Climate Cases

In the U.S., the response to climate litigation is often “who cares when this Supreme Court is ultimately going to knock it back anyway?” And the answer is simple: discovery. Discovery is a term that describes the fact-finding phase of civil litigation. During the discovery phase, lawyers can access primary documents, depose current and former employees and executives, and generally get a whole bunch of information they couldn’t previously access.

The oil companies have been fighting like hell to avoid this phase because it will undoubtedly produce ten more “Exxon Knew” series, if not more. It will provide evidence for all the other cases, too, not just in the U.S. but globally, where the industry doesn’t have Supreme Court justices ready to do their bidding. It’s true that it’s entirely possible that any climate case that gets to the U.S. Supreme Court will result in a pro-oil ruling. But not before massively increasing the risk of accountability for these companies along the way. Even the U.S. government might be forced to finally act if the public, armed with mountains of evidence that politicians have colluded with fossil fuel executives to sell their future, demands it.

And it’s important to remember that climate litigation does not begin or end with the U.S., nor does accountability for U.S. oil companies. It’s entirely possible that documents unearthed via litigation in one country can be used to hold a company accountable in one of the other 100 countries in which it operates.

Given the importance of climate litigation today, and the fact that in its 2022 mitigation report the IPCC included litigation as a key mitigation tool for the first time ever, we keep tabs on these cases, both on the website and via multiple podcasts.