Folks gather in Boston Common for the Hands Off! national day of protest against the Trump administration on April 5, 2025. Millions of Americans took to the streets in displays of “No Kings” democratic resistance over the past two years, culminating in voters’ historic repudiation of Trump and MAGA Republicans in the 2026 midterm election.

It has been a remarkable past two weeks for climate action and accountability, from a seismic electoral rejection of the US climate-denier-in-chief’s politics of cruelty and corruption to significant victories for clean energy and advances for accountability in the courts. And while the struggle of course continues, it is important to acknowledge and celebrate the bright spots – the sparks of hope and signs of progress – especially at a time of accelerating and converging societal crises.

First off, the “blue tsunami” that was the 2026 US midterm election was a clear repudiation of Trump and MAGA’s fascist politics and of the oligarchy and corruption that sees the ultra-rich get even richer while the public pays the price. As Indivisible’s Ezra Levin said in remarking on the election results: “Today the United States joins Hungary, and Brazil, and Serbia, resoundingly rejecting authoritarianism in a national election.”

Climate may not have been a central issue in this election, but the affordability crisis and government corruption certainly were, and climate advocates say these things are all linked. “Americans are struggling with high gas prices, rising energy bills, and mounting climate disaster costs while Big Oil rakes in record profits and spends millions buying influence in Washington,” said Cassidy DiPaola, spokesperson for the Make Polluters Pay campaign. “Trump and Republicans were elected to cut energy costs and instead they cut clean energy,” noted Pete Maysmith of the League of Conservation Voters. “They stuck the American people with the bill while pocketing the profits for themselves and Big Oil CEOs.”

Manish Bapta of NRDC Action Fund, speaking during a post-election presser, said that the corruption and “crony capitalism” that has left Americans footing the bill was “arguably best epitomized by Trump’s collusion with the fossil fuel industry.”

“The Trump administration has worked nonstop to throttle clean energy, even as energy bills soared,” he said. “They declared a wind ban. They grinded renewable energy permitting to a halt. They froze funding to help low-income households get rooftop solar. And they even used taxpayer dollars to buy off companies so they cannot develop offshore wind projects. And instead of relief, they doubled down on the dirtiest and most expensive energy sources. They opened up our public lands and waters to oil drilling. They gave coal plants millions of dollars in federal bailouts. And they even let coal plants and chemical plants email in to get a free pass to pollute.”

For more on what the election results may mean for climate action, check out this brand-new story I wrote for Sierra. Basically, from what I’ve heard from advocates and policy experts, there seem to be two main avenues for Democrats to advance their agenda. One is at the state level, where Democrats will now be in control of a majority of state legislative chambers and governorships. And with a handful of new trifectas (control of the state legislature and governorship), Democrats are anticipated to be in complete governing control in 23 states. This is where we could see real progress in terms of action on decarbonization and clean energy. As former Washington governor and prominent climate advocate Jay Inslee said: “States can move the ball.”

The other main avenue, at the federal level, is through congressional oversight. That’s not to say Democrats in Congress won’t try to get legislation passed (in the immediate term, it’s looking like there’ll be a fight over the BAAJA permitting bill in this lame-duck Congress). But Trump is expected to veto pretty much anything coming out of a Democrat-controlled Congress. Democrats will have some important leverage on appropriations. Oversight, though, is where Democrats can really start to bring some scrutiny and accountability to a lawless Trump administration and to a slew of industries engaged in alleged corporate malfeasance and profiteering, from Big Tech to Big Oil.

“On congressional oversight, we’d love to see Democrats launch a major investigation into Big Oil’s relationship with the Trump administration, particularly the industry’s political spending, massive windfall profits from the Iran war, and their ongoing efforts to secure special legal immunity,” DiPaola told me. “There are a lot of questions worth asking about how much influence the industry has had over Trump’s agenda and who’s getting rich off his policies. We’d like to see oil executives hauled before Congress to answer some of those questions. I also think this could be a really powerful opportunity for newly elected Democrats who want to make a name for themselves as fighters for working families and against corporate greed -- I mean, what better way to do that than taking on one of America’s wealthiest and most politically connected industries.”

Industry interests seem to be expecting that they will be targeted by Democratic oversight in the 120^th Congress. “Energy companies should expect a renewed slate of congressional hearings and investigations, particularly in the House,” the corporate PR firm Edelman wrote in a recent memo warning a number of industries that they should prepare for enhanced congressional scrutiny. Energy in Depth, a blog and communications platform run as a project of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, wrote in a recent post: “Producers should expect oversight hearings on the regulatory rollbacks and on the industry’s ties to the administration.”

New Wins for Offshore Wind

Clean, renewable energy certainly came out as a winner in the election results with many Democratic candidates having ran on platforms that included supporting cheaper, cleaner energy. Inslee said he was confident that Dems who were elected “are going to be really strong champions of clean energy.” Commenting on the election results, Solar Energy Industries Association CEO Tim Pawlenty said in a statement that the solar and storage industry “looks forward to working with newly elected federal and state leaders to bring more affordable, reliable power online and deliver the energy savings Americans are demanding.”

Another win for renewable energy in the US came in the form of operational project milestones for two new commercial-scale offshore wind farms in the New England region. Vineyard Wind – located about 15 miles offshore of Massachusetts’ Martha’s Vineyard island – and Revolution Wind (about 15 miles south of the Rhode Island coast) both became fully operational right around the same time at the end of October. These two projects had already started delivering some power to the grid, but reaching full commercial operation is a notable achievement especially in the face of relentless attacks by the Trump administration. Just last month, Trump’s Department of Justice asked a federal court to allow the administration to reconsider Revolution Wind’s approval, even though the project at that point was fully built.

“New England is better off now that we have not one but TWO fully commercially operational projects,” Katie Segal, senior director of offshore wind at Environmental League of Massachusetts, said in a statement. “We are in for a difficult winter and wind will help with costs and reliability.”

Vineyard Wind is a 62-turbine wind farm capable of generating 800 megawatts of clean electricity, or enough to power about 400,000 Massachusetts homes. Revolution Wind is a 704-megawatt, 65-turbine wind farm that is expected to power the equivalent of about 350,000 homes across Rhode Island and Connecticut.

“These clean energy projects create jobs, deliver locally generated power, and help provide an affordable, stable source of electricity at a time when families and businesses are struggling with rising fossil fuel costs,” Conservation Law Foundation staff attorney Anxhela Mile said in a statement.

Polluter Accountability Advances in the Courts

In the courts, plaintiffs fighting for accountability against major polluters notched some recent procedural wins. Just days before the midterm election in which trillionaire Elon Musk – who poured nearly half a billion dollars into Republican candidates – got trounced, a federal court in Mississippi denied a bid from Musk’s company xAI to dismiss a Clean Air Act citizen lawsuit brought by the NAACP challenging the company’s unpermitted operations of gas turbines at its Colossus 2 data center. The ruling came on the heels of the same court rejecting the Trump DOJ’s claim that the administration has the unilateral authority to block the NAACP’s citizen suit under the Clean Air Act.

“The Clean Air Act promises that communities that have been failed by federal, state, and local leaders have the right to go to court to protect themselves from illegal pollution, and this ruling makes it clear that this right cannot be tossed aside simply because a massive corporation finds it inconvenient,” Kym Meyer, litigation director for the Southern Environmental Law Center, said in a statement. “This decision is a victory for communities across the nation, but especially for those in South Memphis and North Mississippi that have been forced to breathe the unlawful air pollution being spewed from xAI’s unpermitted power plant. We will continue to fight to hold the tech company accountable in court.”

Then on Nov. 2, a state court in Oregon denied fossil fuel industry defendants’ motions to dismiss a climate accountability lawsuit filed by Multnomah County against ExxonMobil and other big oil firms and trade associations. The lawsuit, filed in 2023, aims to hold defendants liable for alleged deception on climate dangers and seeks more than $51 billion in damages for past climate-related harms, like the deadly 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome, as well as for future adaptation expenses.

“The Court validated what we have been saying from day one. This case deserves to be heard on the merits and Multnomah County wants its day in court,” County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson said in response to the ruling from the Multnomah County Circuit Court.

Notably, the court rejected the industry defendants’ federal preemption argument (claiming that the Clean Air Act bars the county’s suit), recognizing that while the case involves interstate greenhouse gas emissions, the alleged wrongdoing is deceptive conduct or fraud. That distinction is important not just to Multnomah County’s case but to the more than two dozen other climate accountability suits pending against Big Oil, including one brought by Boulder County, Colorado that is currently before the US Supreme Court. Oil companies are making the same federal preemption argument in the Boulder case, and if the Supreme Court accepts that argument, it could seriously undermine these cases and make it harder to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for climate damage. But at least for now, the Multnomah County case is moving forward, as are several other climate deception cases against Exxon and its industry peers.

And finally, there is the landmark climate lawsuit brought by 15 young Canadians against their federal government where a historic full evidentiary trial is currently underway. Over the past week, experts in climate science, economics, climate policy, and international law all testified in support of the youth plaintiffs, many of whom testified themselves the week prior. The Canadian government will start presenting its defense on Monday and is expected to call upon four expert witnesses.

Regardless of how the case ultimately turns out, just having an open trial like this where the climate policies of a national government can be scrutinized, climate science can be brought into the courtroom, and young people can talk about how they are experiencing real harms today, is a big step towards advancing accountability and justice.

Further Reading

Check out my latest published articles:

“What the Midterm ‘Bluenami’ Means for Climate Action and Environmental Protection,” Sierra, https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/what-midterm-bluenami-means-climate-action-and-environmental-protection

“The Midterms Are Finally Here. So Are Surging Costs and Corruption, Which Remain Top Concerns for Voters,” Sierra, https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/midterms-are-finally-here-so-are-surging-costs-and-corruption-which-remain-top-concerns

“A Landmark Youth Climate Trial Against the Canadian Government Is About to Begin,” Inside Climate News, https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23102026/a-landmark-youth-climate-trial-against-the-canadian-government-is-about-to-begin/

“Trump Administration Renews Effort to Block the Nearly Completed Revolution Wind,” Sierra, https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/trump-administration-renews-effort-block-nearly-completed-revolution-wind

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Youth plaintiffs in the climate case La Rose v. His Majesty the King. Credit: Photo courtesy of Our Children's Trust.

Story co-published with Climate in the Courts

A historic climate trial kicked off on Monday at Canada’s Federal Court in Vancouver in a case brought by young Canadians against their federal government over what they say are insufficient climate policies that violate their constitutional rights. It is the first federal youth climate trial in Canadian history, and marks one of the first times anywhere in the world that national government is facing this type of full evidentiary trial in a climate change legal action from youth activists.

The case, La Rose v. His Majesty the King, was first filed in 2019 by 15 children and teens from across Canada who have all directly experienced extreme weather events and adverse health and quality of life impacts linked to a rapidly warming planet. Their amended complaint, lodged in 2024 after the court initially tossed out their original case, challenges Canada’s framework greenhouse gas emissions reduction statute (called the Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act) and 2030 climate plan. Plaintiffs say these policies enable an emissions trajectory that is incompatible with a stable climate system, in violation of their rights to life, liberty and security of the person under section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. They seek not only a court declaration of rights’ infringement by the government, but also an order for the government to develop and implement a science-based “climate recovery plan” for swift decarbonization.

“This case is about the most fundamental rights of children in Canada,” plaintiffs’ counsel Catherine Boies Parker told the court in her opening statement, “and how those rights are affected by what the Supreme Court of Canada has called an ‘existential threat.’” Parker outlined the legal argument that the government’s conduct – including setting inadequate emissions reduction targets and failing to meet them – contributes to dangerous climate change and thus constitutes breaches of young Canadians’ fundamental rights. Plaintiffs also argue that Canada has an affirmative or positive obligation to take action to protect their constitutional rights in the face of grave climate harms – a novel claim that Canadian courts have not yet grappled with in the context of climate change.

The government contends that it has no such obligation at all. The Canadian Charter, part of Canada’s constitution, “was never intended to solve existential crises,” BJ Wray, counsel for the federal government defendants, told the court.

Wray repeatedly emphasized the global nature of the climate crisis in arguing that Canada cannot solely tackle the problem and eliminate the harms to the young plaintiffs. “It would be impossible for Canada to fulfill the obligation of ensuring a safe climate system on its own,” Wray said. “Climate change is a global problem that can only be remedied with a global solution.”

“The evidence in this case will show the harms are not inflicted by the government,” Wray added, an assertion that was met with skepticism by the judge, Justice Simon Fothergill. “At all?” he questioned in a tone of disbelief. Wray responded by repeating that the climate problem is global, and noted that Canada has been reducing its greenhouse gas emissions over the last 20 years.

Canada further argues that the challenged policy, the Net Zero Act, is not unlawful and does not require specific levels of emissions reductions, nor does it require the government to achieve the targets it sets. “The Net Zero Act is a procedural statute, full stop,” Wray told the court.

The Net Zero Act, enacted in 2021, requires the Canadian government to set periodic targets intended to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and to develop plans for meeting those targets. Canada is nowhere close to meeting its 2030 target of a 40 to 45 percent emissions reduction, and many of the measures in its 2030 plan have been scrapped or weakened under Prime Minister Mark Carney. Climate Action Tracker, a project that assesses countries’ alignment with the Paris Agreement goal for limiting warming to well below 2°C, recently rated Canada’s policies and action as “critically insufficient.”

