With Big Oil working to insulate itself from the consequences of the climate crisis it caused, environmental advocacy groups are sounding the alarm in hopes of outflanking the industry and preventing the destruction of future legal cases worth potentially trillions of dollars.
On March 13, 195 organizations sent a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries urging Democrats to "proactively and affirmatively reject any proposal that would shield fossil fuel companies from the growing number of legal and legislative efforts to hold them accountable for their role in the climate crisis," as The Guardian reported.
The letter highlighted that 1 in 4 Americans live where a local or state government is suing Big Oil companies for producing, marketing, and selling dirty fuels and lying about their impacts on the public and environment to continue to reap profits.
It stated that the Trump administration "has vowed to quash lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry" and that Big Oil and its associates "will use the chaos and overreach of the new Trump administration to attempt yet again to pass some form of liability waiver."
The Guardian reported that over 30 lawsuits have been filed against the industry in the last decade. Attempts to get the cases thrown out have been mostly unsuccessful. It said Big Oil's bid for blanket protection could give it the same ability as the firearms industry to withstand actions to hold it accountable for violence.
The 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act "prevents the gun industry from being held accountable for harm caused and disincentivizes the industry from ensuring consumer safety," according to nonpartisan think tank the Center for American Progress.
Similar immunity proposals for Big Oil were drafted in 2017 and 2020. In the former case, which was abandoned, Exxon Mobil "threatened to leave the group," The Guardian reported. In the latter, a waiver was removed from a COVID-19 relief package.
The passage of such a waiver would require 67 votes in the Senate, a seemingly tall task unless it's slipped into a large, must-pass bill, as the newspaper outlined.
"Democrats need to be on guard," said Aaron Regunberg of the nonpartisan public interest group Public Citizen, one of the signatories.
The Guardian added that the threat comes from a Leonard Leo-backed effort to get the Supreme Court to grant Big Oil immunity. Leo helped the conservative legal organization the Federalist Society gain its footing in the 1990s and then stock the courts with loyal appointees, which led to the reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
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Yes 💯 The industry is also worried about climate superfund bills. Vermont and New York in 2024 passed such legislation to hold dirty fuel companies financially responsible for the impacts of rising global temperatures, which are caused by the burning of coal, gas, and oil via heat-trapping pollution. "Ten other states are considering similar proposals, which could each cost the industry billions or trillions," the outlet stated.
"What's at stake here isn't just who pays for climate disasters," said Cassidy DiPaola of Make Polluters Pay, which also signed the letter and is a campaign to build public support for climate litigation and related efforts. "It's whether our democracy allows powerful industries to simply rewrite the rules when justice catches up to them."
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