Oil companies have become some of the wealthiest organizations in history by producing a product that we now know is endangering the future of humanity.

Many of these companies have known about the effects of carbon dioxide for decades, yet while they adapted their own businesses to survive climate change, they actively undermined efforts to understand it.

Should Canadians be able to sue oil companies for that?

“They are in a position to pay for this damage; they have the responsibility to pay for this damage,” Peter Tabuns, the NDP’s climate change critic in the Ontario legislature, told DeSmog Canada. “We’re talking very big bucks.”

Tabuns has introduced legislation, the Liability for Climate-Related Harms Act, that would open oil companies up to lawsuits in Ontario.

The bill sets out a legal framework for individuals and the government to sue fossil fuel companies for climate-related damages like flooding or wildfires, and to force them to pay for infrastructure that protects against those effects.

The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy estimated in 2011 that by 2020 climate change would cost the Canadian economy $5 billion per year — and more than $40 billion by 2050. Around the world, that number is closer to $600 billion annually.

Tabuns’ bill is modelled after lawsuits that are ongoing in the United States.

The question of legal culpability used to be a sticking point for these kinds of cases, but according to Keith Stewart, energy campaigner at Greenpeace Canada, that’s beginning to change.


“We used to say, ‘oh, you can’t attribute any particular disaster to climate change,’ — well, now you can,” he says.

That ability to parse what contribution climate change made to the strength of a hurricane, for example, means a dollar value can now be put on a lawsuit. Directing that lawsuit at a particular company is also now possible thanks to a more thorough accounting of emissions.

“We have evidence of which company has produced which percentage of greenhouse gas emissions,” he says.

What if Canadians sue oil companies for #ClimateChange? https://t.co/ix7VS7hoiw

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) March 28, 2018

Modelled after tobacco legislation, American lawsuits

The tactics used by oil companies and those used by tobacco companies are remarkably similar, as laid out in the books Climate Cover-Up and Merchants of Doubt — they even employed the same public relations firms. The playbook was to move from outright denial of the products’ harms to obfuscation of the science, leading lawmakers to delay action for as long as possible.

“They were saying, ‘we don’t know enough about climate change for governments to take action,’ ” says Stewart. “At the same time, they were building their offshore drilling platforms higher, because they assumed that over the 50-year lifespan of that drilling platform, seas were going to rise.”

This duplicity, Stewart believes, is at the heart of why these lawsuits could be successful in the same way tobacco lawsuits were successful.

“The reason they were held accountable was because they knew the harm their product was causing, but they didn’t warn people,” he says.

Andrew Gage, a lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law, agrees, points to evidence that fossil fuel companies knew as early as the 1960s about the effects of carbon emissions. Instead of warning the public and trying to reduce their emissions, the companies set about preventing that knowledge from reaching the public.

“We want to make it very clear that it was never legal to sell a product that you knew would destroy communities and pollute our global atmosphere and cause massive economic and human upheaval,” says Gage.

“Usually, the moment you become aware your product is killing people, you have some obligations about that. It’s actually quite bizarre.”

Tabuns’ bill doesn’t have much of a chance of becoming law at this point — it’s a private member’s bill offered up by an opposition party near an election.

But according to Stewart, who helped Tabuns draft the bill, that isn’t the point.

It’s about getting the issue on the agenda, forcing government ministries to analyze the possibilities, and “putting the big polluters on notice that this is coming,” he said.

For Gage, the exciting part about the bill is creating a provision that makes companies liable for damages, regardless of their intentions. It creates a financial incentive for them and their investors to change.

“These costs are just going to continue to rise,” says Gage, pointing to the B.C. Lower Mainland, where cost estimates to adapt to sea level rise alone are approaching $10 billion by 2100.

“So I have no doubt that these cases will continue to be filed around the world. It is not affordable for taxpayers to continue paying.”

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As leaders from around the world head to Paris in December for the COP21 UN climate negotiations, they do so with the burdensome knowledge that this is it: the big year. More than 190 nations will try to reach an internationally binding climate agreement to prevent the globe from warming to catastrophic levels.

Such high stakes haven’t pressed upon the negotiations since 2009’s Copenhagen climate summit, widely regarded as a failure after wearied countries fled the conference without producing a strong international agreement.

