Why Congress Must Block a Liability Waiver for the Fossil Fuel Industry
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President Trump and congressional Republicans have made clear their intention to boost fossil fuel company profits by expanding drilling and slashing environmental and public health protections. It is increasingly possible they may try to give the industry what it wants most of all: immunity from liability for the enormous damages these corporations have knowingly caused to people and the planet. Congress must resist such efforts—whether through the upcoming budget process or as stand-alone legislation—and protect the ability of states, municipalities, and others harmed by fossil fuel-driven climate change to hold polluters accountable through litigation and legislation.
Last month, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) joined with nearly 200 other groups in signing a letter calling on Congressional Democrats to “proactively and affirmatively reject” potential efforts aimed at shielding the fossil fuel industry from legal liability. Here are six reasons major fossil fuel corporations fear being held accountable for decades of deceit and the resulting harm to people and the planet.
The impending arrival of “Danger Season” is a stark reminder that climate change impacts are already devastating communities worldwide, intensifying many kinds of extreme weather events, driving sea level rise, and harming human health.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has tracked extreme weather and climate-related disasters, including hurricanes, wildfires, droughts, and floods. According to NOAA data, 2024 saw 27 confirmed weather and climate disaster events that each caused damages amounting to $1 billion or more. The cost and deadly effects of climate change fall disproportionately on people and communities on the front lines of those impacts, many of them historically disadvantaged and under-resourced.
The Trump Administration’s plan to end climate research at NOAA and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) would be disastrous, as my colleague Dr. Marc Alessi writes. And hiding data and stopping research will do nothing to slow the climate crisis. On the contrary, burying our heads in the sand will only put more lives at risk and increase costs to our economy.
Advances in climate attribution science, which quantifies the extent to which human activities are responsible for observed changes in the climate system, show it is indisputable that the primary driver of these escalating harms is the burning of fossil fuels.
A key link in quantifying the contributions of major fossil fuel companies to cumulative global emissions is the Carbon Majors database, now run by the UK-based global nonprofit thinktank InfluenceMap.
UCS has been a leader in peer-reviewed scientific research linking climate impacts to emissions that trace directly to fossil fuel companies. Research teams led by UCS climate scientists and joined by a variety of top academic expert collaborators have published a series of pathbreaking studies quantifying how emissions traced to major fossil fuel companies have driven increases in global temperatures, sea level rise, ocean acidification, and damage from wildfires.
Most recently, a study led by former UCS science fellow Dr. Shaina Sadai underscores how emissions traced to the world’s major carbon polluters have all but guaranteed sea level rise for generations to come. Multiple scenarios demonstrate how avoided emissions could have saved lives if polluters had taken action when they first understood the impacts of their products, or when there was general global understanding of climate change.
Instead of addressing the many ways climate change threatens the country’s financial stability, the Trump administration is pulling back safeguards in order to reward his Big Oil donors, as my colleague Laura Peterson writes (Heads in the sand, part B).
Major fossil fuel companies have fought hard to block mandatory and standardized corporate climate disclosures, long demanded by investors. In March 2024, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) finalized a regulation that would compel publicly traded companies to assess and report on how climate change will affect their bottom lines and, by extension, investors and the public. The fossil fuel industry and its allies had lobbied against the rule, weakening the final version to the point that companies are essentially allowed to decide what climate-related risks they disclose to investors.
Nevertheless, fossil fuel industry proxies immediately filed lawsuits against the rule. Through the US Chamber of Commerce, the industry is also suing to block two California laws passed in 2023 to strengthen corporate climate disclosures—one of which requires large public and private US-based corporations that do business in California and have annual revenues greater than $1 billion to disclose their global warming emissions all along the value chain. For companies in the oil and gas sector, 80 to 90 percent of carbon emissions result from the use of their fossil fuel products.
The SEC rule was targeted for elimination by a major oil and gas industry trade association. Shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, the SEC asked the court to pause the lawsuits, and in March 2025 the commission voted to withdraw its defense of the rule altogether.
A mounting body of evidence—reinforced by recently released internal corporate documents—demonstrates that major fossil fuel companies have known for decades that the continued extraction, production, promotion, and sale of their products would lead to catastrophic consequences, and that action to ward off the crisis would threaten their business model and bottom lines.
Instead of acting responsibly, they engaged in a long-term, deliberate disinformation campaign to sow public doubt, block climate action, and continue profiting from fossil fuel extraction at the expense of people and the planet. These companies have not only failed to take responsibility for their role in the climate crisis but also actively obstructed efforts to transition to a clean energy future. Many of the tactics they used—often following the playbook of the tobacco industry—are still being deployed today.
