This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

As US communities take big oil to court for allegedly deceiving the public about the climate crisis, polling shared with the Guardian shows that a majority of voters support the litigation, while almost half would back an even more aggressive legal strategy of filing criminal charges.

The poll, which comes as the world’s first-ever criminal climate lawsuit was brought in France last week, could shed light on how, if filed, similar US cases might be viewed by a jury.

The 40 existing US lawsuits against major oil companies, filed by cities and states, are based on civil charges such as tort law and racketeering protections. But last year, the consumer advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen proposed also filing criminal charges—most notably, homicide—against the companies.

Big Oil, the argument goes, knew pollution from the use of fossil fuels could have lethal consequences and yet still fought to delay climate action, which could be considered grounds for charges of reckless or negligent homicide.

Asked for comment about the legal theory last year, the American Petroleum Institute, the top US fossil fuel lobby group, said that “the industry has achieved its goal of providing affordable, reliable American energy to US consumers while substantially reducing emissions and our environmental footprint.”

The seemingly radical idea has received “real, serious interest” from several district attorneys’ offices, said Aaron Regunberg, senior policy counsel with Public Citizen’s climate program. But it has also garnered some skepticism.

To see how the scheme plays with ordinary Americans, Public Citizen teamed up with progressive polling firm Data for Progress to survey 1,200 likely US voters. Conducted earlier this month, the poll was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, race, geography, and voting history.

Asked if fossil fuel companies “should be held legally accountable for their contributions to climate change,” 62 percent of voters said yes, suggesting majority support for the existing civil lawsuits against oil companies. That included 84 percent of Democrats, 59 percent of Independents and 40 percent of Republicans. The results confirm a majority opinion suggested by earlier national and state polls.

“[V]oters strongly want to see companies held accountable for their harmful actions,” said Grace Adcox, senior climate strategist at Data for Progress from the organization and advocacy group Fossil Free Media.

The poll went on to explain that while oil companies are already facing civil lawsuits, some climate advocates have also “proposed criminal prosecutions against these companies.”

It asked: “Knowing what you do now, do you support or oppose criminal charges being filed against oil and gas companies to hold them accountable for deaths caused by their contributions to climate change?” In response, 49 percent of those surveyed said they would “strongly” or “somewhat” support the effort, compared with 38 percent who said they would not. The results indicate that though the idea is new, it may not be too “out there” for many Americans, said Regunberg.

Of Democrats, 68 percent said they would back the idea, which Regunberg said was “huge,” especially because Democratic districts are much more likely to bring such legal action against the fossil fuel industry. He was “surprised,” he said, to find that the idea received support from nearly a third of Republicans, at 32 percent.

“A significant number of Republicans would support these prosecutions, even if none of their party’s leaders have the courage to buck their fossil fuel donors,” Regunberg said.

Chesa Boudin, former district attorney from San Francisco, which sued big oil in 2017, has expressed interest in Public Citizen’s legal theory.

Boudin, who was elected on a progressive agenda, said the poll was not just a useful way to judge support for criminal climate litigation, but could also show how potential jurors might view the cases.

“It gives you an indication of what a cross-section of citizens on a jury might do with this kind of evidence,” said Boudin, who was in 2022 removed from office amid conservative backlash.

Bringing criminal charges against Big Oil would come with major challenges at every step, experts say, from a lack of political will, to scarce resources in public prosecutors’ offices, to potential difficulties in proving causality.

Building political support for the projects may also not be easy, but Adcox of Data for Progress said the poll shows it could be possible.

“These national findings show these cases may be able to earn popular support, particularly in blue jurisdictions,” she said.

Oil companies have yet to face criminal climate-related charges in the United States. But last week, eight victims of extreme weather and three NGOs filed a criminal case against the French oil company TotalEnergies, alleging its fossil fuel exploitation has contributed to deadly climate disasters. In the US, energy companies PG&E and BP have previously been charged with homicide. (Both companies pleaded guilty and paid penalties and fines worth billions of dollars.)