“The Government of Canada is committed to fighting climate change and reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. As this matter is before the courts, we cannot comment further,” Keean Nembhard, senior strategic communications advisor in Canada’s Office of the Minister of the Environment, Climate Change, and Nature, said in an emailed statement.

Under current global climate policies, Canada is projected to experience 5°C of average warming towards the end of the century, according to the government’s own updated climate assessment report released last month. That level of temperature increase, Parker noted, would be “catastrophic.”

Parker told the court that just because climate change is a huge issue, and one that is inherently political, does not mean that courts should have no role to play. “Courts around the world have concluded they can and must address this greatest crisis of our lifetime,” she argued. She referenced the International Court of Justice’s landmark 2025 climate advisory opinion that affirmed that all countries have stringent due diligence obligations, under existing international law, to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in accordance with the best available science.

Justice Fothergill expressed interest in understanding how Canada’s international legal obligations should inform its domestic law duties when it comes to climate. The La Rose case is the first of its kind in the world to go to trial following the ICJ’s climate advisory opinion.

“We’re going to see how international law is going to fold into domestic law [on climate change] for one of the first times,” said Kelly Matheson, deputy director of global strategy at Our Children’s Trust, one of the organizations supporting the youth plaintiffs.

“It is going to be a long trial where the evidence is going to be put out in open court, and being able to build that robust trial record is rare in climate litigation,” Matheson added. “There have been other cases around the world that have presented limited amounts of evidence, but not that robust trial record.”

In the U.S., a youth climate lawsuit against the state of Montana went to trial in 2023, and the plaintiffs in Held v. Montana ultimately won their case. That trial, which featured testimony from plaintiffs and experts in climate science, medicine, policy, Indigenous affairs, and the renewable energy transition, ran for a week and a half.

The Canadian trial is expected to run for four weeks, with a closing session slated for February. The format will be similar to the Montana trial, with youth plaintiffs and their experts taking the stand, followed by government defendants presenting their case.

Plaintiff Kira Young was the first to testify on Monday. Young, who grew up in Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories, discussed her personal experience during Canada’s record 2023 wildfire season, including a mandatory evacuation from her home that she described as “terrifying.”

“I worry often about what the future will look like for Yellowknife and the North,” Young said, adding that she is “so scared” that the pain and hardships she talked about are “just the beginning” as the climate crisis rapidly worsens.

The court will hear more testimonies this week from plaintiffs and several of their experts.

Matheson said a decision could come sometime in early 2028. And if the Canadian plaintiffs, like their counterparts in Montana, end up winning, she said it would be highly significant.

“With Canada being a major historic emitter and one of the top producers of oil and gas today, if we’re able to secure a robust win in Canada, which I think we will be able to, that has global implications, both legally and for the fossil fuel sector,” Matheson said.

Climate science is clear that fossil fuels must be phased out to avert catastrophic and irreversible climate consequences. While the court will not require Canada to follow a specific policy pathway, it could order the government to develop a plan guided by climate science, which would seemingly imply that Canada must swiftly transition away from fossil fuels.

“If Canada is judicially required to fast track off of fossil fuels, that is going to have global implications,” Matheson said. “It’s going to set a precedent, or be persuasive, all over the world.”

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As President Trump’s war in Iran drags on, 2026 has set a new record for the number of days where the average price of gasoline has exceeded $4 a gallon. “When dependence on fossil fuels leaves household budgets at the mercy of war and volatile global markets, it is ordinary people who pay the price for an energy system built around fossil fuels,” 350.org US campaigns manager Candice Fortin said in a statement.

With U.S. voters set to go to the polls in two weeks for the 2026 midterm election (and early voting has already started), the economy and the soaring cost of living are top concerns. Polling indicates that most Americans are feeling financially strained and think that the country is headed in the wrong direction. New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index (CPI) backs up this widespread sense of economic anxiety and aggravation.

Overall inflation rose to 3.7 percent in September, up from 3.4 percent in August. It is the highest reported increase since May when the annual inflation rate of 4.2 percent reached a three-year peak. And as the Guardian noted, September’s figure is the highest that inflation has been just ahead of a midterm election (excluding the COVID-19 pandemic) since 1990.

Much of the rise stems from skyrocketing energy and fuel costs linked to President Trump’s ongoing war with Iran. According to the CPI: “The index for gasoline rose 9.1 percent in September, accounting for over half of the monthly all items increase. The energy index increased 5.2 percent over the month following a 2.1 percent increase in August.” Energy prices overall have climbed by more than 20 percent over the last 12 months, with electricity up 4.4 percent, gasoline up 34.2 percent, and fuel oil up by a staggering 74.2 percent during that time.

But it is not just higher energy and gasoline costs that have consumers feeling pinched. Prices are up nearly across the board, on everything from food to insurance. Volatile and climate-destabilizing fossil fuels underpin the economic system, and therefore it makes sense to interpret the current inflationary economic woes as a crisis of fossil fuel dependency.

When fuel prices soar due to geopolitical turmoil, it impacts the price of food and other goods that are shipped or trucked to their retail markets. Food prices also rise when nitrogen-based fertilizer costs go up, since fossil gas is the primary feedstock for this fertilizer. High jet fuel costs typically mean higher airfare, as we’re currently seeing. Plastics and other everyday consumer items made from petrochemicals rise in price as the costs for their oil and gas feedstocks increase.

There is a term for this – “fossilflation.” The European Central Bank’s Isabel Schnabel first introduced the term during a 2022 speech in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which precipitated an energy price shock (especially in Europe). Schnabel warned that “dependence on fossil energy sources is not only considered a peril to our planet, it is also increasingly seen as a threat to national security and our values of liberty, freedom and democracy.”

“Put simply: fossilflation is when the cost of everything rises because our economic systems are still built to run on fossil fuels,” Mallika Singhal, senior coordinator for global communications at 350.org, wrote in a July article.

Fossil fuels, Singhal notes, “are an energy source whose supply and price remain volatile, controlled by a handful of producers, shipping lanes, and governments who can disrupt it on a whim. And it’s a familiar problem because we know that oil shocks have hit roughly every decade since 1973: from the Arab oil embargo and the Iran-Iraq War, to the 1990 Gulf War, the 2008 financial crisis, the Arab Spring, and Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine – each one driving prices up and economies into turmoil.”

350.org, the global climate action organization co-founded by veteran environmental activist and author Bill McKibben, has been at the forefront of calling out the links between fossil fuel dependency and inflationary price shocks.

“What we are witnessing is fossilflation – real, direct and hitting people where it hurts: their pockets,” 350.org’s Candice Fortin said in a statement responding to the latest U.S. Consumer Price Index inflation numbers released last week. “Rising gas prices are squeezing household budgets, and the impacts are spreading across the economy, making everyday life more expensive at a time when many families are already struggling to get by.”

“We cannot keep asking households to absorb the costs while fossil fuel companies benefit from market volatility,” Fortin added. “Governments must accelerate a fair transition to affordable, homegrown renewable energy, so people have greater energy security and are no longer held hostage to the next fossil fuel crisis.”

Oil companies are raking in enormous windfall profits from the fuel price spikes. When oil majors like ExxonMobil and Chevron announce their third-quarter earnings at the end of this month, expect substantial reported gains – perhaps more than double those from the third quarter of last year. This profiteering at the expense of working families and average households is sparking renewed calls for a windfall profits tax and the related demand to make polluters pay as the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis accelerates.

The ”2026 state of the climate report” published last week provides the latest update on the alarming trends of climate breakdown. “We are witnessing the rapid destabilization of the Earth’s climate system,” top climate and Earth system scientists explain. “This is no longer a warning for the future; it is a diagnosis of the present. Earth’s life-support systems are being pushed beyond stable limits, with changes unfolding faster than our ability to respond… Climate-related changes appear to be accelerating and intensifying, raising concerns about reinforcing feedbacks and crossing of tipping points, with potential irreversible impacts.”

This “rapid destabilization” of the climate system is itself bringing about soaring economic costs and increased disruptions, from extreme weather disasters (costing more than $3.3 trillion since 1980 in the U.S. alone) to supply chain crunches to unaffordable home insurance premiums. Responding and adapting to climate-related disasters and impacts comes with a hefty price tag, and costs are only likely to get steeper the longer climate mitigation and adaption are delayed.

“Climateflation”, closely related to “fossilflation,” describes the economic reality we are now facing, according to scholars Ryan Katz-Rosene and James Jackson, who published a research paper on the topic in June. They argue that climate-related price increases “will likely amplify other geopolitical economic stressors” and contribute to overall greater political and economic volatility and instability.

Taming climateflation (and by extension, fossilflation) demands urgent climate action and shifting away from fossil fuels. As Katz-Rosene and Jackson write in an August piece published in The Conversation: “The net effects of climateflation are likely to be increasing costs for the foreseeable future. That is likely to remain the case until we can power most of the global economy without fossil fuels, bring emissions down to net zero and halt further warming, and build infrastructure that is truly resilient to new climate conditions.”

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Climate accountability and community advocates in Australia celebrate a landmark climate ruling on October 7, 2026 from the country’s top court. Credit: Courtesy of Climate Media Centre via news release

It’s been a big week for climate law and accountability, with the highest courts in two major fossil fuel producing countries hearing or deciding landmark cases that could have significant implications for the fossil fuel industry.

In Australia – the world’s fourth-largest producer and second-largest exporter of coal – the nation’s top court delivered a ruling on October 7 in a case involving a legal challenge to the approval of a major coal mine expansion. The expansion project, approved by the New South Wales planning commission, would have doubled the mine’s coal output and extended its operations by more than 20 years, unleashing more than 800 million metric tons of additional carbon pollution. After an appeals court last year ruled in favor of a group of farmers and local residents challenging the project approval, the mine operator took the case to Australia’s High Court. It was the first climate case that this court has taken up.

The High Court ruled, in a split 3-2 decision, that the mine expansion’s approval was invalid because the planning commission had failed to adequately consider the downstream or “scope 3” emissions from the eventual burning of the coal or how those emissions might be mitigated. Since the extracted coal would be exported overseas, nearly all of the project’s greenhouse gas emissions (98 percent) would fit into that category. The court’s decision means that government authorities and fossil fuel developers cannot disregard these emissions even if they occur outside of Australia.

Lawyers representing the community group challenging the mine expansion called the court’s decision “groundbreaking.”

“This is an historic ruling for Australian environmental law and for the communities who have been fighting for accountability in the fossil fuel approvals process,” said Anita O’Hart, principal lawyer at the firm Johnson Legal. “This ruling will be applied by courts and planning authorities across Australia, and it will be studied internationally as one of the most significant domestic climate law decisions in the world.”

“The High Court has said what we have always known: we cannot dig up coal, ship it overseas, watch it drive climate change, and then pretend the consequences have nothing to do with us and won’t be felt by us,” said Wendy Wales, a retired science teacher and president of group that challenged the project. “We can’t ignore physics, chemistry and biology. We must live within Nature’s limits and this ruling endorses that.”

Jacqueline Peel, a climate law expert and law professor at the University of Melbourne, wrote in a piece in the Guardian that the decision “provides Australia with some much-needed climate credibility, as it faces pressure from Pacific neighbours over fossil fuel approvals at the pre-COP31 negotiations in Fiji and Tuvalu this week” and that it also “brings us in line with recent judicial findings elsewhere in the world.” Fossil fuel producers in Australia, she suggested, should be “shaking in their boots” in the wake of the court’s ruling.

Indeed, a coal industry trade association issued a scathing statement in response to the High Court decision, calling it a “further blow to Australia’s prospects of meeting continued demand for our high-quality coal from global customers.”

Legal experts say the ruling “sets a new standard for coal and gas projects” in New South Wales and potentially all across Australia, raising the prospect that the fossil fuel industry will face continued legal challenges to its development and expansion plans in that country.

Supporters of a climate case filed by Boulder, CO against Big Oil rally outside of the U.S. Supreme Court on October 5, 2026. Credit: Kevin Wolf/AP Content Services for Fossil Free Media

Meanwhile, here in the U.S. our top national court – the Supreme Court – opened its new term on October 5 by hearing a “blockbuster” case called Suncor v. County Commissioners of Boulder, one of the most anticipated and perhaps most consequential climate cases ever to come before the court.

I previewed the case here, and since it has received widespread press coverage I won’t get into the details. Basically it is all about accountability for the widespread and worsening harm caused by fossil fueled climate change, and whether or not local or state governments can even have a chance to make the case in court that major oil and gas companies should be held liable for the climate-related damage inflicted upon their communities, given that the companies have allegedly lied about climate consequences of their products for decades and stymied climate action.

Boulder, Colorado’s case against ExxonMobil and Suncor is one of dozens of climate accountability lawsuits pending against the fossil fuel industry in courts across the U.S., and if the industry gets its way at the Supreme Court, most if not all of them would be wiped out.

