planetary heating. The French oil company TotalEnergies recently was put on trial in the city where the Paris Agreement was created. As I reported for Inside Climate News, the case, if successful, would set an important precedent for corporate accountability that could have ripple effects far beyond France.

Renewable Energy Surge

While the fossil fuel industry continues to face legal risks in various jurisdictions around the world, it is simultaneously grappling with the economic risk that renewable energy – namely solar and wind – are now able to outcompete it on price. As the veteran climate writer and activist Bill McKibben often says, we “live on a planet where the cheapest way to generate power is to point a piece of glass at the sun.” The rapid surge in the availability and affordability of clean energy around the world, McKibben points out, is the “one big good thing happening on planet Earth.”

China is leading the world in renewable energy and is well on its way to becoming the first ‘electro-state.’ And even in a country like the US that seems to be going backwards in terms of doubling down on the dirty energy of the past, there remain some (faint) bright spots. After Trump’s Department of the Interior tried to block five offshore wind farms being built along the US East Coast, for example, courts have allowed construction to resume. The Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project – which will be the country’s largest to date – is now expected to begin generating electricity this month.

At a smaller scale, the concept of plug-in or ‘balcony’ solar appears to be gaining in popularity across the US. Bills to facilitate consumer adoption of these systems have been introduced in 28 states plus Washington DC. The aim is to open up access to solar power to people who otherwise would be shut out, such as renters and low-income individuals or families.

There is still a long way to go to phase out fossil fuels and replace them with cleaner alternatives, but the good news is that the transition is happening. Whether it will happen fast enough to stave off the worst impacts of an overheating planet, however, remains an open question.

First Global Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels is Coming Up

At long last, there is an initiative underway at the international level to directly confront the elephant in the room and to discuss and coordinate a plan of action for breaking away from its addicting stranglehold. The first global conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels will be held in Santa Marta, Colombia from April 24 to April 29.

The conference, co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, is intended to open up a space for dialogue and planning amongst stakeholders who already agree that a transition away from fossil fuels must happen. After 30 years of UN climate diplomacy that has largely failed to prevent catastrophic climate breakdown, this initiative aims to tackle the primary underlying cause of the climate emergency head-on.

Organizers discussed what to expect from the event during an online briefing on March 5. First, in terms of who will be participating, it will be academics and scientists; civil society and nongovernmental organizations, Indigenous Peoples, youth, etc.; and ministers and governments from the national and subnational levels. Second, it is designed to be a conference of implementation, not negotiation, discussing concrete solutions and actions to advance the transition. Third, the main outcome will be a report, to be presented to the presidencies of the COP30 and COP31 UN climate conferences. And finally, a second conference, to be held in 2027, will build upon the momentum from this initial conference.

“Everyone coming to Santa Marta agrees that the transition away from fossil fuels must happen,” Stientje van Veldhoven, climate minister for the Netherlands, said during the briefing. “The key question now is how do we make it succeed, and how do we accelerate it.”

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The US Supreme Court building. The Court has decided to weigh in on Big Oil’s attempt to skirt climate accountability.

Last week I wrote about how the Trump administration is trying to sabotage global climate action, actively working to try to stop other countries from adopting measures to respond to the climate crisis. At the same time, the administration is shutting down all federal avenues for climate action. The Environmental Protection Agency’s repeal of its 2009 greenhouse gas endangerment finding, along with the repeal of all controls on greenhouse gas emissions that were based on the finding, essentially strips the nation’s top environmental watchdog of its primary tool, and underlying legal authority, to mitigate climate change. As environmental legal expert Bob Sussman said during a February 27 climate law briefing hosted by the Environmental Law Institute, the recission of the endangerment finding is “the last piece to fall into place in the administration’s across-the-board push to eliminate climate change as a focus of US policy domestically and internationally. And it follows other far-reaching actions such as the US withdrawal from the 2015 Paris Agreement, and more recently the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.”

Given that context, state and local efforts to advance climate action and hold polluters accountable become even more important, climate advocates argue. But Trump and his Republican allies are also trying to shut these efforts down. Last year in April President Trump issued an executive order titled “Protecting American Energy from State Overreach” that directed his attorney general to identify and “expeditiously take all appropriate action to stop” state and local lawsuits, policies, and practices that target or otherwise burden the fossil fuel industry. Just weeks after the order was issued, the Department of Justice brought lawsuits against the states of New York, Vermont, Hawaii, and Michigan challenging their climate liability laws and lawsuits that seek to make big oil companies pay for climate damages (though Hawaii and Michigan had not filed any lawsuits at the time the DOJ made its filings). The DOJ’s lawsuit against Michigan was recently tossed out by a federal court.

According to Attorney General Pam Bondi, the DOJ is actively considering additional actions to implement Trump’s order cracking down on state and local climate policies. During a recent oversight hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, Bondi assured Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman that her department and the entire administration are committed to “using all available legal tools to stop” state and local climate initiatives. Hageman then announced that she is working with her congressional colleagues to “craft legislation tackling both these state laws and the lawsuits” that seek accountability from large fossil fuel companies – or, as she described it, that “could destroy energy affordability for consumers.” In other words, Hageman is working on legislation that would shield fossil fuel companies from liability and block both state climate lawsuits and climate superfund laws.

Such a liability shield was included among a list of recommended actions for furthering Trump’s directive in a June letter from 16 Republican state attorneys general to Bondi. In the letter, the state AGs recommended legislation that would stop “activist-funded climate lawsuits” through a liability shield, similar to the law that granted immunity from lawsuits for gun manufacturers.

Now, it appears that the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court is positioning itself to potentially immunize fossil fuel companies from state and municipal climate lawsuits. On February 23, the court agreed to take up a petition filed by oil companies Suncor and ExxonMobil in a case brought by Boulder, Colorado against the companies.

The case, initiated in 2018, claims that the oil company defendants misrepresented the climate change risks of their products and lied about climate science in order to stave off climate policies. This deceptive conduct, the suit argues, exacerbated damaging climate impacts like extreme heat, flooding, and wildfires. Through this legal action, Boulder is seeking to recover costs to help it respond and adapt to climate change hazards. In May of last year, the Colorado Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s denial of the defendants’ motions to dismiss, allowing the case to proceed towards trial.