Because it relies on precedent, “the law is an inherently backward-looking, conservative institution,” said Boudin. That can make it difficult to use new legal theories.

“And yet the law does change and evolve and grow,” he added. “The fact that this hasn’t been done before may lead many to say, well, it can’t be done, there’s no precedent. But there was no precedent for anything until there was.”

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Eight young people are suing the government of Alaska—the nation’s fastest-warming state—claiming a major new fossil fuel project violates their state constitutional rights.

The state-owned Alaska Gasline Development Corporation has proposed a $38.7 billion gas export project that would roughly triple the state’s greenhouse gas emissions for decades, the lawsuit says. Scientists have long warned that fossil fuel extraction must be swiftly curbed to secure a livable future.

The Alaska LNG Project would involve the construction of a gas treatment plant on the state’s North Slope, an 800-mile pipeline and liquefaction plant on the Kenai Peninsula which would prepare the gas for export to Asia.

“[Y]outh plaintiffs are uniquely vulnerable to and disproportionately injured by the climate harms that would result from the Alaska LNG Project,” the suit says.

In an unusual move in 2014, Alaska passed legislation amending multiple state laws to direct the state to see the project through.

The challengers, aged 11 to 22, argue that the proposal—and that legislation in particular—violates two sections of the Alaska constitution: the right to protected natural resources for “current and future generations,” and the right to be free from government infringement on life, liberty and property.

“The acceleration of climate change that this project will bring will affect what the land provides and brings to my culture,” said Summer Sagoonick, the 22-year-old lead plaintiff in the case and a member the Iñupiaq tribe. “I am counting on the courts to protect my rights.”

The Alaska attorney general, Treg Taylor, said his office would be reviewing the lawsuit carefully and called it a “misguided effort.”

“On its face, we can see that it is an attempt to block the development of Alaska’s natural gas reserves based on a purported environmental safety rationale,” he said. He added that Alaska was experiencing a shortage of gas, which he claimed was a “clean fuel.” And he said if the state did not develop gas, another place probably would, “without stringent standards to protect the environment.”

The case was filed by Our Children’s Trust, the non-profit law firm that won a groundbreaking climate victory on behalf of young Montanans last year.

Global warming is already taking a toll on the young Alaskans, the lawsuit says, by “interfering with their natural development, disrupting their cultural traditions and identities, and limiting their access to the natural resources on which they rely.”

Fish and other species that the plaintiffs eat are dying due to changes in the climate. More frequent and severe wildfires are threatening the young people’s homes and exposing them to dangerous pollution from smoke. And the knowledge of the threat of the climate crisis is taking a toll on their health, the complaint says, among other impacts.

Those effects have been particularly harsh for Native Alaskan youth, the complaint says. That includes Sagoonick, who resides in the village of Unalakleet, which is vulnerable to climate-induced flooding, rapid permafrost thawing and severe coastal erosion.

“We’re already seeing huge impacts to our ability to provide for our subsistence because of climate change,” she said.

Sagoonick learned to fish, hunt, and gather when she was young; she relies on local subsistence foods, including salmon and other fish, seal, duck, and cranberries, for the vast majority of her diet, the lawsuit says. “As our water warms and the land erodes, it poses a threat to our nourishment and our cultural practices,” Sagoonick said.

Tim Fitzpatrick of the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation said: “AGDC is directed by Alaska statute to commercialize North Slope natural gas because of the substantial environmental, economic and energy security benefits it unlocks for our state.” He added that the project had “withstood intensive environmental scrutiny by two successive administrations because of its obvious and abundant benefits.”

Four of the plaintiffs, including Sagoonick, were also part of a 2017 Our Children’s Trust lawsuit against Alaska that argued the the state’s promotion of fossil fuels in general violated the challengers’ state constitutional rights.

In 2022, the Alaska supreme court dismissed that case in a 3-2 decision. But the two dissenting justices said under Alaska’s constitution, the “right to a livable climate” is “arguably the bare minimum” when it comes to the rights enshrined in the state constitution.