The stakes are incredibly high on both sides. The oil companies warn that they are facing the threat of “ruinous” liability with a price tag on the order of billions, or perhaps even trillions, of dollars. But communities like Boulder are already facing steep costs to recover from climate disasters and adapt to worsening climate impacts, and absent accountability from the industry driving much of this damage, those costs will continue to balloon and the burden will fall entirely onto the public and local taxpayers.

“The costs are projected to climb higher for our families and our taxpayers. Faced with these rising costs, we ask, is it fair for communities to shoulder these costs alone? We believe it is not,” Marta Loachamin, a county commissioner for Boulder County, said in a statement. “For decades, the companies producing and selling fossil fuels knew that their products contribute to a changing climate. These companies are asking the Court to help them evade responsibility. “

For years, fossil fuel industry lawyers have pressed the argument that lawsuits like Boulder’s are unprecedented attempts to regulate worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. They say that addressing climate change is a matter for the federal government (even as their corporate clients have worked for decades to block federal climate policy), and that federal law defeats or “preempts” state law claims pertaining to climate. Kannon Shanmugam, counsel for ExxonMobil, made this very argument to the Supreme Court on Monday.

Part of his argument was grounded in the “extraterritoriality” principle arising from the Constitution – that individual states or municipalities cannot sue over conduct or, in this case, pollution, occurring outside of their borders. It is unclear if a majority of the justices will endorse such a sweeping constitutional theory. A more likely outcome might be a holding that the Clean Air Act preempts state law claims relating to greenhouse gas emissions. Boulder, for its part, argues that its case is not at all about regulating GHG emissions. And ironically, the EPA under Trump is now disclaiming its Clean Air Act authority to regulate climate pollution (a position that is facing legal challenges), which some legal experts say undermines the industry’s preemption argument.

The Suncor case in the U.S. and the coal mine case in Australia are very different cases, but in some respects, they raise the same important question about responsibility or accountability for greenhouse gas emissions and climate harm. Australia’s highest court has issued a pro-accountability ruling in saying that the coal industry and regulators are responsible for the full scope of an extraction project’s emissions even if they occur beyond Australia’s borders. Will the U.S. Supreme Court allow Boulder and other communities the opportunity to try to hold Big Oil responsible for the damage it has caused them, or will it shield the industry from legal accountability (having to face trial) simply because greenhouse gas emissions transcend state borders?

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Screen shot of UN Secretary-General António Guterres addressing the UN General Assembly in New York on September 22, 2026.

Last week I was in New York City attending several Climate Week events focused on climate litigation and accountability. In recent years, Climate Week has seen a handful of events each September organized around those topical themes – two years ago for example, there was a panel made up of folks from a newly formed group called Extreme Weather Survivors who told their first-hand stories of experiencing climate-related weather disasters and called for major polluters to be held accountable.

This year, the climate accountability panel discussions that took place during Climate Week (an annual event held on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York) did so against a backdrop of democratic backsliding and escalating backlash to accountability efforts from corporate polluters and their allies in government, as well as ever-worsening extreme weather driven primarily by more than a century of unchecked fossil fuel combustion. These trends, starkly apparent in the U.S., are by no means limited to this country. Colombia, which in April hosted the world’s first-ever conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels, recently became the latest Latin American country to see a far-right government come into power. New Zealand, which saw a right-wing government – the country’s most conservative in decades – elected a few years ago, just passed a law banning climate tort lawsuits and shielding polluters from accountability. And Nepal recently suffered one of the latest climate-linked disasters with the deadly and devastating landslide and flash floods in late August stemming from glacial collapse that wiped out entire villages.

These are undoubtedly perilous times we’re living through, and if my piece from last week is any indication, I’m really not all that optimistic about the future for our civilization. But being in New York last week in the company of people fighting tirelessly for justice and accountability raised my spirits – and so I wanted to share some reflections here based on three events I attended during Climate Week.

I think my main takeaways boil down to three broad points: 1) It is more important than ever to come together in solidarity and unite across struggles and social justice movements and across geographic borders; 2) Related to that, the climate accountability movement, like the climate crisis itself, is global, and polluting corporations and countries will not be able to evade liability everywhere; 3) Communities and advocates pushing for accountability will keep going no matter what.

Solidarity

During a September 22 “No Immunity for Big Oil” panel organized by the Center for Climate Integrity and the Union of Concerned Scientists, several speakers connected the fossil fuel industry’s push for legal immunity to efforts to attack U.S. democracy. As former Washington Governor Jay Inslee has said, the American jury is one of the most fundamental democratic institutions that there is. Preventing climate lawsuits against oil companies from ever reaching a jury, as fossil fuel interests and their government backers are desperately trying to do, is “un-American,” Inslee previously told me in an interview. He has been one of the most outspoken opponents of Republican-led legislation currently pending in Congress, the “Stop Climate Shakedowns Act,” that would give sweeping immunity to the fossil fuel industry from climate accountability laws and litigation.

“I’m mad as hell about this,” Inslee said during last week’s panel. “Nobody should be above the law in the United States.” He said that this is “a basic issue of democracy.”

Former Washington Governor Jay Inslee speaks during a September 22, 2026 panel held during Climate Week NYC

The Stop Climate Shakedowns Act, introduced in April by Rep. Harriet Hageman and Sen. Ted Cruz, has been gaining co-sponsors in the House (so far 24 House members, all Republicans, have signed on) and was slated to come before the House Judiciary Committee for consideration on September 16. But the committee adjourned and didn’t take up the bill, at least for now. Inslee said there is a good chance that Republicans will try to push it through after the November election during Congress’ lame duck session. And Democrats, he said, should be prepared to rally to defeat it.

“[Democrats] will be united. But we’ve got to raise the profile on our outrage,” Inslee said, suggesting that opposing Big Oil immunity should be at the top of Democrats’ list of priorities. Some Democratic lawmakers are already speaking out in opposition to the immunity bill, as I previously reported.

Versions of that legislation shielding polluters from any liability for climate damage have already passed in five states, including Tennessee. Justin Jones, a Democratic state representative in Tennessee, talked about that during the panel, and he connected the fight against corporate immunity to the fight against efforts to undermine democracy (i.e., restricting voting) and to strip away civil rights and liberties.

“We have to start getting out of the silos of our movements and connecting our struggle,” Jones said.

The theme of solidarity also came up during a panel I attended on September 24 about youth climate litigation, which featured an international dialogue among young climate activists and plaintiffs from Japan, South Korea, and the U.S. Although the lawsuits these young people are involved in are different (I plan to report more on the Japanese and South Korean cases in a later piece, stay tuned), they are all connected through a shared pursuit of generational justice.

“All over the globe, we’re raising our voices towards the same goal,” said Katrin Miyazawa, a plaintiff from Youth Climate Case Japan.

“Even though we come from different countries and legal systems, many of our struggles are very similar,” she added in a post-event press release. “We can learn from each other’s experiences, strategies, and successes. The more climate cases succeed, the more examples and legal foundations we create for others to build on. Knowing that we are connected across borders, facing the same global crisis and working to hold governments and companies accountable, gives me a lot of strength and hope.”

Youth climate activists (foreground) from Japan, South Korea, and the U.S. came together during a September 24, 2026 panel about international youth climate litigation.

A Global Movement

Indeed, the battle for climate justice and accountability is one that transcends borders. From youth climate demonstrations and lawsuits to campaigns and legislative initiatives demanding the polluters pay for climate harms, efforts in pursuit of climate accountability are happening all around the world.

At the start of Climate Week and the UNGA, an international coalition of climate campaigners delivered petitions to the UN with over 2 million signatures from people all over the globe calling on governments to hold polluters accountable and force them to pay for the damage they have caused. UN Secretary-General António Guterres then echoed this demand during his final General Assembly speech.

“Those who polluted the most – and profited the most – must do far more to repair the damage they caused,” Guterres said. “Polluters must pay.”

The U.S. has seen a particularly intense backlash to attempts to make polluters pay through climate lawsuits and Superfund-style state laws, as the fossil fuel industry has united with the Trump administration and Republican elected officials to push back against these laws and lawsuits on multiple fronts. And they are starting to notch some wins in the courts. New York’s landmark climate superfund law, for example, was just struck down by two courts in parallel legal challenges brought by industry groups and Republican-led states as well as by the Trump administration. Last week Michigan’s pioneering antitrust lawsuit against Big Oil was dismissed by a federal court. And the U.S. Supreme Court could soon deliver a knockout blow to many of the pending climate suits filed against the industry. The court is taking up one of those cases, brought by Boulder, Colorado, in oral arguments on Monday, October 5; a broad ruling in favor of oil companies Suncor and Exxon could effectively shut down avenues for climate liability at the state and local level, shielding polluters from accountability.

Even if that does end up happening, there are other lawsuits underway against some of these fossil fuel companies in other countries that would not be affected by a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court. Shell, for example, is facing climate cases in the Netherlands and the UK, in addition to the suits it is trying to fend off in the U.S. Those cases and others against big polluters would continue regardless of what happens with the U.S. litigation.

“There are dozens of suits pending in the United States to use tort and consumer protection law to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable. And they are facing massive blowback and pushback like we’ve never seen before from the industry and its backers in power,” Nikki Reisch, director of the climate and energy program at the Center for International Environmental Law, said during a September 23 panel about global perspectives on climate litigation. “But I think the message here,” she added, “is that there are multiple channels, jurisdictions, legal theories, defendants and actors who will continue to bring these claims because the harm continues, and that cry for justice and the avenues for accountability are strong.”

And as another panelist reminded the audience, some courts and judges are starting to not only be willing to hear these cases, but to issue rulings aligned with justice and accountability that are informed by climate science. Just last year for example, the International Court of Justice handed down its historic climate change advisory opinion affirming that climate action is a legal obligation.

“The law is not static. It changes,” said Elaine Johnson, an Australian environmental lawyer. “There are courts and judges that are willing to look at the law in a new light, given what we now know communities are experiencing on the ground in terms of climate change. And the state of science now is at such a high level that we can start attributing individual projects and companies to specific climate harms. So, not all is lost.”

Keep Going

The work to advance and fight for climate accountability will continue. It must, because the stakes are too high and giving in is not an option. That was a clear takeaway message from the Climate Week events I attended.

“Youth all around the world are fighting back, fighting back against the impacts of climate change through the legal system, because we don’t have a choice,” said Delaney Reynolds, a 27-year-old climate activist from Miami and plaintiff in youth climate cases against the state of Florida and the federal government (read more about her story here). “It’s either sit back, and watch governments continue to protect the polluting ways of the fossil fuel industry, or it’s take a stand and fight to protect the planet, the environment and places we love all around the world.”

Jones, the Tennessee state representative, invoked the words of Frederick Douglas in urging people to be persistent and continue fighting in the face of oppression. “Let it inflame and embolden our resistance… We have to agitate, agitate, agitate, agitate, agitate.”

The mounting backlash by the fossil fuel industry and its political backers, Reisch said, is an indication of the strength and effectiveness of the climate accountability movement.

“We can’t forget, that not only is this a sign that what we’re doing is working, and we need to keep going. It’s also galvanizing the movement,” she said. “People don’t accept the idea that this industry, or those who are harming the climate and our rights are above the law. And people are rallying and will continue to rally together.”

Guterres also offered some words of encouragement to accountability advocates during his UNGA remarks: “And to the leaders, cities, civil society and citizens working to hold [polluters] accountable: you are on the right side of history. Keep going.”

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Solar park at Gharo, near Karachi, Pakistan. Credit: شہاب via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

First off, a sincere apology for the delay in posting new content. While I strive to put out a new article of One Earth Now roughly once a week, I cannot promise that I will always stick to this schedule. In all honesty, I’ve been struggling a bit these last few weeks in trying to find anything remotely positive or uplifting to report on. The news on the planetary-scale, existential crises that are already underway has been beyond grim – from the UN report “Limiting Overshoot” that officially acknowledges that global heating will exceed the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal, to the hair-on-fire warnings from AI industry insiders that this technology has the potential to wipe out humanity within this decade. Whether we’re talking about catastrophic climate breakdown or rogue AI super-intelligence setting in motion some cataclysmic, humanity-destroying event, it is becoming somewhat harder to imagine that our species has much of a long-term future on this beautiful planet. Or at least, a future that is sustainable and just and one that allows the global population not just to survive, but to thrive.

That doesn’t mean that such a future is impossible or that it’s not worth fighting to try to turn things around. With so much at stake, giving up at this point is foolish and self-defeating. While the forces destroying the world have an enormous amount of money and political power, the other side has the collective power of the masses, or people power. When it comes to climate action, for example, research has shown that the vast majority of people around the world – up to 89 percent – want their governments to do more to address this crisis. And there are many, many people from all corners of the globe who are pushing hard and taking action on climate and environmental sustainability. Some prominent, high-profile folks are recognized here, on The Independent’s Climate 100 List for 2026.

Circling back to the UN report on 1.5°C overshoot, I will say that the report did get quite a bit of press coverage (see here and here, for example), though not nearly as much as the new alarming AI warnings did. But also, and this is evident for those of us who work on climate issues, the fact that global heating is on track to surpass the 1.5°C target isn’t exactly news. This has already been clear for some time. Warnings issued by climate and Earth system scientist have grown increasingly dire over the years – and yet it hasn’t yet led to the kind of systemic and urgent action necessary to avert the worst outcomes. Still, as the report points out, “every fraction of a degree matters.” Actions that are happening today around the world, to build out renewable energy and implement resilient and regenerative agriculture, for example, help prevent greenhouse gas emissions and therefore reduce risks and damage.