In response to that ruling, Suncor and Exxon petitioned the US Supreme Court to intervene, in an attempt to derail not only this lawsuit, but all other climate-related suits brought against the fossil fuel industry. Over the past eight years, cities, counties, states, tribal communities, and individuals have filed dozens of such cases against major fossil fuel industry players. Many of these cases could be blocked if the Supreme Court agrees with Suncor and Exxon on the question of whether federal law broadly prohibits state law climate change claims.

In addition to this federal preemption question, the Supreme Court will be considering whether it even has jurisdiction to take up this case. The court added this jurisdiction question in its decision to grant the oil company’s petition. Alyssa Johl, vice president of legal and general counsel at the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), an advocacy group supporting efforts to hold climate polluters accountable, said that this indicates that “the justices do not agree whether the Court even has the authority to hear Boulder’s case at this time.”

“The Court should uphold what the Colorado Supreme Court and others have made clear: communities like Boulder have the right to seek accountability in their state courts when corporations have knowingly caused local harms,” Johl said in a statement.

While it is not yet clear whether the justices will decide that they do have authority to hear this case, the fact that they even granted the petition at all is not a promising sign for those who support climate accountability. The court denied a near-identical petition just a year ago in a different climate suit (filed by Honolulu, Hawaii against Big Oil). That denial was one of five instances where the justices have denied previous requests from oil companies or their political allies to intervene in cases against the companies since 2023, according to CCI. This time, however, the oil companies had even more political backing behind them, with amicus briefs urging the court to step in filed by the US Department of Justice, 26 Republican state attorneys general, and over 100 Republican members of the US House of Representatives.

James May, a distinguished professor of environmental and human rights law at Washburn University, told me that the court’s decision to finally accept the industry’s petition is a more impactful decision than even many legal experts realize. He warned that it “could be the beginning of the end of state-based climate claims, potentially of any flavor, statutory, common law, or constitutional.” If a majority of the justices rule in favor of the oil companies that federal law bars state law climate claims, it “potentially kills everything that the states can do” on climate, May told me.

Jean Su, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, had a similar view on the consequences of the Supreme Court ruling in favor of Big Oil in Boulder’s case.

“You would have unshackled the oil and gas industry from major regulation, on both federal and state levels,” Su told me. “And that is extremely scary. It will be a Dante’s inferno.”

If Big Oil gets its way, there would be no meaningful regulation or accountability for climate change of any kind at any level – international, federal, or state and local. Trump and his political allies who are in the industry’s pocket are attempting to turn this aspiration of complete impunity into reality.

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Screen shot from recording of President Trump’s speech at the UN General Assembly in New York in September 20205, when he called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”

Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency this week delivered its most sweeping attempt yet to destroy US climate action with the agency publishing a final rule in the Federal Register that eliminates the so-called greenhouse gas (GHG) endangerment finding and repeals all GHG emissions controls on motor vehicles. The 2009 endangerment finding – a science-based determination that carbon dioxide and other GHGs that cause climate change endanger public health and welfare – served as the legal underpinning for EPA rules to rein in climate pollution from sources like vehicles and power plants. In terminating the finding, EPA is now claiming it lacks the legal authority to do anything about climate change – a position that environmental and public health groups and others are now contesting through court challenges.

The rollback, these groups say, is blatantly illegal, running afoul of the Clean Air Act and Supreme Court precedent; another petition from a group of children and young Americans argues that the EPA’s move is unconstitutional. And according to the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), it violates not just domestic law, but international law as well.

“As the world’s highest court made clear last year, all countries, including the US, must do everything in their power to prevent further climate harm. This decision does the opposite. It heightens the risk, sacrificing environmental protection and public health for industry profits and private interest,” said Nikki Reisch, climate and energy program director at CIEL.

In its historic advisory opinion on climate change, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said that all countries have obligations under existing law to protect the climate system. These obligations apply regardless of whether or not countries are parties to the UN climate change treaties – a clarification that is especially salient given that the US under Trump has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and is even moving to exit the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Customary international law (while difficult to enforce) still provides a source of obligations that apply to climate change, the court said in its opinion.

Among those obligations is a duty to regulate industrial climate polluters. As the court stated: “A state may be responsible, where it has failed to exercise due diligence by not taking the necessary regulatory and legislative measures to limit the quantity of emissions caused by private actors under its jurisdiction.” In other words, a country may be in violation of its legal duty under international law by failing or refusing to regulate GHG emissions from private industry – precisely what the Trump administration is doing.

In refusing to regulate emissions, and also refusing to cooperate with other countries to tackle the climate problem as Trump abandons global climate treaties, the US is, as CIEL notes, defying its international duties.

“On the international stage, it cements this US administration’s position as an outlier and global pariah,” Reisch said.

But it goes even beyond that. Trump is not just attacking or shutting down climate science and policies here at home, and sidelining the US from international efforts to address this global threat. He and his administration are also actively trying to prevent other countries from adopting measures to respond to the climate crisis and to advance the clean energy transition. They are attempting to sabotage global climate action.

Just this week, for example, US Secretary of Energy (and former fossil fuel executive) Chris Wright rebuked the International Energy Agency for accounting for climate change in its energy outlook scenarios and threatened that the US would withdraw from the agency if it continued its climate focus. Following Wright’s remarks, the IEA omitted climate change from its list of priorities in a ministerial meeting summary document, Politico reported.

In another recent example, the Trump administration has reportedly been pressuring other countries to reject a Vanuatu-led draft UN resolution endorsing the ICJ’s landmark climate change advisory opinion. Vanuatu – a tiny Pacific Island nation threatened by rising sea levels – led the charge to get the UN General Assembly to vote on a resolution seeking the ICJ’s input on climate change. That resolution passed in 2023, and last year the court delivered its opinion in what many observers said was a landmark moment for climate justice. Now, Vanuatu is looking to take the next step by having the UNGA adopt another resolution that would welcome the opinion and start to translate it into “concrete multinational action.” The resolution would call on countries to take actions like adopting national climate action plans aligned with the goal of limiting global heating to below 1.5 degrees Celsius, phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, and creating an international registry to record climate damage claims.

“The resolution attempts to turn the ICJ’s interpretation of key legal standards into a practical roadmap for state accountability which is likely to trigger political pushback from higher income high emitting countries wary of their historical responsibility and financial liability,” Candy Ofime, climate justice researcher and legal advisor at Amnesty International, said in a statement.