“They are the only two justices from the Alaska supreme court to address this question of whether Alaska’s constitution guarantees the right to a climate system that sustains human life,” Andrew Welle, senior staff attorney for Our Children’s Trust and counsel for the Alaska plaintiffs. “So we’re seeking for the full court to decide that same issue.”

Though it did not set precedent, Welle said the decision is a “a strong indication.”

The complaint marks the first time Our Children’s Trust is challenging a specific fossil fuel project, rather than a government’s overall support of fossil fuels. The state of Alaska is named as a defendant, as is the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation, and that corporation’s president, Frank Richards.

The youth plaintiffs are hoping the court issues an order prohibiting the state from moving forward with the project. They are also seeking to set precedent recognizing that fossil fuel infrastructure violates the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.

“That is the first step to securing broader vision of climate justice for Alaska’s youth, as that can be built upon in future cases and enforcement actions,” said Welle.

Earlier this year, Montana’s supreme court upheld a groundbreaking decision in a case filed by Our Children’s Trust, requiring state regulators to consider the climate crisis before approving permits for fossil fuel development. The state has appealed that decision, and on Tuesday, the court said it would hear oral arguments this coming July.

Our Children’s Trust also has pending state lawsuits in Hawaii—which will go to trial in June—as well in Florida, Utah and Virginia. On Monday, it filed an amended complaint against the federal government on behalf of California youth.

A federal appeals court this month granted the Biden administration’s request to strike down a landmark federal case from Our Children’s Trust.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Donald Trump was continuing to ask fossil-fuel executives to fund his presidential campaign on Wednesday, despite scrutiny of his relationship with the industry.

The former president attended a fundraising luncheon at Houston’s Post Oak hotel hosted by three Big Oil executives.

The invitation-only meeting comes a day after the defense rested its case in Trump’s criminal hush-money trial, and a week after Houston was battered by deadly storms. The climate crisis, caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, has created the conditions for more frequent and severe rainfall and flooding, including in Texas.

“Houstonians are staring at Trump in disbelief as he flies in to beg Big Oil for funds just days after the city’s climate disaster,” said Alex Glass, communications director at the climate advocacy organization Climate Power, and a former Houston resident.

It also follows a fundraising dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club last month, where the former president reportedly asked more than 20 oil executives for $1 billion in campaign donations from their industry and promising, if elected, to remove barriers to drilling, scrap a pause on gas exports, and reverse new rules aimed at cutting car pollution.

“Donald Trump is telling us who he is, again,” said Pete Maysmith, a senior vice-president at the environmental nonprofit the League of Conservation Voters. “He has already asked oil executives for a billion dollars for his campaign; we can only assume this week’s meeting is to haggle over exactly what they will get in return.”

Executives from two of the companies reportedly represented at the Mar-a-Lago meeting were among the hosts of Trump’s Wednesday’s fundraiser.

Harold Hamm, the executive chairman and founder of Continental Resources and one of the Wednesday luncheon organizers, is a longtime Trump supporter and was reportedly also at the April dinner.

Hamm, a multibillionaire, was a major player in the rush to extract oil from the Bakken shale formation, which stretches across the US midwest and Canada.

During Trump’s first presidential campaign, Hamm was also reportedly one of the seven top donors to receive special seats at Trump’s inauguration. The oil magnate was briefly under consideration to be energy secretary during the former president’s first term but reportedly turned down the position. He turned away from Trump after his 2020 loss, choosing to donate to his opponents, but then donated to Trump’s primary campaign in August.

One of Hamm’s Wednesday co-hosts was Vicki Hollub, chief executive of Occidental Petroleum, which was also represented at the Mar-a-Lago fundraiser. Hollub has been criticized by climate activists for investing in carbon-capture technology in an effort to continue extracting oil and gas, despite warnings that fossil fuels must be phased out to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

Congressional Democrats launched an investigation into Occidental Petroleum and other companies on Wednesday after the Federal Trade Commission last month accused the head of Pioneer Natural Resources of illegal collusion with the oil production cartel Opec+ to keep fuel prices high.