The transition to clean, renewable energy is underway, but it needs to go much further and much, much faster. That is the message of a new report released today titled “Delivering on the UAE Consensus: Tracking progress toward tripling renewable energy capacity and doubling energy efficiency by 2030.” As the title suggests, the report examines progress on the goal, established at COP28 in Dubai in 2023, of tripling installed renewable energy capacity and doubling energy efficiency by 2030. There is still a long way to go to reach the renewables goal, even as renewable energy grows at a record pace. As the press release accompanying the report states: “To meet the global target of tripling renewables to 11.2 TW by 2030, installed capacity must more than double today’s levels. Despite a record 693 gigawatts (GW) of new renewables power added in 2025, the annual growth rate would have to accelerate to 1 200 GW on average between 2026 and 2030.”

What is urgently needed is more debt-free financing and support from governments, investors, and the international community to accelerate this transition.

“Energy security is not compatible with fossil fuel dependence,” Anne Jellema, executive director of 350.org, said during a recent webinar. “Governments need to show us the proof of how they will accelerate renewable electrification, make that electricity not only clean but also affordable and accessible for everyone, and turn promises to end fossil fuels into credible, time-bound national plans.”

The webinar, titled “Renewables are Energy Security,” featured frontline stories from people working to implement the renewable energy transition on the ground, from Pakistan and the Philippines to Africa and Brazil.

In Pakistan, for example, Omais Abdur Rehman, of a group called Renewables First, spoke about how the country has deployed 38 gigawatts of solar power since 2018, saving some $12 billion dollars in imported fossil fuel costs. “It was a citizen-led revolution,” he said. “Pakistan’s energy transition is no longer waiting on the government, with households and businesses importing 55 GW of solar and deploying 38 GW since 2018 while battery storage imports surged 220 percent in a single year.”

In the Philippines, Noel Rosal, governor of Albay province, talked about how his community has launched a renewable energy roadmap and strives to meet its goal of reaching 100 percent renewables by 2030.

“Albay is ready to lead, but we cannot do this alone,” he said. “To the global community, to partners and to investors: support Albay not because it is easy, but because it is necessary. That means making green finance directly accessible to provincial and local governments, with simpler procedures and fairer terms. It means democratizing technology, sharing knowledge, transferring skills and building local capacity so renewable energy serves people, not just markets.”

“And it means backing community-led models,” Rosal added. “When communities have a meaningful role in owning and shaping their energy future, they are better placed to protect it and sustain it. Albay has the ambition to deliver a 100% renewable future. What we need now are the tools, resources and partnerships to make it possible and to show the world what a genuinely community-led energy transition can look like.”

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Climate activists rally inside the New York statehouse in Albany, New York in December 2024, calling on Gov. Kathy Hochul to sign the New York climate superfund bill into law. Credit: Dana Drugmand

Story co-published with Climate in the Courts

State efforts to hold major fossil fuel producers liable for their role in driving the climate crisis and to force them to pay for the resulting damage have run into a roadblock with a federal court striking down New York’s Climate Change Superfund Act on Monday. The court’s decision was hailed as a victory by West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey and by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, both of whom led legal challenges aiming to overturn New York’s $75 billion polluter pays climate law.

Those lawsuits, launched in February 2025, alleged that New York’s law was unconstitutional and barred under federal law, arguing that the law acted as a de facto regulation of interstate and global greenhouse gas emissions. West Virginia led a 22-state coalition of Republican state attorneys general, joined by several fossil fuel industry groups, in suing New York state officials to block the law. The U.S. Chamber along with the American Petroleum Institute, the National Mining Association, and the Business Council of New York State, Inc. brought a separate legal challenge that made similar arguments, and the two cases were thus consolidated.

Following a hearing on July 30 during which the court appeared skeptical of New York’s defense of its climate superfund law, Chief U.S. District Judge Brenda K. Sannes of the Northern District of New York delivered her ruling on August 31, finding the state’s law to be invalid. According to the court, New York’s law would effectively regulate greenhouse gas emissions and is therefore preempted by the Clean Air Act, the federal statute that authorizes the EPA to regulate interstate air pollution. The court also found that New York’s law is preempted by the foreign affairs doctrine, since climate change is a problem of global concern.

Sannes indicated that her decision was guided by a 2021 ruling from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirming dismissal of a climate tort lawsuit brought by the City of New York against a handful of big oil companies. The Second Circuit held that the City’s state tort claims seeking a damage payment were regulatory in nature and thus preempted by federal law. While some legal scholars have criticized that ruling, fossil fuel industry lawyers have leaned on it heavily in arguing against attempts to impose liability on energy companies, whether through state common law (tort) litigation or through state statutes like the superfund law. That argument, that there is no distinction between a common law claim seeking damages and a state cost recovery statute, resonated with Sannes, who wrote: “there is very little daylight left to distinguish [New York’s] Climate Act from the common-law claims in City of New York.”

New York’s Climate Change Superfund Act, signed into law by Governor Kathy Hochul in December 2024, sought to recover $75 billion from major fossil fuel producers – companies that generated over one billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions between 2000 and 2024. That money would go towards supporting climate change resiliency and adaptation projects in New York. The law left it up to state regulators to determine which companies would have to pay and how much each one owed, a process that was just starting to get underway.

Sannes’ ruling blocks that implementation from moving forward, at least for now. The New York Attorney General Office declined to say whether it plans to appeal, referring a request for comment to the governor’s office and the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC).

In a statement, DEC Commissioner Amanda Lefton, who was a defendant in the legal challenges along with New York Attorney General Letitia James, said that the work of helping New York prepare for and respond to damaging climate change impacts would continue.

“Despite rollbacks in Washington, New York State will continue efforts to help communities become more resilient to severe weather and reduce climate change pollution,” Lefton said. “While we are reviewing the decision and do not comment on pending litigation, we can say that New York will press ahead and work with partners at every level to advance climate action and resilience that delivers for New Yorkers today and for future generations.”

Ken Lovett, senior communications advisor on energy and environment for Governor Hochul, said in an emailed statement: “Taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill for damages caused by polluters. We are reviewing the decision to determine possible next steps.”

Is An Appeal on the Way?

Environmental groups and proponents of New York’s climate superfund law are calling on AG James to appeal the court’s decision, arguing that it is unfair for state taxpayers to shoulder the entire burden of climate change-related costs.

“New Yorkers are footing a massive and growing bill for climate adaptation and mitigation to keep communities safe from deadly floods, fires and heat waves. Big Oil must pay its fair share, relieving the burden from everyday New Yorkers who are suffering the consequences of this industry’s decades of recklessness,” said Food & Water Watch’s senior staff attorney Erin Doran. “We are grateful to Attorney General James for defending this law and we urge her to continue to fight for the Climate Change Superfund Act by appealing this unfortunate decision.”

“What New Yorkers know for sure is that the damages caused by the worsening climate are hammering their wallets and unless this decision is reversed, they will face higher taxes or reduced public services – or both – to the tune of $75 billion,” New York Public Interest Research Group senior policy advisor Blair Horner said in a statement. “NYPIRG urges New York State Attorney General Letitia James to file an appeal, not only to protect the public’s health and wellbeing, but to protect taxpayers too.”

If the ruling is appealed, it will go up to the Second Circuit – the same appeals court that decided that the City of New York’s climate tort case against Big Oil was preempted by federal law, a decision that ultimately influenced Sannes’ ruling.

A statement issued by New York state senator Liz Krueger, a lead sponsor of New York’s climate superfund law, suggests that an appeal is more than likely and asserts that the judges that take it up would be different this time around.

“I have always said that there would be many rounds of legal wrangling before the Climate Change Superfund could begin to provide relief for New Yorkers,” Krueger said. “It is unfortunate that Judge Sannes failed to recognize the clear distinction between a tort lawsuit, which was at issue in the New York City v. Chevron decision, and a state legislature exercising its constitutional powers to raise revenues and protect its citizens. Regardless, this case will now move up to the Second Circuit, where a new panel of judges will have the opportunity to acknowledge the difference between this case and Chevron, or, failing that, to revisit the Chevron decision, which has been widely criticized on both the left and the right.”

Will This Deter Other States?

While New York officials consider their next steps in the battle to defend their climate superfund law, climate accountability advocates say that the fight to make polluters pay for climate damage and adaptation costs will continue.

“Other states should move forward with fair legislation that makes polluters pay for their damage. With the Trump administration gutting climate protections, our campaign for a California climate superfund bill is gaining momentum every day,” said Maya Golden-Krasner, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, a group that has supported efforts in California to pass a climate superfund law.

Besides New York, Vermont is the only other state to have enacted a climate superfund law. Vermont was the first state in the U.S. to do so, passing its climate superfund bill in May 2024 following a round of devastating summer flooding the year before. Climate superfund legislation has been introduced in multiple states in recent years, though the legislative momentum seems to have stalled a bit amidst the legal challenges to the New York and Vermont laws. A decision in cases seeking to overturn Vermont’s climate superfund law remains pending.

According to Michael Gerrard, founder and faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, the ruling striking down the New York law is not binding on the Vermont court. “But I’m sure the Vermont judge will take it seriously,” he added.

It remains to be seen whether the ruling against New York’s climate superfund law will deter other states from moving forward with their own versions of the legislation. But, as Gerrard pointed out, an upcoming Supreme Court review of a climate tort case brought by Boulder, Colorado against big oil companies could end up foreclosing the approach of state climate superfunds altogether. The Supreme Court’s decision on the preemption question “could well be determinative of the state superfund cases,” Gerrard said.

The Supreme Court is set to hear the Boulder case on October 5.

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New Zealand Parliament building in Wellington. Credit: Office of the Clerk via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

New Zealand has enacted a controversial new law that explicitly prohibits climate change tort liability, effectively shielding major greenhouse gas emitters from being held responsible through the courts for their contributions to climate damage. The move makes New Zealand the first country in the world to institute a national ban on climate tort lawsuits, and it comes amidst mounting legislative efforts in the U.S. to similarly immunize polluters from any prospects of climate liability. The New Zealand liability shield, however, might be short-lived – depending on the outcome of the upcoming November election.

Last week, the New Zealand Parliament passed the Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Bill. The bill amends the country’s framework climate change law – the Climate Change Response Act 2002 – to make it clear that matters of addressing greenhouse gas emissions should be resolved by the political branches, not the courts, and that “no person (including the Crown) can be found liable in tort for emissions-related climate change effects.” The amendment also specifically calls out a live climate change tort lawsuit against a handful of New Zealand’s largest emitters that was slated to go to trial next year. With the bill’s passage, that lawsuit is stopped in its tracks.

The suit, Smith v. Fonterra, was filed in 2019 by Māori climate activist Mike Smith against half a dozen large corporate polluters in the agriculture and energy sectors, such as dairy titan Fonterra and petroleum supplier Z Energy. The defendants together account for about one-third of New Zealand’s carbon emissions. Smith’s case, brought under tort claims like nuisance and negligence, sought to hold the companies liable for their emissions that contribute to dangerous climate change.

In 2024, the New Zealand Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling dismissing the case, finding that Smith had alleged plausible claims that could be adjudicated through the court system. The decision allowed the case to proceed towards trial, which was scheduled to start in April 2027.

In response, the corporate defendants turned to their lobbyists to draft and push through a bill that would block the lawsuit before it could get to a trial. As Smith wrote in a recent article: “Fearing the evidence that would come out in an open courtroom, these big polluters bypassed the public and went straight through the back door to the highest office in the land.” The bill prohibiting tort liability for climate damage, he noted, was “effectively ghostwritten by the polluters themselves.” This lobbying was not disclosed, and it only came to light after the government had announced in May that it planned to make this change to the law.

“Executives from Z Energy and Fonterra had direct access to the Prime Minister’s Office. They handed over private briefing documents suggesting exactly how the law should be rewritten to exempt them from accountability,” Smith wrote in his article. “When investigative journalists and watchdogs asked for these documents under official transparency laws, the Prime Minister’s Office hid them, keeping the corporate collusion secret from the public.”

New Zealand’s right-wing coalition government, its most conservative in decades, has taken a number of steps to roll back climate policies, such as reversing a ban on offshore drilling exploration and weakening a methane reduction target. A recent report from the country’s independent Climate Change Commission warned that, under current policies, New Zealand will not meet its emissions reduction targets.

“The Government says, on the one hand, ‘don’t worry, we have climate legislation’, but, on the other, has consistently acted to weaken that legislation,” Laura MacKay, acting executive director of New Zealand-based Lawyers for Climate Action,” said in response to the passage of the climate tort prohibition bill. “It’s abundantly clear that the current application of New Zealand’s legislative framework means we are highly likely to miss our domestic targets, fail to uphold our international obligations, and leave New Zealanders highly exposed to the impacts of climate change - and now, an accountability lever has been removed before the courts could even test it.”