Perhaps no country is pushing back more aggressively than the US, which circulated guidance to its embassies and consulates abroad saying that it “strongly objects” to Vanuatu’s proposal, as the AP reported. The US argues the resolution poses a major threat to US industry, and it is urging other countries to demand that Vanuatu withdraw the draft proposal.

Climate and human rights groups are urging countries to support the resolution and to not succumb to the Trump administration’s bullying.

“Vanuatu and other Small Island States are facing existential threats from a climate crisis they did not cause,” said Brad Adams, executive director at Climate Rights International. “Countries around the world—all of whom are also facing the impacts of global warming–must stand with Vanuatu at the United Nations and oppose Trump’s bullying tactics.”

In October the Trump administration worked to defeat the International Maritime Organization’s proposed fees on emissions from the most polluting ships. As Noah Gordon, a fellow and researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes in a new piece published in Foreign Policy: “The U.S. State Department claimed the levies would have been the UN’s first-ever ‘global carbon tax.’ By threatening to impose tariffs on supportive countries and strip diplomats of visas, the United States was able to kill the measure.”

Gordon says that this example, along with others like the attempt to thwart Vanuatu’s UN resolution, suggest that the US under Trump has become a climate bully.

“Trump is using US power to scare other countries into reducing their climate ambition,” Gordon told me. “Europe, which relies on the US for defense and increasingly for gas, has been a big target. The White House has warned, for example, that Europe could face higher tariffs if it doesn’t walk back regulations like its Methane Regulation and Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive.”

“Tariffs, or the cancellation of trade privileges, are the main tool the bullies in the White House are wielding,” Gordon added.

Today the US Supreme Court ruled that Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose tariffs is illegal. But that might not stop Trump from continuing his strong-arming abroad.

“The Supreme Court decision to invalidate Trump’s [International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA] tariffs could complicate Trump’s plans there, though he could find other ways to implement tariffs without declaring a national emergency,” Gordon told me. “We should also expect the White House to make greater use of other tools, like visa bans on negotiators from insubordinate countries, withdrawing funding from institutions it perceives as too green or woke, like the IEA, or even threatening sanctions on countries that prefer to do business with China rather than buy US products that run on fossil fuels.”

Further Reading

Check out my latest published articles:

“Paris Court Holds Historic Climate Trial in Case Against TotalEnergies,” Inside Climate News, https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19022026/paris-totalenergies-climate-trial/

“Environmental Groups Vow to Stop Trump’s EPA From Revoking the Endangerment Finding,” Sierra, https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/environmental-groups-vow-stop-trump-s-epa-revoking-endangerment-finding

“Michigan Tries a New Legal Tactic Against Big Oil, Alleging Antitrust Violations Aimed at Hobbling EVs and Renewable Energy,” Inside Climate News, https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15022026/michigan-alleges-antitrust-violations-against-big-oil/

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Credit: Edward Kimmel via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 2.0

Earth is entering a period of unprecedented climate change and the risks that the planet could be heading towards a globally catastrophic “hothouse Earth” trajectory are less remote than most people realize, top climate and Earth system scientists say.

The assessment of the risk of proceeding along such a pathway of irreversible global heating – essentially a point of no return – was published on Wednesday in the journal One Earth. The analysis synthesizes scientific findings on climate tipping points, or Earth system elements that become destabilized and may unleash additional warming thorough self-reinforcing feedback loops if critical temperature thresholds are passed. Research suggests that several of these elements may be closer to destabilizing than previously thought.

Rapid melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, boreal permafrost, and mountain glaciers and loss of parts of the Amazon rainforest, for example, suggest that that these Earth system features may already be destabilizing. As the study explains, “These processes could raise global temperatures, accelerate sea-level rise, release vast stores of carbon, and destabilize ecosystems. The precise threshold temperatures remain uncertain, but research shows that crossing one or more of these thresholds could trigger self-reinforcing processes that propel the Earth system onto a hothouse trajectory with long-lasting and potentially irreversible consequences.”

There is still a lot of uncertainty around the timing and precise nature of the risks of triggering these tipping points. But this uncertainty should not be an excuse for continued inaction or delay in mitigating the climate crisis, the scientists say. Instead, what is needed is an urgent course correction.

“Uncertain tipping thresholds underscore the importance of precaution,” said Christopher Wolf, study co-author and a scientist at the Oregon-based Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Associates. “Policymakers and the public remain largely unaware of the risks posed by what would effectively be a point-of-no-return transition. And while averting the hothouse trajectory won’t be easy, it’s much more achievable than trying to backtrack once we’re on it.”

Another concerning sign of destabilization, the scientists note, is that a key oceanic current system called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation appears to be weakening, which risks shifting tropical rain belts and drying out the parts of the Amazon.

“The AMOC is already showing signs of weakening, and this could increase the risk of Amazon dieback, with major negative impacts on carbon storage and biodiversity. Carbon released by an Amazon dieback would further amplify global warming and interact with other feedback loops,” said William Ripple, study lead author and a distinguished professor of ecology at Oregon State University.

“We need to act quickly on our rapidly dwindling opportunities to prevent dangerous and unmanageable climate outcomes,” Ripple said.

The study notes that current climate action and commitments are nowhere near sufficient and that some major economies are even pulling back when it comes to climate policies.

“Policy shifts in major economies may block progress on emissions cuts, threatening climate stabilization. The window to limit global temperatures below critical thresholds may be rapidly closing,” the scientists warn.

The assessment of the risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory follows a grim warning from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that the world is now the closest it’s ever been to an apocalyptic doomsday scenario, as symbolized by the Doomsday Clock – which was revealed this year to be just 85 seconds to midnight. The doomsday scenario is essentially an assessment of the global risks to humanity from threats such as nuclear war, the misuse of biotechnology and artificial intelligence, and climate change.

Here is how the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists summed up the current outlook in terms of tackling the threat of climate destabilization:

“The national and international responses to the climate emergency went from wholly insufficient to profoundly destructive. None of the three most recent UN climate summits emphasized phasing out fossil fuels or monitoring carbon dioxide emissions. In the United States, the Trump administration has essentially declared war on renewable energy and sensible climate policies, relentlessly gutting national efforts to combat climate change.”