The third co-host of Wednesday’s meeting, Kelcy Warren, is the executive chairman of Energy Transfer Partners—a company with whom Trump has close financial ties.

Throughout the 2024 campaign cycle, Warren has donated more than $800,000 to Trump’s campaign. In the 2020 election cycle, he held at least one fundraiser for the former president in 2020 and donated $10 million to a pro-Trump Super Pac.

During his first presidential run in 2016, Trump invested in the company while also receiving more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from Warren, the Guardian found.

Warren appears to have benefited from Trump’s first term: within days of taking office in 2017, Trump approved construction of his company’s highly controversial Dakota Access pipeline, triggering outrage from climate advocates, conservationists and nearby Indigenous tribal organizations.

Last year, the Texas Tribune found that Energy Transfer Partners profited to the tune of $2.4 billion as gas demand soared during Texas’s deadly winter freeze and the ensuing collapse of the state’s energy grid.

The fossil-fuel industry has funneled $7.3 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign and associated groups, making it his fifth-largest industry donor this election cycle.

The $1 billion “deal” that Trump allegedly offered to oil executives last month could save the industry $110 billion in tax breaks if he returns to the White House, an analysis last week found.

Last week, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) launched a House oversight investigation into nine oil companies after Trump reportedly offered to dismantle Biden’s environmental rules for their benefit and requested $1 billion in contributions to his presidential campaign.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has also expressed interest in formally investigating the Mar-a-Lago meeting. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, the powerful Washington watchdog, also told the Guardian it is investigating.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

US gas utilities are partnering with one of the nation’s most trusted nonprofits as part of a “cynical PR stunt” to combat efforts to curb fossil fuel usage, a Guardian investigation has found.

Local Habitat for Humanity affiliates have teamed up with at least four utilities across 10 states to build “zero-net energy homes,” which are meant to produce more energy than they use.

The houses, which are sold at affordable rates to low-income families, are weatherized and meticulously insulated to boost efficiency and equipped with rooftop solar panels. But they also come with appliances powered by gas, a planet-heating fossil fuel that has been shown to degrade indoor air quality.

The utilities say the homes provide lower electricity bills and affordable mortgages for vulnerable families.

“It’s part of our culture to really give back to the communities that we serve,” Jennifer Altieri, vice-president of public affairs for Atmos Energy’s Colorado-Kansas division, said in a video announcing the utility’s first Habitat home in Evans, Colorado, in September 2021, which was provided to a single mother and her children.

Yet Atmos has privately described the project as something closer to a public relations tactic, intentionally launched in a state that is “on the frontlines” of attempts to quell reliance on gas.

Atmos has since expanded the Habitat partnerships to seven communities, with plans to launch similar initiatives in at least two more. National Fuel in the Northeast, SoCal Gas in Southern California, and Nicor in Illinois have also partnered with Habitat on zero-net energy (ZNE) projects.

The moves by utilities to attach themselves to social justice causes come as the US is embroiled in a broader political culture war over federal, state, and local attempts to phase out gas and make new buildings electric.

The projects by Atmos and others have won widespread praise from gas interest groups. An autumn 2022 feature in Southeast Gas’s magazine Natural Living says the Atmos-Habitat partnerships promote “healthy living,” and that same year, its Evans, Colorado, home was a finalist for an ESG award from the Southern Gas Association. “These ZNE homes demonstrate that natural gas is a part of the solution to achieve our low-carbon energy future,” the award submission says.

Habitat for Humanity International has participated in international climate negotiations and says it prioritizes climate safety. In a statement, the nonprofit said: “We know that innovation is required so future construction doesn’t exacerbate the climate crisis.”

Habitat for Humanity says it helps millions of people access affordable homes each year who are often “among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.” But to do so, it relies on independent, locally run affiliates, which can decide how houses are built and funded.

