The New Science Fossil Fuel Companies Fear

November 06, 2019

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by Zack Coleman (Politico) Researchers can now link weather events to emissions – and to the companies responsible. A string of lawsuits is about to give “attribution science” a real-life test. -- Richard Heede spent a decade digging through “disheveled, dusty” tomes in libraries around the world searching for the answers he thought could help save humanity.

The Norway-born academic’s task was direct, but far from simple: Find out how many greenhouse gases the world’s fossil fuel companies, cement-makers and other industrial giants had pumped into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution.

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Shouldn’t the companies who profited from those decisions play a role in mitigating them? With world governments making little progress toward reducing emissions, perhaps pressuring the companies whose products were causing the harm might have more effect?

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Just 90 companies had contributed nearly two-thirds of the world’s industrial emissions. He could even pinpoint the share of those emissions for which companies existing today are responsible.

In effect, Heede had established a pillar of a new field of research, now known as attribution science. But it wasn’t just an academic exercise: It’s a weapon that climate campaigners are starting to wield to put fossil fuel companies on the hook for billions of dollars in damages. It’s a kind of end run around a political system they see as forced into gridlock by fossil fuel industry influence.

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If blame can be attributed to corporations or governments, they believe, it can have two powerful effects: create a strong incentive for those companies to once and for all move away from fossil fuels, and unleash — through lawsuits — financial resources that could be used to seed new technologies and better prepare communities for the calamities climate change is expected to bring.

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The first lawsuit over what fossil fuel companies revealed about the costs of climate change comes from the New York attorney general, who has accused Exxon Mobil of securities fraud. The suit alleges that Exxon used a different internal estimate for the cost that carbon-reduction policies would have on its business than it told investors; ....

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(Oxford University scientist Myles) Allen and colleagues Dáithí Stone, Peter Stott and Mark Hawkins published the first “extreme event attribution” study. Using computer models, they compared human-caused, post-Industrial Revolution emissions with scenarios lacking such emissions, known as natural variability. They concluded that man-made greenhouse gas emissions had more than doubled the likelihood of the deadly European heatwave of 2003, which killed 27,000 people. The analysis was straightforward and remains the bedrock of extreme event attribution science.

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Reruns of the World Weather Attribution analyses confirmed the group’s initial efforts. It helped that the National Academy of Sciences wrote a 2016 report on climate attribution science and identified World Weather Attribution’s methods as the gold standard. Last year, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service asked World Weather Attribution to write a road map to operationalize the science so it can better predict and respond to disasters; a prototype could launch this fall.

On top of that, computer modeling vastly improved, and quickly, permitting the volume and sophistication required for World Weather Attribution group’s mission.

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The reinsurance industry, which covers megalosses in the event primary insurers can’t foot the bill, contends other factors like building codes and zoning decisions contribute a great deal to the overall financial toll from major disasters.

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For any potential uncertainty about climate attribution, Heede said there’s at least one definite truth about fossil fuel companies that should override the rest.

“They were aware decades ago what trouble climate change would be,” he said.

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So far, 13 state and local governments have filed lawsuits against oil and gas companies like Exxon Mobil, BP and ConocoPhillips, including the cities of New York, Baltimore, Oakland, San Francisco and Richmond; Imperial Beach and Santa Cruz, Calif.; the counties of Marin, San Mateo and Santa Cruz, Calif.; King (Wash.) and Boulder (Colo.); and the state of Rhode Island. Another lawsuit by Pacific Coast fishermen against Chevron also seeks climate damages.

The cases face long odds.

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Fossil fuel companies have successfully swatted away past cases, all of which have been federal, in part because the courts say Congress has responsibility for regulating greenhouse gas emissions, but Congress hasn’t yet amended the 1990 Clean Air Act to incorporate concerns about climate change. So, climate cases get stuck.

The novel legal innovation this time is that plaintiffs are aiming to sue in state courts. States have common law provisions that allow for claims under two legal theories: public nuisance, that a party is interfering with the rights of citizens, or product liability, that the dangers of using a product must be communicated to the public. Plaintiffs are trying to make the case that energy companies that extract, transport or market fuels are a public nuisance because they are destroying their residents’ enjoyment of a stable climate and forcing costs on them. Under product liability, plaintiffs are arguing that the companies pushed those products into the market knowing these probable, damaging outcomes.

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They are also expected to argue that all levels of government have cemented fossil fuels’ place in American society through tax incentives, infrastructure spending and other policies. That is the crux of what the companies argued in a federal case in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California brought in 2017 by the cities of Oakland and San Francisco.

“Plaintiffs do not assert that the mere extraction or sale of fossil fuels created the alleged nuisance (nor could they), but rather that the combustion of fossil fuels by third-party users — such as Plaintiffs themselves — causes global warming and rising seas,” attorneys for BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil and Shell wrote in a March 2018 motion to dismiss.

The federal case ultimately was dismissed, but Oakland and San Francisco are appealing. READ MORE

HONOLULU JOINS CLIMATE SUIT TREND: (Politico's Morning Energy)

Excerpt from Politico's Morning Energy: HONOLULU JOINS CLIMATE SUIT TREND: Honolulu may soon join the litany of municipalities suing fossil fuel companies over climate change. Mayor Kirk Caldwell on Tuesday announced plans to sue for climate change-related damages that present particular danger to the island state. "They need to pay just like Big Tobacco needed to pay," Caldwell said. The full city council must still authorize the suit. Maui County last week announced similar plans for litigation. READ MORE