The government tried to justify its move by arguing that climate lawsuits like Smith’s would create a “parallel and contradictory” regime to the legislative framework established by the Climate Change Response Act. They also said that the litigation was creating business uncertainty.

“The courts are not the right place to resolve claims of harm from climate change, and tort law is not well-suited to respond to a problem like climate change,” Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said in a statement.

MacKay says that the government’s arguments are baseless. Ministry of Justice officials have acknowledged that there is no evidence that Smith’s case is actually creating business uncertainty, she noted. And the existing climate law, she explained, does nothing to hold polluters accountable for climate damage.

“Without tort liability, there’s no way of allocating responsibility for climate-related harm, which leaves the question of who’s going to be responsible and who’s going to pay,” MacKay said during a July webinar.

Critics of the government’s move say that it demonstrates that the government cares more about protecting polluters and their profits than advancing the public interest.

“This abuse of power – a law change made at the request of Fonterra and Z Energy – is yet more evidence that this Government is little more than a puppet for polluting corporations and industries,” said Greenpeace Aotearoa Programme Director Niamh O’Flynn.

“The effect of this legislation is clear: it would shield major greenhouse gas emitters while restricting the public’s ability to seek justice for climate harm,” ClientEarth CEO Laura Clarke said. “This is a political choice to prioritize short-term private profit over fairness, accountability and the rule of law.”

“Every week brings fresh images of forests on fire, towns underwater and families fleeing disasters that scientists have warned about for decades. The climate emergency is no longer measured in scientific reports. It is measured in funerals, evacuations, destroyed homes and shattered livelihoods,” Smith said in a statement.

“There is a profound moral failure in allowing the companies that have profited from climate pollution to use their political influence to avoid answering before a court,” he added. “Communities are paying the price while powerful corporate interests seek immunity from accountability.”

Liability Shield Efforts in the U.S.

That trend is already evident in the U.S., where the fossil fuel industry and its political backers have been ramping up efforts to shield the industry from climate accountability and litigation. As I reported last fall for Inside Climate News, these efforts are unfolding across multiple fronts, bolstered by a Trump administration that is going all out to “unleash” fossil fuels and protect the industry from any threats of regulation or liability. Trump’s Department of Justice, which recently renamed its environment division as the “energy” division and welcomed a senior lawyer from ExxonMobil onto its team, is currently suing several states over their climate accountability lawsuits and climate superfund laws targeting Big Oil.

The conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court could soon deliver a knockout blow to climate tort lawsuits brought (mostly) by state and local governments against fossil fuel companies. The court is slated to hear what’s being billed as a “blockbuster” climate case – Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County – on Oct. 5, in which oil companies are aiming to block Boulder, Colorado’s climate tort lawsuit and all similar cases pending against their industry on the proposition that federal law broadly precludes state law climate claims. “What [oil companies] advocate for is nothing less than a judicially crafted liability shield for the fossil fuel industry,” an amicus brief filed by 19 states led by Colorado and California in support of Boulder argues.

Industry lobbyists have also been active in the halls of Congress and statehouses in pursuit of a legislative climate liability shield. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) introduced a bill called the Stop Climate Shakedowns Act in April that would grant sweeping legal immunity to the fossil fuel industry, prohibiting climate lawsuits and climate superfund laws. It is framed in even broader terms that New Zealand’s liability shield bill, as it would ban not only climate tort claims but other types of claims like consumer protection brought against energy companies as well. Thus far, the bill has not gotten a lot of traction in Congress, and if Democrats succeed in gaining control of at least one chamber after the November election, it could likely end up just fading away. But the fossil fuel industry, it seems, already has a contingency plan.

It involves passing climate liability shield laws at the state level. Five states – Utah, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Iowa, and Louisiana – have already passed legislation shielding polluters from climate accountability. More Republican-led states could soon follow. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an organization that connects corporate lobbyists to conservative state lawmakers, recently adopted a model bill that would essentially ban climate liability and immunize big polluters from legal claims, both civil and criminal. The Center for Climate Integrity, an advocacy group that supports efforts to hold climate polluters accountable, said that this model bill “would put Big Oil above the law.”

Could the New Zealand Law Get Repealed?

What is happening in the U.S. and in New Zealand with this backlash to climate lawsuits suggests that major polluters feel very threatened by the litigation. That is an indication that climate litigation is an important strategy for confronting the forces that are obstructing climate action and profiting from predatory delay. It also underscores the point that political choices, and elections, have consequences.

The battle over climate accountability is nowhere near over. In New Zealand, there is a real possibility that the new law banning climate tort suits will get repealed if a new, more progressive-leaning government gets elected in November. During the July webinar hosted by Lawyers for Climate Action, Smith said he has been in talks with some officials from the Labour Party and had received reassurance that they would reverse the law change if they regain power.

Smith, for his part, said that he is determined to continue his fight for climate justice.

“We’re not dead. We’re feeling strong,” he said. “It certainly isn’t game over.”

Tip Jar

Colorado homeowners sift through the burnt remains of a house destroyed by wildfire. The Marshall fire tore through Boulder County, Colorado in late December 2021 and incinerated roughly 1,000 homes while forcing the evacuations of tens of thousands of residents. It was the most destructive wildfire in Colorado’s history. Credit: State Farm via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

Story co-published with Climate in the Courts

When the U.S. Supreme Court returns to session this fall, the very first case they will hear is a climate accountability case. As someone who has been closely following and reporting on climate change litigation for nearly ten years now, I can tell you that this case is a big deal. Depending on the decision that the court ultimately comes out with, it could have sweeping implications not only for climate law and accountability for the fossil fuel industry, but also for constitutional federalism and state sovereignty.

The case, Suncor Energy, Inc. v. Commissioners of Boulder County, stems from litigation that the city and county of Boulder, Colorado filed in 2018 against oil companies Suncor and ExxonMobil. Boulder alleges that the companies lied about and misrepresented the climate change harms of unchecked fossil fuel use in order to inflate sales of their products and boost profits. This deception in turn drove worsening climate impacts like extreme heat and flooding, severe drought, and monstrous wildfires, the lawsuit says, and Boulder therefore wants the oil companies to help pay for some of the costs of adapting to such impacts.

Boulder is not alone. Over the course of the past nine years, dozens of municipalities and states across the U.S. have sued major fossil fuel companies like Exxon over climate deception, citing evidence reveled through investigative reporting and scholarly research. Some of the lawsuits bring classic tort claims like nuisance, trespass, and failure to warn and seek monetary damages, while others assert fraud claims under state consumer protection statutes, and in some cases they bring a combination of the two or attach other claims like racketeering or antitrust. All of the cases, for the most part, have been filed in state courts under state law, and they are slowly proceeding through initial (pre-trial) motions. Some cases have already been dismissed.

Now, however, the oil companies are looking to quash them all in one fell swoop, with the help of the Supreme Court.

Boulder’s case is set to be heard by the court on October 5. But the case the court is hearing is likely to be much bigger in impact than just this one Colorado community. “The decision may determine the outcome of the more than two dozen lawsuits pending against the fossil fuel companies by states, counties and cities for money damages,” said Michael Gerrard, faculty director at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.

So, how did we get here? What are both sides and their backers or friends-of-the-court arguing? And what is potentially at stake?

Road to the Supreme Court

Lawyers representing the oil companies have been fighting the climate liability lawsuits tooth-and-nail for years. Many of the cases, including Boulder’s, have been bogged down in lengthy procedural battles over the issue of whether the litigation belongs in federal or state courts. Oil companies wanted the cases to be in federal court, where they saw an easier path to dismissal. They argued that the lawsuits raise uniquely federal issues like interstate air pollution and therefore the claims must arise under federal law in federal court. In 2021 the Supreme Court actually heard arguments on a narrow technical question in one of the suits, a case brought by Baltimore, Maryland against oil companies. The court ruled in favor of the companies and directed federal appeals courts to consider the full range of arguments from industry lawyers on the jurisdiction question – a ruling that applied to Baltimore’s case and several others including Boulder’s.

The appeals courts then heard these additional arguments and rejected them, which prompted the oil company lawyers to run back to the Supreme Court challenging those decisions. In 2023 the court denied a handful of these petitions from the industry, involving Boulder’s lawsuit and several other climate suits. Justice Samuel Alito, who holds stock in a couple of big oil companies, at the time had recused himself from considering these petitions.

With the question of whether the cases belong in federal or state court thus settled, the litigation advanced in state courts. Some courts have sided with the companies and tossed out the suits. Baltimore’s case, for example, went down that path. But other state courts have allowed the lawsuits to move forward towards trial. A lawsuit brought by Honolulu cleared procedural hurdles in the Hawaii courts and was on track to move towards trial, but the oil company defendants lodged a petition to the Supreme Court to try to block it. The justices denied that petition in January 2025, right before the start of the second Trump administration.

Eight months later, oil companies tried again, filing another Supreme Court petition in a different climate case – the one brought by Boulder. It was the third such petition filed by Suncor and Exxon in Boulder’s case, and it was basically identical to the petition in the Honolulu case that the justices had denied.

But this time, the justices decided to take up the petition. They granted cert – meaning they agreed to review the case – in February of this year. Alito did not recuse himself this time around, either. The petition aims to reverse a May 2025 ruling from the Colorado Supreme Court allowing Boulder’s suit to move towards trial. The question presented, however, is framed in such broad terms that it is likely to apply to many of the other climate liability lawsuits pending against major oil companies.

The Arguments and Amicus Briefs

This is the question at issue: “Whether federal law precludes state-law claims seeking relief for injuries allegedly caused by the effects of interstate and international greenhouse-gas emissions on the global climate.”

In other words, does federal law shield major greenhouse emitters or other defendants from potential liability for climate change harms in lawsuits brought under state law?

When the justices granted the oil companies’ petition, they added a question of their own about whether they even have the jurisdiction or authority to hear the case at this time. Ordinarily, the Supreme Court does not hear challenges to state court decisions early on in litigation, before there has even been a trial. But we are not living in normal times.

“Boulder’s going to argue first that it’s too early to take this case,” Gerrard said. “And secondly, that states have every right to bring these lawsuits to redress in-state damages.”

Oil companies Exxon and Suncor are taking the opposite position. Gerrard said they will argue that climate change “is a matter of national and really international significance and the state courts should have no say.”

The companies say that Boulder’s lawsuit is an attempt to regulate the fossil fuel industry (by making it pay monetary damages) as well as interstate and global greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, Boulder’s state law claims implicate U.S. foreign policy and federal regulatory authority, they argue, insisting that the lawsuit is preempted or prohibited by federal law, including the Constitution and the Clean Air Act.

A flood of amicus or “friend-of-the-court” briefs, 40 in total, were filed backing the oil companies’ position. These briefs claim that Boulder is impermissibly trying to dictate national energy policy and control worldwide emissions, and they echo the companies’ warnings that the fossil fuel industry could face “ruinous liability” if it is forced to pay billions of dollars in damages. Among the parties filing such briefs – the U.S. (Trump) Department of Justice, more than two dozen Republican state attorneys general, 78 Republican members of Congress, a group of former senior foreign policy officials, two former Joint Chiefs of Staff, right-wing or “free market” think tanks and dark money organizations, conservative legal groups, major industry lobbying groups like the US Chamber of Commerce and trade associations for big insurance companies, a coalition of Indian tribes, and an association of counties in northwest Colorado.

Many of these groups have funding ties to the fossil fuel industry or the billionaire-backed climate denial apparatus, according to a new report out today from Consumer Watchdog, a public interest research and watchdog organization. “The fossil fuel industry wants the Supreme Court to believe there’s a broad, independent movement supporting Exxon and Suncor. Follow the money and you understand it’s a fossil fuel funded and coordinated echo-chamber: these groups are financed by the same fossil fuel companies, billionaire investors, and climate denial networks that spent decades disputing the industry’s role in climate change,” Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, said in a statement.

Boulder, for its part, argues that the Supreme Court should not even be hearing its case, since there has been no trial or final judgment imposing any kind of liability on the oil companies, who the Colorado municipality says are “impatient.” Boulder also says that its lawsuit is not about trying to control greenhouse gas emissions or solve climate change, and the legal claims should not be preempted by federal law.

More than two dozen amicus briefs in support of Boulder were recently filed with the court. They came from parties like climate economists, progressive and public interest advocacy organizations, youth, Native American tribes, a group of Colorado ranchers, 90 Democratic members of Congress, Colorado plus 18 other “blue” states, local government coalitions, a bipartisan group of former US government and EPA officials, law professors, climate disinformation scholars, and more. These briefs generally back Boulder’s arguments that it is too early for the justices to intervene and that the Constitution and Clean Air Act do not shield fossil fuel companies from state law claims.

“This case involves the basic question whether Colorado courts can consider common law claims that fossil fuel companies engaged in wrongful behavior that contributed to climate change. At this stage of the case, it would be an overreach and improper for the Supreme Court to prevent Colorado courts from considering the merits of this litigation,” said Colorado attorney general Phil Weiser.

“Congress carefully defined EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act,” William Reilly, who served as EPA Administrator from 1989 to 1993, said in a statement. “The law regulates emissions, not fossil-fuel marketing, and it does not displace states’ traditional authority to apply their own tort law to conduct outside its scope. The Court should not create an immunity Congress never enacted.”