Asked about the perceived conflict between the gas utility partnerships and its climate-related statements, a spokesperson for the organization said the group’s affiliates “engage a wide range of partners.” The world is “facing a growing crisis in affordable, adequate housing” which requires “a multi-faceted challenge that demands nonprofit organizations, individuals, corporate partners, elected officials and more to work alongside one another,” he said.

He said Habitat’s advocacy and partnerships were “designed to confront the housing crisis and ensure more people have a decent place to call home.” But critics say those arrangements appear to have opened the door for gas utilities to attach themselves to the organization and its reputation.

“It’s a cynical PR stunt by the gas utilities,” said Itai Vardi, research and communications manager at the utility watchdog group the Energy and Policy Institute, which provided some research about the partnerships to the Guardian. “We know that we need to transition very rapidly and dramatically off of fossil fuels, and there’s really no good reason to build new construction that is not all electric.”

“Zero-net energy” is a building standard requiring a home to produce as much energy as it uses. Builders first work to boost a home’s efficiency with insulation and air sealing, then equip the home with energy production capacity, such as solar panels.

But efficient homes that still use gas should not be considered climate-friendly, said Mike Henchen, who leads the carbon-free buildings program at the pro-electrification nonprofit RMI. “When it comes to climate, gas is part of the problem,” he said. “There’s this effort to hype natural gas as clean energy, but it’s not.”

Gas is primarily composed of methane, a greenhouse gas 80 times more planet-warming than carbon dioxide in the short term.

In the US, gas accounts for the vast majority of planet-heating pollution from buildings, which makes up more than one-tenth of all US greenhouse gas emissions.

The utilities say the projects illustrate that gas can be part of decarbonization efforts. Describing its Habitat partnerships to American Gas Magazine, a representative from the gas utility Nicor said: “These homes demonstrate the importance of natural gas as part of a diverse energy mix in a net-zero future.”

Jennifer Golz, spokesperson for Nicor, said that “research shows a hybrid energy approach will help drive greater emissions reductions at lower overall costs” while improving reliability during extreme weather. A spokesperson for Atmos said: “We believe a balanced energy approach that includes natural gas and preserves energy choice, rather than supporting specific fuels or technologies, will achieve goals of reducing emissions while maintaining energy reliability.”

But climate experts agree that gas must be swiftly curbed to avert climate catastrophe.

Spokespeople from Atmos and Nicor did not directly respond to questions about that scientific consensus.

In an emailed comment, a representative from Colorado’s Greeley-Weld Habitat affiliate said: “We have long constructed homes with a variety of energy sources, including natural gas and electricity.”

Daniel Aldana Cohen, a co-director of the progressive thinktank Climate and Community Project, said the gas-powered ZNE projects made an unnecessary compromise: They tie access to affordable housing to increased planet-heating pollution.

“The two great existential crises that most people face are eviction and climate breakdown, and the second one is making the first one worse,” said Aldana Cohen, whose research has informed federal Green New Deal for Public Housing proposals.

Experts have long warned that gas appliances can emit pollutants, including carcinogens. In recent years, a slew of studies have linked gas stoves to increased risk of childhood asthma, chronic lung disease and other health impacts.

Low-income people and people of color may be at higher risk if exposed to these pollutants, as they are more likely to have asthma and other underlying respiratory issues due to disproportionate exposure to environmental contaminants.

Gas trade groups note a recent World Health Organization-funded study found gas stoves had a non-significant impact on childhood asthma. The same study noted a connection between gas use and pneumonia and lower respiratory infections.

Last year, US regulators suggested a potential eventual nationwide gas stove ban, though Biden later ruled out such a policy.

Yet the utilities behind the partnerships have repeatedly referred to gas as “clean.” And during a dedication ceremony for a zero-net energy home built by a Habitat affiliate and Atmos in Lafayette, Louisiana, a representative from the utility claimed that the air quality in the home would be of “the best quality breathing air that you can have.”