On Thursday, this war on climate policies will reach a new level as the Trump administration is expected to announce the finalization of its repeal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s endangerment finding for greenhouse gases, a move that will eliminate the agency’s legal authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from sources like motor vehicles. The EPA issued the finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare in 2009 based on a voluminous scientific record, which has only gotten stronger in the years since then. The finding was issued in response to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Clean Air Act, and therefore the EPA must regulate them if it makes a finding of endangerment.

The repeal of the endangerment finding contravenes science, the law, and public opinion and lived experience of increasingly dangerous extreme weather and climate impacts. But it is in line with the position of President Trump that climate change is a hoax. Recall that Trump stood on the world stage at the United Nations General Assembly last September and literally claimed that climate change is “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”

Climate and environmental groups put out statements ahead of Thursday’s repeal blasting the move and vowing to challenge it in court. The Sierra Club said that Trump’s EPA head Lee Zeldin, with the stroke of a pen, “will formalize climate denialism as official government policy.” The organization said that it and its partners are “exploring all legal options in response, including litigation.”

“The Trump administration justifies this assault on science and our health by falsely claiming that U.S. climate-heating pollution doesn’t matter and that it lacks the authority to cut it,” said the Center for Biological Diversity’s Dan Becker. “That’s a lie, and any 6-year-old knows it’s wrong to lie.”

“Climate denialism will bleed the people dry,” 350.org executive director Anne Jellema said. “By giving Big Oil a license to pollute even more, the EPA is defying international law and piling more damage on communities in the US and around the world.”

“Removing EPA’s authority to limit deadly greenhouse gas emissions is as shortsighted as it is reckless,” said Sierra Club executive director Loren Blackford. “Communities will suffer as extreme weather continues to threaten us all, costs will continue to rise, and we will saddle future generations with a world that grows increasingly unlivable and endangers the life we know.”

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Sheringham Shoal offshore wind farm, a UK wind farm in the North Sea. Credit: NHD-INFO via Flickr (Photo by Harald Pettersen/Statoil), CC BY 2.0

As US President Donald Trump continues to try to shut down wind energy here at home while maligning it on the world stage, Europe is embracing the renewable energy resource as a key instrument for not only decarbonization, but energy security at a time of rising geopolitical instability.

Nine European countries plus the United Kingdom reached what is being called a “historic clean energy security pact” on January 26 to support the buildout of offshore wind in the North Sea and to turn the region into “the largest clean energy hub in the world.” The Hamburg Declaration, signed at the North Sea Summit in Hamburg, Germany, reaffirms a pledge to develop 300 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2050. And it includes a new commitment to deliver 100 gigawatts through “cross-border cooperation projects” that involve grid connections to more than one country.

According to an accompanying Joint Offshore Wind Investment Pact, governments will work together to help de-risk investments and work towards facilitating up to 15 gigawatts per year of offshore wind development between 2031 and 2040. The offshore wind industry in turn is committing to driving down the cost of electricity from offshore wind by 30% while mobilizing 1 trillion Euros in economic activity for Europe and creating 91,000 additional jobs.

Danish energy company Ørsted, a leading developer of offshore wind, called the deal a “giant leap towards powering Europe with renewable, reliable, and cost-competitive electricity.”

“By turning targets into turbines, the pact will boost European energy security, competitiveness, and decarbonization,” Ørsted said. “Today, 58% of EU’s energy is imported. With the pact to help secure 300 GW of offshore wind in the North Sea, the offshore wind industry – which already employs around 100,000 people across Europe – is set to help save Europe around EUR 70 billion on fossil fuel imports, cut electricity prices, and reduce European carbon emissions by 15%.”

The countries supporting this landmark offshore wind deal include Germany, Belgium, France, Ireland, Iceland, Luxembourg, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway, plus the United Kingdom.

European officials say the deal is a key step towards strengthening their energy security and reducing dependency on volatile fossil fuels, including imports that are controlled by authoritarian regimes, whether that is Russia or, now, the US.

“We are standing up for our national interest by driving for clean energy, which can get the UK off the fossil fuel rollercoaster and give us energy sovereignty and abundance,” UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said in a statement.

Politico reports that the EU is now looking to reduce its reliance on imports of US liquified natural gas given Trump’s threats to take over Greenland.

“In these turbulent geopolitical times, Europe must stand strong and united — and choose independence,” EU Commissioner for Energy and Housing Dan Jørgensen said at the North Sea Summit. “That means doubling down on clean, safe, home-grown energy. It means building on our natural strengths, and few are greater than the North Sea and its vast offshore wind potential.”

By forging ahead with offshore wind in the North Sea, the EU and the UK are defying Trump. The US president has urged the UK to abandon its clean energy pursuits and instead double down on North Sea oil drilling. During his recent speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump repeated his attacks on wind energy. “There are windmills all over Europe,” he said. “There are windmills all over the place, and they are losers.”

Having seen wind turbines up close myself, I would tend to disagree with that claim. As One Earth Now previously reported, the one fully operational, commercial-scale offshore wind farm in the US, called South Fork Wind, is performing exceptionally well. A handful of other offshore wind projects on the US East Coast are being built and due to come online soon, despite the Trump administration’s dogged attempts to try to stop them. Following a December order from Trump’s Department of Interior to halt construction on five offshore wind projects, courts have now allowed four of them to resume construction, and the fifth project could get the go-ahead from a court on Monday.

Trump can try to bully other countries into clinging to fossil fuels and can try to thwart the energy transition here and abroad, but he cannot stop it. In the US, the Energy Information Administration reports that utility-scale solar is the fastest growing source of electricity, and projects that the combined share of generation from solar and wind will rise from 18% in 2025 to 21% in 2027. In the EU, meanwhile, wind and solar generated more electricity than fossil fuels for the first time in 2025, according to Ember.

“The next priority for the EU should be to put a serious dent in reliance on expensive, imported gas,” said Beatrice Petrovich, senior energy analyst at Ember. “Gas not only makes the EU more vulnerable to energy blackmail, it’s also driving up prices.”

By committing to develop offshore wind in the North Sea, the EU could be starting to make such a dent.

Climate advocates praised the move.

“The Trump administration may be doing everything it can to keep the fossil fuel ‘rollercoaster’ going, but people are no longer buying tickets. Some European political leaders are beginning to recognize that energy security and economic stability won’t come from oil and gas, but rather, a renewable energy system that can lower electricity bills and can’t be switched off by dictators or disrupted by global conflicts,” said Clémence Dubois, 350.org global campaign manager.