A handful of the briefs supporting Boulder also push back against specific amicus briefs backing the oil companies.

A group of Colorado ranchers, for example, argues against a brief supporting Exxon and Suncor filed by a coalition of counties in northwest Colorado, where some oil and gas production takes place. The majority of the ranchers live in those counties, and one said she was “outraged to learn that her tax dollars were being spent on a brief opposing redress for local government expenses.” The ranchers are all deeply affected by climate change impacts like drought, extreme heat, and wildfires, and they want municipal governments to be able to recoup climate-related costs so they can stay financially healthy and continue to provide local services that ranchers rely on.

Native American tribes are also on the frontlines of damaging climate impacts. “Climate change poses an existential threat to many of the Tribes, who are confronted with the need to spend staggering sums of money to protect (and in some cases rebuild or migrate) their communities and lack the budgetary capacity to do so,” says a brief filed by the Makah and Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribes along with 11 other federally recognized tribes, federal Indian law professors, and tribal organizations. The brief pushes back against an amicus brief supporting the oil companies from the Coalition of Large Tribes.

High Stakes

With so many interested parties weighing in on both sides of the case, it is clear that this is a highly significant clash with potentially enormous stakes. There is a lot of money on the line, on the order of billions of dollars, if major oil and gas companies are eventually held liable for deceiving the public about the climate harms of their products. But that is far from a foregone conclusion. Local and state governments would have to first win at trial, and then survive the rigorous appeals that the industry would surely mount. What is really at stake, then, in Boulder’s case is whether or not the plaintiffs should even have a chance to try to prove their case in court.

“While the case is in its infancy, with no liability yet found, [oil company] defendants are asking the Supreme Court to kill it before it can walk,” Sean Powers, an attorney who authored an amicus brief backing Boulder for an organization called WHEN Justice, wrote in a LinkedIn post. “Their argument for doing so is both sweeping and provocative. At bottom, the defendants believe the Constitution gives polluters special immunity not only with respect to climate change, but in all cases involving interstate pollution. If they succeed, it could significantly limit the ability of states, communities and individuals to seek compensation when they are harmed by pollution (and potentially other acts) that cross state lines.”

“Regardless of where you stand on climate policy, this case raises important questions about federalism, accountability, and who gets to decide whether injured parties have access to remedies,” Powers added.

The impacts from a sweeping ruling could reach even beyond environmental matters, potentially limiting the ability of local and state governments to protect their residents from widespread harms that involves out-of-state conduct. Local governments’ “traditional authority to seek redress in their own courts, under their own states’ law, is at stake in the jurisdictional and preemption questions presented,” an amicus brief filed by the Local Government Legal Center and several other municipal associations in support of Boulder argues.

As Pat Parenteau, emeritus law professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School, told me, an extremely broad ruling from the Supreme Court in favor of the oil companies “would be attacking state sovereignty.”

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Credit: Quintin Soloviev via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0

At the end of June, the division within the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) charged with enforcing the nation’s environmental laws announced it was dropping the word “environment” from its name. Instead of the Environment and Natural Resources Division, this part of the DOJ – which describes itself as the nation’s “largest environmental law firm” – now goes by the title of “Energy and Natural Resources Division.”

The name change, replacing “environment” with “energy,” reflects the division’s priority under the Trump administration to serve a so-called “energy dominance” agenda of unleashing fossil fuels. “The Justice Department is defending the federal government’s efforts to advance U.S. energy dominance,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson, the current head of ENRD, wrote in a June 28 Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “New Name, New Mission at the Justice Department.”

Gustafson noted that the division has changed its name several times over the course of its 100-plus-year history: “It was renamed three times in response to evolving responsibilities—most recently in 1990, when it became the Environment and Natural Resources Division to reflect its enforcement function under the environmental statutes Congress enacted in the 1970s and 1980s.”

Those environmental laws are still on the books. But the DOJ division that is supposed to be defending and enforcing them now appears to be largely stepping back from that responsibility.

Last week, Inside Climate News published a story that I had been working on for much of the last month, examining the significant changes at the DOJ’s environment division under Trump II – including the recent name change. The story is based on interviews I did with half a dozen or so former ENRD attorneys, as well as reports by other news outlets. And according to the ENRD alums I spoke with, including the former heads of the Environmental Enforcement and Environmental Crimes sections, there has been a massive decline in enforcement resources and actions, to the point where environmental enforcement has essentially “collapsed,” as one former ENRD enforcement attorney described it.

“Under the Trump administration, federal enforcement of our bedrock environmental laws cratered, leaving a wide gap between what the law requires and what companies actually do,” Laura Thoms, director of enforcement at Earthjustice who previously served at DOJ’s ENRD for 19 years, wrote in a December 2025 article.

“Since taking office, the Trump administration filed only 20 civil environmental enforcement cases in court. That’s less than a third of the cases filed by the federal government during the same period in 2024, and far lower than any year in modern history, including Trump’s own first term,” Thoms continued. She wrote that this track record “isn’t a dip. It’s a collapse. And it matters for our lives, our health, and our economy.”

“To date, the Administration has hamstrung the ability of hardworking career staff to hold polluters accountable, blocking criminal investigations of Trump allies, pardoning convictions of Trump donors, and dismissing meritorious enforcement actions with prejudice,” Thoms told me in an emailed statement. “The Administration’s selective enforcement threatens to create sacrifice zones where some communities receive the benefit of environmental protections, while others are left vulnerable to harms created by illegal pollution and the government’s failure to act.”

Tom Mariani, who spent nearly 40 years at the DOJ’s ENRD and headed the Environmental Enforcement Section since 2016, shared Thoms’ concerns that the division’s enforcement has been hamstrung under Trump II.

“The Department of Justice is rapidly moving away from enforcing the nation’s core pollution control laws in ways not seen in prior administrations, including President Trump’s first term. Drastically fewer civil enforcement lawsuits and severe cuts to staffing will adversely affect our health and environment, now and into the future,” Mariani wrote in a December 2025 Substack piece published by Justice Connection, a network of DOJ alumni.

He told me that the Environmental Enforcement Section lost more than half of its attorneys over the last year and half, calling it a “massive, massive reduction.” Mariani himself was forced out last year at the start of the new administration, through an involuntary transfer to a start-up unit called the sanctuary cities working group. Instead of taking the new assignment, Mariani decided to leave the DOJ.

Three other heads of litigating sections within ENRD were also reassigned to the sanctuary cities working group, which Mariani said “seemed like sort of a fake job.” Deborah Harris, chief of the Environmental Crimes Section, told me that the working group indeed “was a complete joke.” She initially accepted the reassignment, but several months later decided that she, too, had to leave the DOJ. By late August 2025, all of the DOJ employees who were reassigned to the sanctuary cities working group had exited.

Harris told me that, like the Environmental Enforcement Section, Environmental Crimes saw the number of its attorneys cut in half, diminishing the capacity of the section to do its job effectively.

“When I was section chief we increased what we did twofold in the sense that we took in two new program areas,” Harris said. “At our max we had 42 attorneys, and to be down to 21 [attorneys] with that many practice areas under our supervision, you can’t expect there to be the same type of results.”

Harris told me it seemed “strange” to hear that the division where she once worked had decided to drop the word “environment” from its name. “To me, it doesn’t indicate any interest in our mandate, which is protecting the health and safety of the people and the country,” she said.

Indeed, the word “energy” does not appear once in ENRD’s mission statement. According to the division’s webpage: “ENRD’s mission is to protect the health and welfare of the American people, manage our precious natural resources, and conserve our nation’s breathtaking landscapes. We do this through civil and criminal enforcement of the country’s environmental and natural resource laws, defense of agency actions taken under those same laws, acquisition of lands needed for federal projects, and litigation to secure and protect the rights and resources of federally recognized Indian Tribes.”

In an emailed statement, Gustafson defended the name change and claimed that the division is continuing to enforce environmental laws.

“ENRD continues to faithfully execute its mission, which has evolved — along with the division’s name — throughout the years in response to expanding responsibilities,” he said. “We defend agency rules and other federal actions against challenges from all sides, and we are enforcing the nation’s environmental laws to protect clean air, water, and land for all Americans.”

“Both goals are consistent with the Administration’s priorities,” he added. “There’s nothing incompatible about unleashing American energy and making America healthy again. We are achieving both.”

Under the Trump administration, the phrase “unleashing American energy” of course means unleashing fossil fuels. And public health professionals and scientists would beg to differ with the contention that doing so is compatible with protecting Americans’ health.

As for the claim that ENRD remains committed to environmental enforcement, former ENRD enforcement attorneys say that this is, sadly, no longer the case.

“Trump’s DOJ showed its true colors when it dropped the world ‘environment’ from the Division’s name, reflecting a whole-hearted embrace of its new mission to push fossil fuels and data centers instead of protecting human health and the environment,” Thoms told me.

“The name change confirms the division’s operating plan and reality: Environmental protection through enforcement of the law is less of a priority than it has been in decades,” Mariani writes in a new Substack piece published by Justice Connection. “The defense and promotion of favored legacy energy sources, especially fossil fuels, is now much more important.”

Tip Jar

Credit: Acropora at English Wikipedia/J. Roff via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

One of the casualties of the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency will be the world’s coral reefs – which are on track to be largely wiped out of existence as the planet continues to heat up. Last October scientists warned that widespread mortality of warm water coral reefs is already underway, following a series of mass bleaching events, and that this coral dieback marked the crossing of the world’s first major climate tipping point. “Warm-water coral reefs have experienced the worst bleaching event on record over 2023-2025 and the central estimate of their thermal tipping point of 1.2°C global warming has been crossed,” the scientific assessment states.

The world has already lost half of its coral reefs, and as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in a 2018 report, “climate change has emerged as the greatest threat to coral reefs.”

Now, a new study has confirmed that climate change is the main culprit responsible for virtually every widespread coral reef bleaching event over the past 40 years.

“Our analysis shows that global warming is the main driver of bleaching and that global coral bleaching simply would not occur without human-caused climate change,” the authors of the study, published in the journal Oceanography, explain.

Bleaching happens when corals expel symbiotic algae (called zooxanthellae) living in their tissues. The algae provide corals with essential nutrients and give them their vibrant colors, so when the algae are expelled due to environmental stressors like heat, the corals turn pale. Elevated ocean temperatures are the leading cause of coral bleaching.

Four periods of global mass coral bleaching have occurred in the last 30 years – first in 1998, then in 2010, followed by 2014 – 2017, and then 2018 – 2025. During the most recent period, 84 percent of the world’s coral reefs were impacted, making it the most widespread and severe mass bleaching episode thus far.

That episode, according to the new study, “is entirely due to human-caused warming.” And all of the previous mass bleaching events “had strong fingerprints of anthropogenic climate change.”

Researchers applied a multi-model extreme event attribution method to examine the influence of climate change on sea surface temperatures. They also used a bleaching risk model developed by NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch to study how the temperatures (both observed and a counterfactual) matched up to bleaching risk. This approach allowed them to assess the role of climate change in mass coral bleaching.

Results indicate that anthropogenic warming is the primary driver of the observed mass bleaching, and is a more significant factor in ongoing bleaching risk than El Niño (a natural climate cycle associated with increased ocean temperatures). “Under current warming rates, the effect of rising temperatures due to human-caused climate change will outweigh the impact from El Niño in all coral-containing regions by 2028,” a press release accompanying the study explains.

“Our study shows that without climate change, coral bleaching would be a rare and isolated event, and global mass coral bleaching simply would not occur,” said Andrew Pershing, chief program officer at Climate Central and lead author of the study. “Millions of people and entire countries rely on healthy coral reefs for livelihoods and food security. But our emissions of carbon pollution are causing increasingly widespread damage and death to these vital and vibrant ecosystems. Without immediate emissions reduction, coral reefs as we know them will disappear.”

Tropical coral reefs provide critically important ecosystem services, such as protection of coastlines from storms and erosion and supporting fish that feed a substantial share of the world’s population. Reef ecosystems are home to at least a quarter of all marine species, and around one billion people living in coastal regions around the world depend upon these ecosystems for their livelihoods and food security.

But as the oceans heat up and acidify, absorbing around 90 percent of the excess heat trapped in the climate system by greenhouse gas emissions as well as nearly a third of human-caused CO2 emissions, coral reefs like the Great Barrier Reef face an existential threat.

“Continued emissions and additional warming raise the potential that human actions may soon eliminate coral reef ecosystems as we know them from the planet,” the new study warns.

Credit: Frank Gibson, courtesy of 350.org

Climate change, of course, is primarily driven by fossil fuel combustion, with the vast majority of the world’s CO2 emissions traceable to the products and production activities of a relatively small number of entities – the “carbon majors.” They include nation states and state-owned firms as well as investor-owned oil giants like ExxonMobil and Shell.

Investigations and scholarly research have revealed that Big Oil long ago knew about the climate dangers and potential “catastrophic” risks of unchecked use of their products, and instead of warning the public and supporting action to transition away from fossil fuels, the industry promoted climate denial and disinformation.

A recent study from researchers at the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme has now shed some light on what and when major oil companies knew specifically about the harms to coral reefs associated with their hydrocarbon products, and what they did with that knowledge.

