Fossil Fuel Firms are Driving Dangerous Climate Impacts – And Science Can Prove It

Scientists are increasingly linking corporate ‘carbon majors’ with climate hazards such as deadly heat waves.

The science is clear that human-caused climate change is supercharging more dangerous, damaging, and deadly disasters – from extreme weather events such as superstorms, flash floods, and oppressive heat waves to slower onset impacts like severe drought and rising seas. It is also well-established that fossil fuels, which release heat-trapping greenhouse gases when burned, are the primary cause of this anthropogenic climate change.

Now, scientists are increasingly connecting the dots between the sources that generate fossil fuels in the first place (and to a lesser extent, cement – a very carbon-intensive material to make) and the climatic and socioeconomic consequences of doing so. This relatively new field of climate research, called source attribution, could open up new pathways and support ongoing efforts to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for the climate crisis it has largely created.

Researcher Richard Heede pioneered this work, publishing a groundbreaking peer-reviewed study more than a decade ago tracing nearly two-thirds of industrial carbon emissions to just 90 fossil fuel and cement-producing entities. These so-called carbon majors include big investor-owned oil companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, and Shell as well as state-owned firms like Saudi Aramco and several nation-states like the former Soviet Union and China.

Scientists have refined and built upon that initial analysis over the years. In 2017, Heede and colleagues published a study linking the emissions attributable to the carbon majors to observed increases in atmospheric CO2, global surface temperature, and sea levels. The framework connects climate impacts or trends to the source entities producing fossil fuels, providing scientific backing to the narrative that these entities are the ones most directly responsible for the climate breakdown we are experiencing.

Subsequent peer-reviewed studies have linked nearly 20 million acres burned by wildfires in the western United States and Canada since 1986 to the carbon emissions from 88 companies, and tied present-day and projected future sea level rise to the historical emissions of 122 carbon majors. The latter study was published in March of this year.

Also in March, the UK-based think tank InfluenceMap – which now hosts the Carbon Majors database – issued its latest update on the carbon majors analysis, finding that half of fossil fuel-based CO2 emissions in 2023 came from just 36 entities.

Then in April, researchers Christopher Callahan and Justin Mankin published a landmark study linking, for the first time, emissions generated by the carbon majors to quantifiable economic damages stemming from extreme heat. The study demonstrates what the authors refer to as “end-to-end attribution” because it connects the source of emissions (individual companies) on one end of the causal chain with the consequent damages on the other end. The study found that trillions of dollars in economic losses globally are attributable to extreme heat tied to the emissions of over 100 carbon-producing entities.

“These aren’t just large numbers — they’re legally and morally significant,” Delta Merner, lead scientist with the Science Hub for Climate Litigation at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told me in commenting on that study. “Courts are increasingly asking not just if climate change caused harm, but who is responsible. This paper can help to answer that. The methodology aligns with legal standards for causation and could strengthen the evidentiary base for ongoing and future litigation.”

One common argument that the fossil fuel industry and its allies make is that energy companies are simply supplying a demand – fossil fuels after all still account for the large majority of the world’s energy supply – and that their products are essential to modern society.

But Callahan says that just because fossil fuels may have provided some benefits, it doesn’t mean their producers should be able to evade accountability for the undeniable harms their products also unleash.

“The affluence of the Western economy has been based on fossil fuels, but just as a pharmaceutical company would not be absolved from the negative effects of a drug by the benefits of that drug, fossil fuel companies should not be excused for the damage they’ve caused by the prosperity their products have generated,” Callahan said.

In a Bluesky thread he posted this week, Callahan summarized the most recent scientific advancements attributing climate change impacts and damages to the world’s largest fossil fuel firms. “Over the last 6 months a series of papers has advanced our understanding of the culpability of fossil fuel firms for climate change impacts,” he wrote.

“Heatwaves that devastate communities, kill thousands, and destroy crops are not ‘natural disasters’, they have been engineered, as a direct result of fossil fuel companies choosing profit over people.” - Anne Jellema, 350.org

In addition to his own paper (co-authored with Mankin), Callahan referenced another major study linking the carbon majors to extreme heat that just came out this week. I covered the study for Inside Climate News. In short, it examined the influence of climate change on over 200 heat waves around the world from 2000 to 2023 and then extended the analysis to look at how the carbon majors contributed to the heat waves. What the researchers found is that not only did climate change increase the intensity and likelihood of the 213 heat waves examined, but that the carbon emissions generated by the 180 largest fossil fuel and cement producers played a significant role in their occurrence. Half of the increase in intensity of the heat waves (since preindustrial times) can be attributed to these carbon majors, according to the study.

“Heatwaves that devastate communities, kill thousands, and destroy crops are not ‘natural disasters’, they have been engineered, as a direct result of fossil fuel companies choosing profit over people. This new research puts names to the culprits,” Anne Jellema, CEO of climate action organization 350.org, said in a statement responding to the new study.

Karsten Haustein, a research associate at the Meteorological Institute of Leipzig University who was not involved with the study, wrote in an accompanying commentary published in the journal Nature that the research can “provide a tool to continue the legal battle against individual companies and countries.”

“This study is a leap forward that could be used to support future climate lawsuits and aid diplomatic negotiations,” Haustein added. “Finally, it is another reminder that denial and anti-science rhetoric will not make climate liability go away, nor will it reduce the ever-increasing risk to life from heatwaves across our planet.”