“This isn’t just about switching energy sources” Dubois added, “it’s about ending a rigged system where fossil fuel companies pocket the profits and the public picks up the bill through higher energy costs, climate disasters, and government handouts.”

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A BP gas station in Michigan. The state has over 600 BP-branded gas stations, according to a lawsuit filed by the Michigan attorney general's office. Credit: F.D. Richards via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0

Story co-published with Climate in the Courts

Major oil and gas companies are facing a fresh lawsuit from a U.S. state contending that they conspired to stifle competition from renewable energy in a decades-long scheme to maintain their market share and inflate profits.

On Friday, January 23, the state of Michigan sued BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and their chief U.S. trade association the American Petroleum Institute (API). The lawsuit, filed in federal district court, alleges that defendants engaged in an “illicit conspiracy” to delay the transition to renewable energy and maintain market dominance of fossil fuels, in violation of federal and state antitrust laws. The case is the first of its kind to bring such antitrust claims against the fossil fuel industry in the context of the energy transition and the climate crisis.

It comes as communities across the country reel from escalating climate disasters and a mounting affordability crisis, and as state and local governments and individuals continue to turn to courts in efforts to hold fossil fuel firms accountable for their role in bringing about these impacts. Dozens of climate accountability lawsuits have been launched against companies like ExxonMobil over the last eight years, grounded in various claims ranging from classic nuisance and failure to warn, to consumer fraud and unfair competition, to racketeering. Michigan is now the eleventh state to file suit against Big Oil, but just the first to file charges under the federal Sherman and Clayton Antitrust Acts. Michigan has also brought claims under the Michigan Antitrust Reform Act.

“By colluding to delay the energy transition away from fossil fuels, Defendants have deliberately imposed staggering external costs on Michigan and the people of Michigan,” the complaint argues. These costs include higher energy bills, economic damage, rising insurance premiums and lowered home values, and worsening climate impacts and public health costs.

Rather than focusing on climate change impacts and associated costs, the case is instead framed around alleged manipulation of energy markets and the consequences of corporate behavior that essentially locked in a fossil fuel-based energy system. This anticompetitive conduct, Michigan says, has resulted in constrained consumer choice in transportation and residential energy usage, and higher energy prices paid by consumers.

“By suppressing innovation and investment in renewable energy, EVs, and EV infrastructure, Defendants have reduced the production of renewable energy for transportation and home heating and cooling, raised prices for Michigan consumers, and caused the United States to fall behind China and other foreign markets in the race to pioneer cheaper and cleaner alternatives to fossil fuels,” the complaint asserts. Michigan says the big oil entities have ultimately operated as a cartel, working to suppress renewable energy and prevent rapid uptake of electric vehicles.

As detailed in the complaint, in 1979, internal Exxon studies found that renewables would need to supply at least half of global energy by 2010 in order to avoid catastrophic climate impacts. That same year, API established a CO2 and Climate Task Force to coordinate strategies and responses to scientific evidence linking fossil fuels to climate harms and to the threat of a large-scale transition away from fossil fuels.

Instead of warning the public about the climate change risks of fossil fuels and leading a transition to cleaner alternatives, Exxon and other defendants ultimately decided to abandon their own investments in clean energy. And they embarked on a campaign to stifle competition from renewables and to delay the energy transition in order to protect their market dominance, despite having full knowledge of the catastrophic climate consequences of unrestrained usage of fossil fuels, the suit contends. The complaint goes on to explain the tactics employed to advance this scheme, from squashing EV and solar panel technologies, to limiting investments in clean energy, influencing university research, and disseminating misinformation about the viability of renewable energy.

And the scheme worked as intended. Fossil fuels today still dominate the energy mix, even as renewable solar and wind have become cheaper and account for the vast majority of new electric generation capacity. In Michigan, as in other states, consumers have limited options when it comes to energy sources used for electricity or heating. Options are also limited when it comes to fueling transportation. Electric vehicles are still a minority of the overall motor vehicle makeup, and public charging infrastructure is not widely developed or available. This is all by design, Michigan argues, in order to protect the profits and market share of the incumbent fossil fuel producers.

“Michigan is facing an energy affordability crisis as our home energy costs skyrocket and consumers are left without affordable options for transportation. Whether you own a home, a small business, or run a large corporation, rising energy and transportation costs harm everyone,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a statement.

“These out-of-control costs are not the result of natural economic inflation,” she added, “but due to the greed of these corporations who prioritized their own profit and marketplace dominance over competition and consumer savings.”

ExxonMobil and Chevron did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and BP and Shell both declined to comment.

API responded with a statement it has used repeatedly when asked for comment about the litigation against Big Oil. “These baseless lawsuits are a coordinated campaign against an industry that powers everyday life, drives America’s economy, and is actively reducing emissions,” said API senior vice president and general counsel Ryan Meyers. “We continue to believe that energy policy belongs in Congress, not a patchwork of courtrooms.”

The statement does not directly address the specific allegations, but rather deflects and misleads. The message that the oil and gas industry “powers everyday life,” for example, conveniently omits the role the industry plays in influencing demand and perpetuating dependency on its products. Renewable energy could be meeting most energy needs today were it not for the actions by major oil companies to sabotage their competition, as detailed in Michigan’s lawsuit.

Furthermore, the industry is not “actively reducing emissions,” especially when it comes to emissions associated with their products (called Scope 3 emissions), which comprise around 90% of a fossil fuel producer’s total value chain carbon emissions. According to new data from the Carbon Majors database, which calculates CO2 emissions (including Scope 3) for the world’s largest oil, gas, coal and cement companies based on production figures, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP all increased their emissions in 2024 compared to 2023. In 2024, Exxon emitted 677 million metric tons (MtCO2e), Chevron emitted 577 MtCO2e, Shell emitted 426 MtCO2e, and BP emitted 354 MtCO2e. In 2023, these figures were 562 MtCO2e, 487 MtCO2e, 418 MtCO2e, and 347 MtCO2e, respectively.