“We searched historical documents using a large-language-model-based agent, finding that carbon majors were aware by the 1980s of prospective impacts of fossil fuels on corals from ocean acidification, marine heatwaves, sea-level rise, and intensified storms and later funded efforts downplaying such impacts,” says the study, published last month in the journal npj Ocean Sustainability.

A 1988 internal study from Shell discussing projected impacts of climate change, for example, noted that rising CO2 levels in the oceans would be detrimental for corals and other shell-forming marine organisms. “Dissolution of shells and corals and subsequently local but massive deaths of organisms on a local scale is therefore not unrealistic,” the document states.

In another document cited by the Oxford researchers, scientists discussed the anticipated impacts of increased ocean temperatures on corals during a 1988 climate change conference that was co-sponsored by commercial fossil fuel interests including the American Petroleum Institute. These discussions from that conference, the researchers argue, “illustrate how the petroleum industry had information available by 1988 that global warming from fossil fuels could injure coral reefs by raising average ocean temperatures, increasing the likelihood of marine heatwaves, and causing more frequent and intense tropical storms.”

Yet despite having this advanced knowledge, Big Oil funded think tanks and propaganda campaigns that undermined climate science and downplayed global warming risks, including risks to coral reefs. The study points to a 2012 climate report published by the fossil fuel funded Cato Institute that downplayed the severity of the threats to coral reefs.

“Even decades later, the fossil fuel industry supported public-facing disinformation denying and downplaying the destructive effects of their products on coral reefs,” said Benjamin Franta, study lead author and senior research fellow in climate litigation at the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme.

“As coral reefs around the world are killed by marine heatwaves and other effects of climate change -- destroying ecologies, cultures, livelihoods, and enormous economic value -- the fossil fuel industry’s historical awareness of this global tipping point is increasingly important,” he added. “Already, climate lawsuits are pointing to the devastating impact of global warming on reefs.”

The researchers say their findings could help “inform legal and policy efforts to protect corals, seek compensation for reef damage, and define the liabilities and responsibilities of fossil fuel producers as they cause the collapse of the world’s tropical coral ecosystems.”

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Smoky skies create an eerie, sepia-tinted sight over a farm in Westport, Massachusetts in mid-July 2026. Credit: Will y theweatherguy473737 via Wikimedia Commons

More than 800 wildfires are currently burning across Canada, bringing a blanket of eerie haze and dangerous smoke down into parts of the U.S., including the upper Midwest and Northeast regions. By Thursday, communities in Minnesota and Michigan had among the worst air quality in the world due to the smoke, at levels considered beyond hazardous. New York City residents were advised to stay indoors, multiple states issued statewide air quality alerts, and outdoor activities from concerts to sporting events were cancelled.

Meanwhile, flash flooding has once again hit Texas’ Hill Country and killed at least two people. Much of area is still recovering from last year’s deadly floods, with many flood survivors saying they feel abandoned by their government that is supposed to be protecting them, according to recent survey results.

Then there’s the extreme heat. Parts of the U.S. choked by wildfire smoke are simultaneously sweltering under blistering hot temperatures. This is obviously a perilous situation, especially for people with pre-existing health conditions. “Extreme heat and wildfire smoke each carry major risks, especially for people with chronic health conditions including heart disease. The combination of the two is extremely dangerous,” said Dr. Manesh R. Patel, volunteer president of the American Heart Association. Just two weeks ago, large swaths of the U.S. were under a brutal heat dome, which has already been linked with dozens of deaths.

That heat wave, as well as the one in Europe in late June that has resulted in thousands of additional deaths, both would have been “virtually impossible” without fossil fueled climate change, according to scientists with World Weather Attribution (WWA).

WWA, an initiative based in the UK, examines the influence of climate change on specific extreme weather events around the world. This field of climate science is known as extreme event attribution. And it has advanced significantly over the last ten years.

That advancement is the top-line message of a new report published Thursday by the U.S.-based National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). The report provides an updated assessment from the National Academies’ 2016 report on attributing extreme weather events to climate change. While the new report cautions that the field of extreme event attribution still faces challenges, it finds that the science overall has greatly strengthened and matured.

“Significant progress has been made over the last decade, with major advancements in methods and modeling that allow for more robust assessments of extreme events,” James Hurrell, chair of the committee that wrote the report, and Scott Presidential Chair of Environmental Science and Engineering at Colorado State University, said in a statement.

“Attribution science confirms what billions of people around the world have experienced firsthand—deadly events like extreme heatwaves are occurring more often and tropical cyclones are more intense due to climate change,” Carly Phillips, senior scientist at Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement commenting on the report. “Despite efforts by the fossil fuel industry and its cronies to intimidate panelists and misrepresent the research, the Academies’ report affirms the scientific consensus: attribution science is based on rigorous peer reviewed methods and provides critical information about how climate change is driving increases in the frequency and/or severity of extreme events.”

The report itself is quite technical, and according to climate scientist Michael Mann, overly conservative. “If anything, the academy understates the strength of the science linking increasingly extreme weather events to climate change,” Mann wrote in a social media post.

As an example of just how far climate attribution science is advancing, some researchers are now starting to link extreme weather events like heat waves not just to climate change, but to the carbon emissions associated with the world’s largest fossil fuel and cement producers – the “carbon majors.”

“Over the last 6 months a series of papers has advanced our understanding of the culpability of fossil fuel firms for climate change impacts,” climate scientist Christopher Callahan wrote in a Bluesky thread last September. Callahan along with Dartmouth researcher Justin Mankin, for example, published a landmark paper last year finding that trillions of dollars in economic damages globally from extreme heat can be attributed to the carbon majors. Another 2025 study found that the world’s largest fossil fuel firms are playing a significant role in driving heat waves.

This kind of scientific research is quite threatening to fossil fuel interests, as it is expected to be used as evidence in climate liability lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in damages from major oil and gas companies. The fossil fuel industry is already facing dozens of these suits in the U.S., as well as state polluter pays or “climate superfund” legislation that directly imposes liability on major climate polluters and requires them to help pay for climate adaptation costs. New York and Vermont have enacted climate superfund laws, which will draw upon climate attribution science in their implementation – if they can survive initial court challenges from the industry and its political backers, that is.

The battle lines are already being drawn and the fight over climate accountability – just like the climate itself – is heating up fast.

On the one side is the fossil fuel industry – one of the wealthiest and most politically powerful on Earth, and its allies in government, which in the U.S. includes the Trump administration and the entire Republican party. These forces have mounted an escalating assault – on climate science (and science writ large), on climate policies and regulations, and on any and all efforts to hold polluters accountable for climate harms.

As part of this endeavor, Republican lawmakers in Congress introduced legislation in April that explicitly aims to protect fossil fuel entities from climate liability laws and lawsuits. The bill, called the “Stop Climate Shakedowns Act,” would grant sweeping legal immunity to the industry, shielding it from accountability at a time when climate-fueled disasters and damages (including deaths from impacts like extreme heat) are rising. The bill also rejects climate attribution science, claiming that “efforts to attribute local weather patterns and the local harms that result from meteorological events, such as floods, droughts, hurricanes, wildfires, or heat waves, to persons engaged in the energy business lack scientific credibility and are, therefore, arbitrary.” The new National Academies’ report contradicts this claim, but evidence-based science does not appear to matter much to Republican climate deniers who are deep in the pockets of the fossil fuel industry. The House version of the bill picked up four new co-sponsors in just the last week, the same week that the NASEM report dropped.

On the other side of the battle are climate activists and scientists, physicians and public health professionals, Democratic lawmakers and officials, extreme weather survivors and communities impacted by climate-driven disasters, and a sizeable share of the public that wants to see climate action and accountability. With the latest bout of extreme weather in the U.S. and the release of the new NASEM report on extreme event attribution, demands for accountability for the fossil fuel industry are once again pouring in.

Youth climate activist groups Sunrise Movement and Climate Defiance posted on social media calling for “Nuremberg trials for Big Oil.”

“Nuremberg style trials are in order for the fossil fuel executives who knew what they were doing to our children’s futures and did anyway,” Climate Defiance wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

In response to Climate Defiance’s post, director of Public Citizen’s Climate Accountability Project Aaron Regunberg wrote on X: “I’m all for this, but we don’t actually have to wait. We have criminal laws on the books right now to prosecute Big Oil’s lethal conduct.” Regunberg has for several years now been advocating for criminal prosecution of fossil fuel industry executives, arguing that charges like homicide or reckless endangerment would be applicable, given that the climate crisis that they largely engineered and perpetuated (for the sake of protecting their exorbitant profits) is literally killing people.

“For decades, Big Oil knowingly poisoned our atmosphere and deceived the public about the impacts of burning fossil fuels —all the while lining executives’ pockets as communities continue to suffer from extreme heat, floods and fires,” Regunberg’s Public Citizen colleague Stephanie Brancaforte said in a statement on Thursday responding to the new National Academies’ report. “The science is clear: the extreme heat killing thousands of people in the northern hemisphere this summer is neither an unpredictable event nor an accident—it is the result of corporate crime. With the backing of the National Academies, survivors of climate catastrophes now have strong evidence to pursue justice against fossil fuel polluters to pay for the devastation they have unleashed.”

U.S. Representatives Doris Matsui, Mike Quigley, Paul Tonko, Don Beyer, Suzanne Bonamici, Sean Casten, Mike Levin, and Chellie Pingree, all Democrats and leaders of the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition, applauded the National Academies’ report, which they said affirmed the science linking extreme weather events to fossil fueled climate change. “The evidence is overwhelming; climate change is driven by fossil fuel pollution, and its impacts are accelerating toward more dangerous extremes,” they said in a statement.

“The National Academies’ report highlights scientific facts and evidence that build upon what the fossil fuel industry has known since the 1950s: that burning fossil fuels would lead to global warming and a changing climate,” they added. “Yet, these polluters continue to downplay and distort the scientific evidence surrounding climate change and its associated harms. Adding fuel to the fire, the Trump Administration is silencing our very own federal scientists and covering up national climate data in order to give the fossil fuel industry a get-out-of-jail-free card for its role in the climate crisis.”

As One Earth Now previously reported, Democratic lawmakers and SEEC leaders say they oppose the effort of their Republican colleagues to shield fossil fuel polluters from climate liability through the “Stop Climate Shakedowns” bill. Rep. Tonko (NY-20) called that effort a “slap in the face to the very concept of justice and to the countless who have been harmed by the fossil fuel industry.” He vowed that he would “fight against this cruel bill that gives polluters a free pass.”

Phillips, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that climate attribution science “provides key evidence to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable,” and she urged members of Congress to not slam the courthouse doors shut on communities seeking to do just that.

“Congress must not grant Big Oil immunity for climate deception and the harms they knowingly caused that attribution science makes evident,” Phillips said. “Communities deserve their day in court and no one—including fossil fuel companies that have profited at the expense of people and the planet—should be above the law.”

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Credit: Rebecca Parker, courtesy of Environmental Justice Australia

Story co-published with Climate in the Courts

In 2022 the city of Brisbane, Australia saw one of its worst flooding events in decades. Torrential rains brought over 31 inches of water into the city over three days, toppling the previous three-day rainfall record from 1974. The Brisbane River swelled, peaking at over 3.8 meters (over 12 feet), inundating area neighborhoods and properties.

Sama Youhana was a high school senior at the time who lived with her family right alongside the river. She recalls the night the flooding hit:

“It was the middle of the night when the water started coming up through the garage. Suddenly everyone was rushing to move what they could and work out what to do next. That night remains one of the most frightening experiences of my life.”

Brendan Donohue, a disability advocate living with blindness, found himself trapped alone in his apartment for 10 days during the floods that knocked out the building’s power, shutting down elevator and intercom service and leaving exits inaccessible for someone with his condition.

“Because of my blindness, I could not read the emergency signage showing where temporary entrances and exits were located. My support workers could not reach me because roads were flooded,” Donohue recalled. “I remember feeling terrified because I had no idea how I would safely leave the building if conditions worsened,” he added. “I felt isolated, confused and unsafe. I felt disregarded.”

Now, these two Brisbane flood survivors have joined eight other Australians who have similarly been directly affected by extreme weather and climate change impacts in bringing a landmark case before the United Nation’s Human Rights Committee. Dubbed the “Hard Truths case,” it accuses the Australian government of violating the 10 claimants’ human rights through its ongoing support of coal and gas exports, which make up the lion’s share of Australia’s overall contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. It is the first case of its kind specifically challenging a country’s fossil fuel exports on the grounds that they violate international human rights law. And it is the first case to be brought before a UN body since the International Court of Justice delivered its historic advisory opinion last year affirming that climate action is a legal obligation.

“All governments have a legal duty to act on the climate crisis, as affirmed by the International Court of Justice last year. The Australian government is failing that responsibility by allowing unchecked exports of coal and gas,” Ramin Pejan, deputy managing attorney of the international program at Earthjustice, said in statement.

Earthjustice along with Environmental Justice Australia and the Human Rights Law Centre are representing the 10 claimants, who come from across Australia and include teachers, a volunteer firefighter, disability advocates, students, and First Nations peoples and indigenous leaders. They have all experienced devastating climate impacts like extreme heat, catastrophic bushfires and flooding, and toxic algal blooms. These impacts, they say, will only get worse unless governments start taking responsibility for their actions that are exacerbating the climate emergency.