Take, for example, a confidential internal Shell report from 1998 that outlines a scenario set in 2010 in which a series of violent storms devastate the US east coast, prompting public outrage over the fossil fuel industry’s role in climate change. In this scenario, insurers deny liability and a fierce debate erupts over who should pay the costs. A coalition of environmental nonprofit groups brings a class action lawsuit against the US government and fossil fuel companies, on the basis that they had long failed to act on warnings from scientists (including the companies’ own) that something must be done. The scenario continues:
“A social reaction to the use of fossil fuels grows, and individuals become ‘vigilante environmentalists’ in the same way, a generation earlier, they had become fiercely anti-tobacco. Direct-action campaigns against companies escalate. Young consumers, especially, demand action.”
The timing of this confidential Shell report is notable. In 1998, I was working at Corporate Accountability on its tobacco campaign. Starting in 1994, US states had begun suing Big Tobacco to recover the costs of treating people with tobacco-related illness. By 1998, Minnesota’s lawsuit went to trial, and the tobacco industry sought to settle the litigation. Ultimately, the Master Settlement Agreement with the attorneys general of 52 states and territories required the four largest US tobacco corporations to pay hundreds of billions of dollars in health care costs; end certain advertising, promotion and marketing practices; close its lobbying arm and fraudulent science arm; and release millions of pages of internal documents.
It seems Shell has long been acutely aware of the threat of legal accountability for the harms caused by its products.
Today, informed by overwhelming physical and social science evidence, legal action against the fossil fuel industry is advancing in courts around the world, part of a growing global movement for climate justice.
One in four people in the United States currently live in a state, territory, or municipality that is suing major fossil fuel corporations to hold them accountable for fraud, climate damages, or racketeering. The lawsuits contend that—much like the tobacco industry in its deception about the dangers of cigarettes—fossil fuel companies have long understood the harm their products cause and chose to prioritize profit over people and the planet.
Separately, a growing number of US state legislatures are considering so-called climate superfund laws, which would require the corporations responsible for the most heat-trapping emissions to help pay for the growing costs to protect public infrastructure from climate-driven damages. Two states—Vermont and New York—have passed climate superfund legislation.
The fossil fuel industry has fiercely attacked climate lawsuits and legislative efforts in court, delaying justice in climate litigation for years with meritless procedural hurdles and unfounded claims of preemption. But earlier this year, the US Supreme Court denied two petitions by the fossil fuel industry and its allies seeking to halt cases by Honolulu and five states, affirming their right to seek justice in state courts.
The fossil fuel industry has employed aggressive tactics to rebuff these advances for accountability and cash in on political favors. A fossil fuel industry lobby group launched a public campaign opposing climate accountability lawsuits, and CEOs of major oil and gas corporations including Chevron and ExxonMobil reportedly met with President Trump to ask for his help fighting both climate litigation and climate superfund legislation. Just weeks later, Trump signed an Executive Order targeting states’ rights.
The Trump administration’s attacks on climate and environmental justice programs and advocates are a signal to the fossil fuel industry and its surrogates that bullying and intimidation are the order of the day.
Last month, a North Dakota jury ruled in favor of Energy Transfer in its long-running meritless Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) against Greenpeace, finding the group liable for more than $660 million in damages for supporting Indigenous-led resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Yet corporate accountability campaigners remain steadfast.
Greenpeace entities in the United States have announced their intention to appeal, and Greenpeace International has filed an anti-SLAPP lawsuit against Energy Transfer in a Dutch court, seeking to recover all damages and costs resulting from the corporation’s meritless litigation.
Meanwhile, UCS and other targets of a criminal scheme to hack into email accounts of staff at public interest organizations seeking to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for its role in climate change continue to push for justice.
We have known for several years that ExxonMobil repeatedly used material stolen through the hack in its defense against climate accountability lawsuits in several US states. A longtime ExxonMobil lobbying firm, DCI Group, is reportedly being investigated in connection with the scheme, and allegedly shared information stolen through the hacking operation with ExxonMobil before leaking it to the media. ExxonMobil and the DCI Group have so far publicly denied involvement in the hacking scheme, and there is no indication that the US government intends to bring criminal charges against the DCI Group or ExxonMobil.
UCS continues to press for accountability for the perpetrators of the criminal hacking scheme.
And given the mounting human and financial toll of climate change and the mountain of evidence of the fossil fuel industry’s deliberate campaign of disinformation, obstruction, and intimidation, no US Senator or Representative should vote to shield this industry from facing consequences for its deception and the massive resulting harm.