“They’re pulling out all the stops”: Big Oil’s all-encompassing attacks on climate lawsuits
The fossil fuel industry and its allies are coordinating to end lawsuits that could make oil and gas companies pay for climate damages.
September 16, 2026 | Emily Sanders, Point Source
When the U.S. Supreme Court returns in October, the first case the justices will hear could decide whether oil companies can be put on trial for the rising costs of climate damages. With billions of dollars and the industry’s public image at stake, the companies’ Supreme Court bid is just one front in a much wider crusade to escape the courtroom entirely.
As lawsuits against fossil fuel companies get closer to trial, a growing constellation of front groups and government officials with financial ties to fossil fuel companies, lobbyists, lawyers, and the companies themselves are waging multiple strategies to undermine the cases or completely immunize the oil industry from liability for climate change…
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Industry allies are now coming after the scientists behind attribution studies. Republicans, fossil fuel-tied think tanks, and oil-funded groups targeted researchers from a panel of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine working on a major climate attribution science report, accusing the scientists of bias in favor of climate litigation. An opposition research firm with connections to fossil fuel interests, Leonard Leo’s network, and the Trump administration escalated the effort by demanding hundreds of emails and documents from scientists through open records requests, leading two scientists to drop out of the panel.
The campaign is designed to dig up information to tarnish scientists’ reputation, and “in the process, intimidate researchers into silence,” said Christopher Marchesano, a senior attorney at the nonprofit legal advocacy group Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. In the past, private communications have been used to cast doubt on climate science and assail scientists’ integrity.
The campaign is designed to dig up information to tarnish scientists’ reputation, and “in the process, intimidate researchers into silence,” said Christopher Marchesano, a senior attorney at the nonprofit legal advocacy group Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. In the past, private communications have been used to cast doubt on climate science and assail scientists’ integrity.