Perhaps that’s why this year there is little patience for the influence peddling of the world’s major fossil fuel companies, all of which are eager to play a role in the conversation.

Nearly 400,000 people have signed a petition to bar “big polluters” from the talks.

The petition, organized by Corporate Accountability International, argues the summit should be protected from corporate interests and becoming a platform for companies intending to “block progress, push false solutions and continue the disastrous status quo.”

The petition is just one of a number of public efforts designed to showcase the negative influence of industry groups on climate talks, their historic bad behaviour and a growing international impatience for meaningful climate action.

Corporate Bad Behaviour in Spotlight

The recent effort to limit the influence of industry at the upcoming talks come on the heels of an allegation that ExxonMobil intentionally deceived the public about the dangers of climate change.

Recent investigations reveal Exxon knew about the existence of ‘potentially catastrophic’ climate change since the 1970s but chose to keep that information hidden. The company is being widely criticized for misleading the public about the influence of human activity and the use of fossil fuels on the global climate.

Both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, leading presidential candidates for the Democratic party, as well as house Democrats have called for an official investigation of Exxon and now leading environmental groups, civil rights organizations and climate campaigners among others are spearheading an international call for further investigation.

Companies like Exxon are being spotlighted by Friends of the Earth France in a new ‘Pinocchio Climate Award,’ which targets industry groups most responsible for preventing or delaying action on climate.

The nominees are corporate sponsors of the COP21 climate talks, including BNP-Paribas, EDF and Engie — all of which will be judged in the Pinocchio Awards for their lobbying activities, promotion of false climate solutions and harmed caused to communities for the sake of profit. The ‘winners’ for each category will be announced at a public ceremony in Paris during the climate talks.

Industry’s “Charm Offensive” Little Help Against Critics

While members of the public cast their votes cast against major industrial polluters, companies also face an increased level of scrutiny for public relations stunts seemingly designed to purchase social favour in the lead up to Paris.

The Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, an effort of 10 top CEO’s from the energy sector, was called a “final charm offensive” before the climate talks by Reuters,

InfluenceMap, an organization that tracks the lobbying and activities of industry groups, called the initiative an attempt by leading energy companies to “improve their image in the face of longstanding criticism of their business practices” ahead of the talks.

A recent report by InfluenceMap shows many top companies in the oil and gas sector publicly support climate action but subvert those same efforts through anti-climate lobbying and the work of trade organizations.

In September a group of European investor institutions worth a collective $66 billion called on nine multinational companies to sever relationships with EU trade groups known to lobby against climate policy. The companies pressured to cut ties with the anti-climate lobby include COP21 sponsor EDF as well as BHP Billiton, BP, Glencore, Johnson Matthey, Proctor and Gamble, Rio Tinto, Statoil and Total.

Corporate Europe Observatory, an organization exposing lobby power in the EU, has already criticized the “climate unfriendly” sponsors of this year’s event, indicating France may be making a critical mistake in welcoming corporate influence.

"Most of these companies are big emitters of the very greenhouse gases responsible for climate change, such as EDF or Engie whose coal plants alone are equivalent to nearly half of France's entire emissions," said Malika Peyraut of Friends of the Earth.

“Putting the most important climate conference of the decade under the patronage of climate-incompatible businesses does not bode well.”

Fossil Fuel Industry’s Controversial Influence at Climate Talks

Pushback against industry influence at the UN climate talks has been ongoing for years.

In 2011, the Polaris Institute released a report outlining how “multinational corporations and their lobbyists have infiltrated the United Nations and are influencing the outcomes of climate negotiations.”

The report demonstrated industry’s influence as a driving force behind market-based rather than regulatory solutions to climate change.

In 2013, civil society groups, trade unions and environmental organizations staged a massive walk out of the climate talks in Warsaw, Poland, arguing corporate sponsorship was threatening the independence and purpose of the event.

Last year at the COP20 climate talks in Lima, Peru, more than 53,000 individuals signed a document that called on the UN Climate Secretariat to ban fossil fuel corporations and lobby organizations from the talks.

“The fossil fuel industry is actively lobbying against climate action and standing in the way of progress. When you’re trying to burn the table down, you don’t deserve a seat at it,” Hoda Baraka, global communications manager for 350.org, said at the time.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.