Michigan’s lawsuit, which is seeking damages and injunctive relief, comes after the Trump administration took action last year to preemptively sue the state over its expected but not yet filed lawsuit against major fossil fuel companies. Nessel had announced in 2024 that her office planned to pursue litigation against Big Oil over climate change impacts and sought proposals from outside counsel to assist in this work.

The Trump Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Michigan argued that the anticipated claim by the state, which was expected to center around climate harms, was preempted by the Clean Air Act – a federal law that authorizes the EPA to regulate air pollution, including greenhouse gas emissions (though Trump’s EPA is now arguing it lacks authority to regulate GHGs). But the lawsuit that Michigan actually filed has very little to do with greenhouse gas emissions or climate impacts.

As a press release from the AG’s office explains: What “started as an investigation into the financial impacts to Michigan from the fossil fuel industry’s persistent coverup and deception about climate change” instead “uncovered one of the most successful antitrust conspiracies in United States history.”

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Credit: C3S/ECMWF

Multiple climate monitoring services have reported that 2025 was the third hottest year on record globally, behind only 2023 and the current record-holder 2024. Over these last three years, global average temperatures exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service. The level of long-term heating is now at about 1.4°C and could reach 1.5°C - the threshold that countries said in the Paris Agreement they would strive to not exceed – by the end of this decade, 2030.

This is not an anomaly but rather a clear sign of a rapidly warming planet, scientists say. The period of 2015 through 2025 has been the hottest ever recorded, with each of those eleven years being among the 11 warmest years yet.

“The fact that the last eleven years were the warmest on record provides further evidence of the unmistakable trend towards a hotter climate,” said Carlo Buontempo, Director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service. “The world is rapidly approaching the long-term temperature limit set by the Paris agreement. We are bound to pass it; the choice we now have is how to best manage the inevitable overshoot and its consequences on societies and natural systems.”

Ocean heat in 2025 was also at record levels. And as World Meteorological Secretary General Celeste Saulo explained, “High land and ocean temperatures helped fuel extreme weather – heatwaves, heavy rainfall and intense tropical cyclones.”

The impacts of intensifying and more frequent extreme weather are becoming ever-more costly and severe. “Another year in the top three hottest on record, and communities everywhere are feeling it. Extreme weather isn’t rare anymore—it’s driving up food prices, insurance premiums, water shortages, and upending daily life across the globe,” Savio Carvalho, managing director for campaigns and networks at the climate action group 350.org, said in a statement.

Scientists say such impacts will only get worse absent urgent action to curb greenhouse gas emissions, which are primarily caused by burning fossil fuels.

“2025’s extreme events are another warning: human-caused climate change is intensifying, and without reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the risks to society and ecosystems around the world will get worse,” said Zachary Labe, climate scientist at Climate Central.

“The fact that the 1.5°C limit has been exceeded for an average three-year period means that everyone should be prepared for more adverse weather, especially heat-related extremes. Their number will continue to increase every year until we end our toxic relationship with fossil fuels,” warned Karsten Haustein, a climate scientist at Leipzig University.

Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London, said the latest climate data indicates a situation that is grim but not unexpected. “Whichever way you look at it, dangerous climate breakdown has arrived, but with little sign that the world is prepared, or even paying serious attention.”

McGuire called for more action “to stop every tonne of carbon being emitted, and prevent every fraction of a degree rise in the global temperature.” Not doing this, he warned, “will inevitably consign our children and their children – and countless generations down the line – to a hothouse hell.”

“It is hard to describe just how serious the risks to humanity are, as we rapidly take ourselves out of the climate our entire agriculturally-based civilization is based on,” John Marsham, professor of atmospheric science at University of Leeds, said in commenting on the latest data. “Impacts on ecosystems, and human food and water systems are rapidly escalating and we are risking a climate that, in my kids’ lifetimes, is almost as different from our natural climate as the last ice-age was, only hotter instead of colder.”

Marsham warned that this “will be catastrophic for ecosystems, human health, and our food and water systems.”

“We need people to call for urgent action,” he added, “and hold both politicians and the media to account.”

Indeed, with limited exceptions (such as The Guardian), the mainstream media tends to not treat the climate crisis as the emergency that scientists say it is. Media coverage that focuses only on political realities without communicating the scientific realities of climate change does a disservice to readers. As Mark Herstgaard, executive director and co-founder of Covering Climate Now, writes in this week’s The Climate Beat newsletter, “gaming out the politics of climate change has to be weighed against what thousands of alarmed scientists have been saying for years: Civilization is hurtling toward irreversible catastrophe, and the only realistic escape route is to phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible.”

The United States under President Donald Trump is doing the exact opposite, doubling down on the very fuels that are dangerously overheating the planet while aggressively trying to thwart clean energy, abandon all domestic and international efforts to address the climate problem, and dismantle scientific research and misrepresent climate science.

Last July the U.S. Department of Energy released a controversial report authored by five climate deniers with ties to fossil fuel interests that disputed the scientific consensus on climate change risks and downplayed the dangers of global heating. The report was widely criticized by the scientific community; more than 85 scientists submitted a detailed response arguing that the DOE report “misrepresents the state of climate science by cherry-picking evidence, exaggerating uncertainties, and ignoring decades of peer-reviewed research.”

Now, it appears that the Climate Working Group – the same group of contrarians that authored the DOE climate report – has been asked to work on the next National Climate Assessment, as E&E News reported. The National Climate Assessment is a Congressionally mandated climate report that synthesizes the latest science on climate change risks and impacts in the United States.

“In the past this was something that was done with a careful process involving federal government agencies, hundreds of independent scientists, lots of opportunity for public comment and comment from the National Academies. It was a rigorous process that led to its credibility,” Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director in the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told me. She was one of the experts who had been working on the sixth NCA before the Trump administration ordered they all be dismissed. “[The administration] wants to come up with some trumped up version that essentially is designed to further their goal of not acting on climate and continuing to boost fossil fuels,” she added.

Trump’s EPA, meanwhile, is about to finalize its repeal of the endangerment finding – a science-based determination that the agency made in 2009 that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. That finding requires EPA to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, so doing away with it effectively destroys one of the federal government’s primary tools to curb these emissions.

Trump is not just attacking climate action here at home. He is also trying to slow global efforts to tackle this threat. He is withdrawing the U.S. not only from the Paris Agreement, but from the overarching international climate treaty known as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

All of these moves may increase short term profits for fossil fuel billionaires, but will ultimately be harmful to ordinary Americans and people around the world as the climate crisis accelerates.

