Pablo Fajardo Mendoza is an environmental justice lawyer who works with the Unión de Afectados por Texaco. Sriram Madhusoodanan is the U.S. climate campaign director at Corporate Accountability, a global corporate watchdog and campaigning organization.
Last summer, Delaware, Connecticut, and other states joined cities like Hoboken, New Jersey, and Charleston, South Carolina, in suing fossil fuel corporations including Exxon Mobil, BP, Chevron, and Shell for misleading the public about the climate impacts of burning fossil fuels. That now makes 16 U.S. cities, counties, states, and the District of Columbia with active litigation.
For justice to be truly served in U.S. courts, however, policymakers and communities trying to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable must do everything in their power to secure justice and restitution for those most impacted around the globe. A critical first step is teaming up and aligning strategies to end the legal loopholes corporations use to escape liability.
To achieve this, a global coalition of liability experts, social justice activists, and NGOs — including one of ours, Corporate Acco... Read more