Jeff Goodell on Attribution Science in the NYT: The Science That Has Oil Companies Running Scared – Gift Link

Goodell, author of ‘The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet’ argues that no matter how the US Supreme Court rules in a liability lawsuit brought against Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy by the city of Boulder, it will not kill attempts to hold those responsible for the impact of climate change accountable.

In fact, he writes, “the age of accountability for the fossil fuel industry has just begun and has a bright future. The reason for that is the emergence of a powerful field of climate science known as attribution science”, which measures how much human-caused climate change influences the frequency, intensity, and likelihood of specific extreme weather events. [Here is a Union of Concerned Scientists piece with a longer explanation on how it works.]

The simple truth is, the climate accountability genie is out of the bottle, and the Supreme Court is unlikely to jam it back in. Even if the court sides with Suncor, attribution science will continue to move forward, filling in the gaps between cause and effect in our understanding of how climate works.

And

In the end, the promise of attribution science is that it helps us see a storm or a heat wave or a flood not as an act of a god or the whim of Mother Nature, but as a disaster that has been knowingly shaped or intensified by particular human actions. And by identifying perpetrators and victims, it transforms the question of who should pay for climate damages into a moral question as much as a legal one.

Gift link.

Related coverage on the case:

• NYT story in the case (Gift link)
• Colorado Public Radio
• Stanford Law School
• The Guardian
• The Nation