“The Trump administration is not simply refusing to face the realities of climate change we are experiencing, it is actively lying about the science and undermining our nation’s federal scientific resources. Acting like there’s no tomorrow by trying to force even more burning of coal, oil and gas will cost lives and make the Earth a harder place to live in the years to come. The administration is also abdicating any semblance of international leadership through its radical actions to increase heat-trapping emissions and drop out of global climate agreements designed to limit warming and help protect people and ecosystems,” Carlos Martinez, senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement.

“We have the technology and scientific knowledge to power the world through clean energy while also investing in climate resilience,” he added. “Clinging to an obsolete and dangerous fixation on fossil fuels will bring profits to a few and deprive billions of others on the planet of a secure and livable future.”

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Where do we go from here? Honestly my head is spinning with the news cycle developments over the last few days – from President Trump’s illegal military intervention in Venezuela and kidnapping of its president and his claims that his administration will be “running” the Latin American country, to Trump and his energy secretary’s brazen assertions that the U.S. and its big oil companies will be taking control of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves and selling this oil “indefinitely,” to Trump’s latest directive withdrawing the U.S. from dozens (66 in total) of international organizations, treaties and conventions, many of which we had been part of for decades like the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The latter move of abandoning scores of international conventions and UN organizations not only further isolates the U.S. during a time of rising geopolitical tensions, but also sends a chilling message of disdain for diplomatic and cooperative global governance. According to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, such governance has become “dominated by progressive ideology” including what he calls “climate orthodoxy” – a term echoing EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s phrase of “climate change religion.”

This rhetoric is of course ridiculous and even dangerous, as climate change is a grave reality that more and more people are experiencing in the form of extreme weather or rising food and home insurance costs. International courts have now recognized climate change as an emergency and an existential threat, one that must be addressed through global cooperative action. The UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change treaty was established precisely for that purpose. As the Union of Concerned Scientists explains, “Every nation in the world is party to the UNFCCC, which was adopted more than three decades ago and has been upheld by Democratic and Republican administrations in the United States alike.” No country has abandoned this bedrock climate treaty – until now. And since it was a Senate-ratified treaty, some legal experts say President Trump lacks the legal authority to unilaterally withdraw without Congressional approval. “Once the Senate has ratified a treaty, only the Senate can withdraw from the treaty,” said U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “This announcement is not just corrupt, it’s illegal.”

It comes on the heels of the Trump-led military operation in Venezuela to capture and abduct the country’s president Nicolás Maduro and his wife and to seize control over the country’s oil resources. Legal experts and critics say the attack was patently illegal. “The Trump Administration has demonstrated again its disregard for international law, violating the U.N. Charter’s prohibition on the use of force,” said the American Society of International Law’s Executive Director Michael D. Cooper. “In the process, the Administration has also violated United States law, which at a minimum requires consultation with members of Congress before involving U.S. armed forces in attacks like the one the world has just witnessed,” he added.

“Donald Trump has, once again, shown his contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law,” U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders said in a statement. “Trump’s attack on Venezuela will make the United States and the world less safe. This brazen violation of international law gives a green light to any nation on earth that may wish to attack another country to seize their resources or change their governments. This is the horrific logic of force that Putin used to justify his brutal attack on Ukraine.”

In the wake of the attack on Venezuela, Trump has threatened to go after other countries such as Mexico, Cuba, Colombia, and Greenland. And what’s to stop him? There is no global law enforcement institution.

With flagrant violations of international law on display – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the US abduction of Venezuela’s leader – some experts are warning that the post-World War II international legal order now faces collapse. “What the world is witnessing now is the international rules-based order being stripped of whatever value it once had,” Jorge H. Sanchez-Perez, assistant professor at the University of Alberta, wrote in a piece published this week. In another commentary published the same day in the New York Times, Oona Hathaway, a professor of law and political science at Yale and president-elect of the American Society of International Law, similarly said that the international legal system “faces total collapse” in the wake of the U.S. action in Venezuela.

“President Trump’s decision to launch a secretive predawn military operation in Venezuela to grab President Nicolás Maduro is a blatant assault on the international legal order,” Hathaway writes. “The action threatens to end an era of historic peace and return us to a world in which might makes right. The cost will be paid in human lives.” Her piece is titled “The Great Unraveling Has Begun.”

This is all happening against the backdrop of a climate system that is also unraveling, with profound consequences for humanity and all life on Earth. In the 2024 state of the climate report, leading climate and Earth system scientists warned that we are “brink of an irreversible climate disaster” and are “experiencing abrupt climate upheaval, a dire situation never before encountered in the annals of human existence.” They note that the risk of societal collapse is becoming less remote, writing: “climate change could contribute to a collapse by increasing the likelihood of catastrophic risks such as international conflict or by causing multiple stresses, resulting in system-wide synchronous failures…Climate change has already displaced millions of people, and has the potential to displace hundreds of millions or even billions more, leading to greater geopolitical instability.”

It goes without saying that, given fossil fuel combustion is the primary driver of the climate emergency, we should be accelerating the transition away from coal, oil, and gas. And yet, under President Trump, the U.S. is doing the exact opposite, boosting fossil fuels domestically and abandoning all climate policies while pressuring other countries to do the same. Now Trump is looking to exploit another country’s oil, insisting that U.S. oil companies will go in and invest billions of dollars to repair the infrastructure and “get the oil flowing.” It is unclear whether this will actually pan out.

But critics say the message is crystal clear – that Trump is putting the interests of Big Oil and his fossil fuel donors above the interests of the public. The move is also especially maddening given the worsening fossil fueled climate crisis – a reality even if Trump denies it.

“In an era of accelerating climate breakdown, eyeing Venezuela’s vast oil reserves this way is both reckless and dangerous,” Greenpeace International Executive Director Mads Christensen said in a statement. “The only safe path forward is a just transition away from fossil fuels, one that protects health, safeguards ecosystems, and supports communities rather than sacrificing them for short-term profit.”

Exploiting Venezuela’s oil reserves – the largest in the world – during a time of climate breakdown may also violate international law, as suggested by the International Court of Justice in its climate change advisory opinion issued last July. The opinion explicitly calls out countries’ continued support of fossil fuels, stating: “Failure of a State to take appropriate action to protect the climate system from GHG emissions — including through fossil fuel production, fossil fuel consumption, the granting of fossil fuel exploration licenses or the provision of fossil fuel subsidies — may constitute an internationally wrongful act which is attributable to that State.”

