It Just Got Way Easier to Sue Fossil Fuel Companies Over Climate Change

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By Rachel Santarsiero, Mother Jones. 

Excerpt: ...In terms of the sheer scope of heat and extreme weather, 2026 has been a year of climate disasters. Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry—by far the greatest contributor to global climate change...is holding firm. ...oil and gas groups and their networks have accelerated their defenses, fighting with their all-too-familiar playbook of discrediting the science linking emissions to extreme weather events.... ...A new peer-reviewed study published earlier this month in Earth’s Future suggests that it is possible to demonstrate that “emissions from company X cause injury Y.” ...the study’s author, Christopher Callahan—an Earth systems scientist and assistant professor at Indiana University’s O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs—built a statistical model to figure out the relationship between the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the odds of extreme heat or rain. ...The study’s results are clear: “There is no level of emissions that does not contribute to changing climate impacts,” Callahan told me.  ...“Climate attribution research seeks to connect greenhouse-gas emissions to specific climate impacts, and increasingly, to particular industries or companies,” wrote Kyle Kohli in Energy In Depth, a blog associated with the Independent Petroleum Association of America. “That makes it especially valuable to climate plaintiffs attempting to overcome one of their biggest legal obstacles: proving causation.”... 

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