“We are seeing more extreme heat, changing seasons, disruptions to cultural practices and growing challenges for communities trying to maintain their connection to the places that sustain them,” said Rikki Dank, a Gudanji and Wakaya Traditional Owner from the Barkly Tablelands in the Northern Territory. “Australia continues to play a significant role in the climate crisis through the coal and gas it exports, while communities like mine are left to deal with the consequences. I believe there must be accountability for the harms already occurring and for those that will continue if meaningful action is not taken.”

Australia is the world’s second-largest fossil fuel exporter, behind only Russia. The coal and gas that Australia exports contribute to about 3.5 percent of global carbon emissions annually, and these emissions amount to a level that is three to four times the country’s domestic emissions. The vast majority, around 80 percent, of the coal and gas extracted in Australia is shipped overseas for export, according to Environmental Justice Australia. And yet the emissions from these exports are excluded from Australia’s climate policies and targets.

Environmental and human rights legal experts argue that Australia is acting unlawfully by failing to take responsibility for the climate harms linked to its fossil fuel exports.

“Every tonne of coal and gas we export makes Australia’s climate more dangerous and Australians less safe. We have the resources and responsibility to phase out fossil fuels. Instead, by doubling down on exports, Australia is standing outside the law,” said Gillian Moon, research lead for the Australian Climate Accountability Project and lead author of a report published last September by the Australian Human Rights Institute, which found that Australia was in breach of its legal obligations by failing to limit its fossil fuel exports.

“Our clients want the Albanese government to face the hard truth that successive governments have avoided,” said Hannah White, senior lawyer with Environmental Justice Australia. “Climate harm caused by Australia’s coal and gas doesn’t stop at a border, and neither does Australia’s responsibility for it.”

White said the claimants are seeking a declaration from the UN Human Rights Committee that Australia’s continued support for coal and gas exports is unlawful. Specifically, they want the Committee to tell Australia that it should stop approving and subsidizing fossil fuel export projects, and that it should come up with a plan to phase out coal and gas exports. Since the Human Rights Committee is not a court, any findings or recommendations it makes would not be legally enforceable.

But Earthjustice lawyer Noni Austin said this does not mean that the Committee’s decision would be insignificant. “It carries a lot of weight. It carries moral weight, reputational weight, diplomatic weight, and international legal weight as well. And governments are expected by the international community to act on the recommendations of the UN Human Rights Committee,” Austin said during a recent webinar discussing the case, which was officially filed last month.

This is not the first time that Australia has faced a UN complaint over its climate inaction. In 2019 eight Torres Strait Islanders lodged a complaint with the Human Rights Committee arguing that the Australian government was failing to protect them from climate impacts like sea level rise and flooding. The Committee issued its decision in 2022, finding that Australia did in fact violate their rights to culture and to private and family life by not adequately protecting them from adverse climate impacts.

The Hard Truths case is seeking to build upon that groundbreaking precedent. The legal team says the case is also on especially solid ground following the ICJ’s climate opinion (issued in July 2025), which explicitly called out fossil fuels and suggested that countries’ ongoing support for fossil fuel activities could be considered an “internationally wrongful act.”

“I joined this case because I want decision-makers to understand the real human consequences of climate inaction and their responsibility to prevent foreseeable harm,” said Jack Egan, one of the claimants whose house on the New South Wales’ South Coast burned down during the 2019 “Black Summer” bushfires. “I also hope this case helps build momentum for stronger legal protections for current and future generations, building on the growing recognition under international law that governments have obligations to protect people from climate harm.”

Australia is not the only country currently facing a claim that its inadequate climate response and promotion of fossil fuels violate international human rights law. Last September, lawyers with the Oregon-based nonprofit law firm Our Children’s Trust filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of 15 of the original 21 youth plaintiffs from the landmark Juliana v. US climate case. The petition argues that the US government is violating international law through its perpetuation of a fossil fuel-based energy system.

Like the Hard Truths case in Australia, the youth petition against the US seeks to force the government to confront the uncomfortable truth that it is actively causing harm by exacerbating the climate crisis, as one legal adviser to the US case explained.

“This courageous action aims to tell the truth and do something about it,” said James R. May, of counsel to Our Children’s Trust and founder of Dignity Rights Advocates. “The truth isn’t pretty—the highest court in the world, the International Court of Justice, and the highest court in the Americas, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, have both recognized a climate emergency and found that climate change violates basic human rights, especially for children. The United States, once a global leader on human rights and the rule of law, doesn’t seem to care much anymore. But it can do better. The Commission’s involvement can help return the US to a position of strength, leadership, and inspiration. The world is watching.”

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Credit: European Space Agency via Flickr, contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2026), processed by ESA; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Dangerous, stifling heat and humidity is set to blanket large parts of the United States over the coming days, bringing oppressive conditions to some 200 million people across the Midwest and central Plains to the southeast and Mid-Atlantic and even parts of New England. As AccuWeather reports: “A heat dome will develop, strengthen and grow in size over much of the central United States for an extended period through the Independence Day weekend. It will even expand into parts of the East for several days. At its full extent, dangerous conditions will affect more than two dozen states.”

It comes on the heels of a record-shattering heat dome in Europe that, in the words of one UK-based climate researcher, “has been hugely disruptive to society.” The heat has caused cancellations of schools, public events, and train service. A June 24 event scheduled during London Climate Action Week titled “Extreme heat: Improving governance and strengthening action around the world” was called off due to the “red alert” heat warning from the UK Met Office; in other words, an event on extreme heat was cancelled due to the extreme heat – a twist that one of the event sponsors called “deeply ironic.”

But beyond just being disruptive, the unprecedented European heat wave has also been deadly. France recorded at least 1,000 additional deaths last week during the height of the heat wave.

A new study reveals that human-caused climate change is the culprit behind this extreme heat event. The record-breaking heat wave affecting much of Europe would have been virtually impossible just 50 years ago, according to a rapid attribution analysis by World Weather Attribution (WWA). Researchers say that climate change is “unequivocally to blame.”

“This event would not have been possible in June without climate change,” Theodore Keeping, an extreme weather and wildfire researcher at Imperial College London, said during a June 25 press briefing. He explained that this is “the most severe and widespread heat wave to have ever affected this large a region of Europe.”

“The science of how climate change is worsening heatwaves is settled,” Keeping said. “Continued fossil-fuel emissions are directly responsible for the disruption people are experiencing this week in their homes, schools and workplaces.”

Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, also pointed to fossil fuels that are the root cause of the climate emergency. “Extreme heat is shattering records across Europe, and the science is very clear about why: climate change is running rampant, caused by the world’s addiction to burning coal, oil and gas,” he said in a press statement.

This “addiction,” some would argue, has been deliberately created and perpetuated by the very industry that profits from society’s dependency on its products. In the wake of Europe’s blistering heat wave, climate advocates are once again demanding accountability for the fossil fuel industry.

“It’s time to turn the heat on the fossil fuel giants that caused this heatwave but are doing nothing to cover the costs,” said 350.org campaigner Lisa Rose. “Both science and the law are clear: polluters must answer for climate damage. Now it’s up to our leaders to make them pay.”

Commenting on the WWA study, Aaron Regunberg, director of Public Citizen’s climate accountability project, said it is clear that the deadly heat wave is not a “natural” weather disaster.

“It’s a climate crime, and one that has already killed hundreds across Europe, including a three-year-old boy in France who is believed to have locked himself inside his family’s car while his father was working in their yard. French prosecutors have announced an investigation into this death, with potential charges of involuntary manslaughter for the child’s family,” Regunberg said.

“We can’t say whether or to what extent this child’s grieving parents should be held responsible for his tragic death. But we know who else should be. The lethal heat that killed their child, and so many others, is the direct, foreseeable—and, in fact, foreseen—consequence of a small number of fossil fuel companies that knowingly generated a huge portion of all the greenhouse gas emissions that are baking our planet, and fraudulently deceived the public to block solutions that could have ameliorated this catastrophe,” he added. “If prosecutors want to seek justice for deaths like these, they should be pursuing the Big Oil companies that are actually responsible.”

Evidence does exist substantiating these types of claims, as scientists are now starting to demonstrate links between specific extreme weather events like heat waves and the fossil fuel and cement-producing entities responsible for generating a majority of the carbon emissions that are heating the planet. Last September a landmark study found that about half of the increased intensity of heat waves (since preindustrial times) can be attributed to these entities known as the carbon majors. In other words, major fossil fuel companies have played a substantial role in driving dangerous and deadly extreme heat events.

As the study’s abstract explains: “Depending on the carbon major, their individual contribution is high enough to enable the occurrence of 16–53 heatwaves that would have been virtually impossible in a preindustrial climate. We, therefore, establish that the influence of climate change on heatwaves has increased, and that all carbon majors, even the smaller ones, contributed substantially to the occurrence of heatwaves.”

The study authors say their research is likely to be directly relevant in legal proceedings as climate liability lawsuits targeting major oil companies continue to pile up on court dockets. Last year a first-of-its-kind wrongful death lawsuit was filed in the state of Washington against ExxonMobil and other large oil and gas companies, aiming to hold them responsible for the tragic death of a woman who perished in her car during the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome. That extreme heat event, which scientists say would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change, is also the focus of a climate liability suit filed in 2023 by Multnomah County, Oregon against Big Oil. The suit came before a court last week in a hearing on motions to dismiss filed by industry lawyers.

It remains to be seen whether this record-breaking European heat wave will spur similar legal actions against any carbon majors, perhaps even a criminal case.

Two years ago, a criminal complaint was brought in France against the CEO, board of directors, and shareholders of French oil major TotalEnergies. The three NGOs and eight individuals behind the case had hoped to set a precedent establishing criminal liability for executives and directors of a large fossil fuel company for its role in driving the climate emergency. “The managers and shareholders of TotalEnergies are fully aware that climate change kills, yet they have made the cynical choice to increase oil and gas production for one reason only: to maximize profits,” a press release announcing the complaint on May 21, 2024 stated.

The French public prosecutor, who had authority to follow through with the complaint, decided instead to dismiss it in February 2025. A few months later in May 2025, seven individuals and two of the NGOs registered their complaint directly with an investigating judge, triggering the opening of a judicial investigation. But on April 29 of this year the Paris Judicial Court issued an order to once again dismiss the case. According to a press release from BLOOM, one of the organizations that filed the complaint – “The office in charge of investigating the complaint announced that it did not intend to open an investigation against TotalEnergies, on the grounds that the alleged acts were not criminally punishable and that the events in question were not ‘directly’ linked to TotalEnergies’ activities.” BLOOM said that it, along with the seven individuals who are all victims or survivors of extreme weather events, have decided to appeal this ruling.

On the civil law side, French civil society organizations and the city of Paris won an important, if only partial, victory last week against TotalEnergies with the Paris Judicial Court ruling that the oil major had fallen short of its climate-related obligation under France’s 2017 duty of vigilance law. That law requires large corporations in France to develop plans addressing risks to human rights and the environment associated with their operations. The court ruled that TotalEnergies’ plan was incomplete because it left out the greenhouse gas emissions from customers using the company’s products. These indirect “Scope 3” emissions account for around 90 percent of oil companies’ total attributable emissions – so a court telling an oil major that it must take responsibility for them helps bolster corporate climate accountability.

The June 25 ruling came in a lawsuit that was filed against TotalEnergies in 2020. The court ordered the company to revise its vigilance plan within the next six months, and said that the case would resume in January when the court will consider whether or not the new plan is adequate. And although the court did not order Total to specifically slash its emissions or curb its oil and gas expansion, as the plaintiffs had demanded, it could do so at a later date.

The court’s decision came as France was suffering under the deadly heat wave – a point which was not lost among people reacting to the ruling.

“The timing is impossible to miss: as Europe is suffering through another unprecedented heatwave, one of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies has once again lost in court,” said ClientEarth lawyer Johnny White. “Today’s judgment adds to a growing body of decisions recognizing that the few companies most responsible for driving climate breakdown can be held responsible for their part in climate harms.”

“This is an important decision during these days of unprecedented heatwave: fighting climate change is also fighting for a livable future,” the plaintiff organizations said in a press release. “Multinationals – particularly oil and gas companies like TotalEnergies – must do their part to protect our loved ones, the regions we cherish, and those most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. We will continue the fight to ensure that this is the case.”

Further Reading

Check out my latest published articles:

“French Oil Major Failed to Fulfill ‘Vigilance’ Duty on Climate, Paris Court Rules”, Inside Climate News, https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26062026/french-oil-major-failed-to-fulfill-vigilance-duty-on-climate-paris-court-rules/

“Greenpeace’s Dutch Anti-SLAPP Against Oil Pipeline Giant Advances”, Inside Climate News, https://insideclimatenews.org/news/21062026/greenpeace-anti-slapp-lawsuit-against-energy-transfer/

“US Faces Triple Threat of Climate Crisis, Economic Hardship, and Donald Trump”, Sierra, https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/us-faces-triple-threat-climate-crisis-economic-hardship-and-donald-trump

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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.

Tip Jar

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!).

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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.”

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