That may not matter much to a president that seems intent on disregarding norms and the law, both domestic and international. But it should matter to the rest of us who care about trying to preserve the rule of law and some semblance of a habitable planet – a planet that our children and future generations are inheriting and that is rapidly becoming less safe and less stable.

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The Trump administration announced on Monday that it is immediately suspending the leases for all offshore wind projects currently under construction in the U.S., a move that threatens to crush the nascent American offshore wind industry and one that critics say will harm electric ratepayers, public health, and the climate. The announcement comes just two weeks after a federal district court in Massachusetts overturned President Trump’s Day One directive halting all federal leasing, permitting and approvals of wind energy projects, on the basis that the directive was arbitrary and capricious and clearly unlawful.

Monday’s announcement of the leasing pause by the Department of the Interior applies to five offshore wind projects, all off the East coast and several of which were nearing completion – Vineyard Wind 1 and Revolution Wind in New England, Empire Wind 1 and Sunrise Wind offshore of Long Island, New York, and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind in Virginia.

The latter project was just months away from becoming operational, poised to deliver nearly 2,600 megawatts of clean electricity to the grid, or enough to power up to 660,000 homes. Consisting of 176 turbines, it was slated to become the largest offshore wind farm in the country.

Vineyard Wind 1, located roughly 15 miles south of the Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard, was already partly operational, generating clean power at 50 percent capacity and sending it into the New England grid. Once completed, the 62-turbine project was expected to produce over 800 megawatts of renewable electricity and power over 400,000 homes.

Revolution Wind, a similarly sized 704-megawatt project, was also almost completely built and had been expected to come online later in 2026. The wind farm was slated to deliver clean electricity to consumers in both Rhode Island and Connecticut.

Empire Wind 1, sited off the southern coast of Long Island, began offshore construction this year and was expected to reach commercial operation in 2027. And Sunrise Wind, located just south of Revolution Wind off the southeastern tip of Long Island, was also slated to come online in the next two years.

Together, the five projects were projected to power the equivalent of over 2.5 million homes.

But now their outlook is uncertain with the Trump administration’s order putting them on hold – a move that clean energy advocates and legal experts say is illegal and has already been rejected by the courts.

“This is a desperate rerun of the Trump administration’s failed attempt to kill offshore wind – an effort the courts have already rejected,” Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice president for law and policy at Conservation Law Foundation, a New England-based environmental law organization, said in a statement. “Many of these clean energy projects passed years of rigorous review, were upheld in court, and are moving forward. Trying again to halt these projects tramples on the rule of law, threatens jobs, and deliberately sabotages a critical industry that strengthens, not weakens, America’s energy security.”

The Department of Interior cited national security concerns as the reason for its lease suspension, saying that the security risks were “identified by the Department of War in recently completed classified reports.” The DOI’s announcement adds that unclassified reports have found that the turbine blades and towers create radar interference.

National security was also invoked by the Trump administration in August as a justification for issuing a stop work order on Revolution Wind, which was already 80 percent complete. The project developer, Orsted, sued over that order and succeeded in getting a preliminary injunction reversing it. Earlier this year the Trump administration issued a similar stop work order on the Empire Wind project; that order was lifted following negotiations between New York governor Kathy Hochul and President Trump.

New York led a coalition of 16 states plus the District of Columbia in challenging Trump’s directive halting all federal approvals of wind projects, and on December 8 U.S. District Court Judge Patti B. Saris ruled in plaintiffs’ favor and struck down the unlawful directive.

“Wind energy is good for our environment, our economy, and our communities. I am grateful the court stepped in to block the administration’s reckless and unlawful crusade against clean energy,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in response to the court’s ruling.

The new move to pause already approved federal offshore wind leases will likely face legal challenges.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said in a statement that the move “appears to be a second, even more lawless and erratic stop work order, reviving the Trump Administration’s prior failed attempt to halt construction of Revolution Wind.”

“Every day this project is stalled is another day of lost work, another day of unaffordable energy costs, and other day burning fossil fuels when American-made clean energy is within reach,” Tong added. “We are evaluating all legal options, and this will be stopped just like last time.”

Virginia Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner along with Rep. Bobby Scott also issued a statement slamming the Trump administration’s latest offshore wind pause, saying it “threatens thousands of good-paying American jobs coming to a veteran-heavy area, undermines energy security, and damages the credibility of the United States government.”

Environmental advocates say the move to block offshore wind threatens public health, energy security, and is especially absurd during a time of accelerating climate change.

“At a time when climate change itself poses one of the greatest national security threats we face, blocking clean energy projects is reckless and dangerous,” CLF’s Sinding Daly said.

“Blocking construction on all offshore wind projects underway in the U.S. is an attack on our economy and our public health,” said Sierra Club legislative director Melinda Pierce. “The Trump administration’s vengeance towards renewable energy knows no end. Instead of progressing us forward as a nation, they are obsessed with attacking a growing industry that provides good clean energy jobs and affordable, clean electricity.”

As One Earth Now previously reported, offshore wind is already demonstrating that it is a viable source of energy and one that is co-existing with the marine environment. South Fork Wind, the nation’s first, fully operational commercial-scale offshore wind farm, is supplying clean electricity to the New York grid and has met or even exceeded performance expectations during its first year of operation. As Orsted’s Norm Zeyack explained during a recent boat tour to see the project up close: “South Fork’s performance is translating into real value for New York State ratepayers.”

The Trump administration’s move to block offshore wind may also jeopardize energy and infrastructure permitting reform legislation that is currently pending in Congress. A version of the legislation – which critics warn would weaken a bedrock environmental law called NEPA – passed the House of Representatives last week, but has not yet passed the Senate. In a statement responding to the administration’s offshore wind pause, Democratic Senators Sheldon Whitehouse, Ranking Member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, and Martin Heinrich, Ranking Member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said the move leaves permitting reform talks “dead in the water.”

“The illegal attacks on fully permitted renewable energy projects must be reversed if there is to be any chance that permitting talks resume,” the senators said. “There is no path to permitting reform if this administration refuses to follow the law.”

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