Spokespeople from Atmos and Nicor did not respond to inquiries about whether the ZNE homes included gas stoves. But an Atmos representative in a December 2023 industry webinar said there was “natural gas cooking in these homes, in every single one of them.”

Asked about concerns that gas appliances can degrade indoor air quality, a representative for Atmos Energy directed the Guardian to claims made by the American Gas Association, a major trade group for private gas utilities.

Despite evidence of the dangers of gas, utilities and their interest groups are using the Habitat partnerships as a public relations tool. The Energy Solutions Center, a trade association of gas utilities, cited the partnerships in a gas-promoting marketing document for its members, which was reviewed by the Guardian. (In an emailed statement, the executive director of Energy Solutions Center, Sonia Vahedian, pointed to recent studies that it said showed gas “remains essential for energy security and will significantly contribute to economic security beyond 2050.”)

And during a December 2023 industry webinar, a recording of which was also reviewed by the Guardian, a representative from Atmos said that the project began as a response to attempts to ban gas in buildings.

“In Colorado, they are a little bit on the frontlines, as far as some of the efforts to maybe dissuade people from utilizing natural gas,” a representative of the utility said. “And as such, that became the chosen site for our very first natural gas-fueled ZNE home build.”

Another representative went on to describe the need to produce a “marketable” product. “Like everyone in the natural gas industry…we’ve kept an eye on the growing loud voice for green energy and squeezing out fossil fuels as an energy source,” he said, adding that the partnerships sought to show that “natural gas can be a part of that future solution or transition state.”

The choice to “combine with renewables,” the representative says, is “kind of a great talking point that, ‘Hey, we’re partnering with renewables, we’re not against them.’”

It’s a strategy that was highlighted in a congressional report last month, based on a tranche of subpoenaed internal documents. A 2018 draft presentation from BP said one way to “harness excitement” about renewables was to suggest gas could be a backup fuel source for wind and solar.

Atmos representatives on the call also said Habitat had a “well-oiled machine in terms of public relations.”

“Utilities enter into places where government investment is lacking and use that to promote its product, but also brandish its image through these kinds of PR stunts,” Vardi said.

Each ZNE home in these projects has gone to low-income members of vulnerable communities, including immigrants, people of color and veterans.

“The gas companies,” said Aldana Cohen, “are essentially using poor people as human shields to perpetuate a business model that is going to do the most harm to poor people.”

It’s not the only instance of fossil fuel interests hitching their wagon to this kind of advocacy. Reports show that utilities have long funded Black civil rights leaders; the NAACP in 2020 urged local chapters to stop accepting this funding.

Promotional materials often say the ZNE homes can help lower energy bills.

“Natural gas is really important to the homes we build because it’s reliable, predictable, and affordable month to month,” a representative of the Habitat affiliate in Austin, Texas, said in a 2021 report on environmental, social, and governance investments.

In a 2022 call with financial analysts shared with the Guardian by the Energy and Policy Institute, Atmos’s CEO, Kevin Akers, said the ZNE homes demonstrated “the value and vital role natural gas plays in helping customers reduce their carbon footprint in a cost-effective manner.”

Recent research, however, shows that newer, efficient electric appliances—such as heat pumps and induction stoves—can cost the same amount or even less to run as their gas-powered counterparts, though they can be more expensive to install.

In some cases, utilities are also using customers’ money to pay to build the homes. In Mississippi, public utility commission documents shared by the Energy and Policy Institute show Atmos is recovering costs to build the ZNE homes from ratepayers.

Though the projects are billed “zero-net energy” homes, it is not clear that they are always meeting that goal.

SoCal Gas in 2017 partnered with Habitat for Humanity of Orange county on a ZNE home, and has touted the benefits of “dual-fuel” ZNE homes over all-electric ones, saying customers prefer them.

But a 2021 study funded by SoCalGas and the California Energy Commission comparing two ZNE homes in the city of Stockton—one fully electric model and another home that included both solar panels and gas appliances—seemed to undercut the purported benefits of gas. Researchers found that the all-electric home produced more energy than it used, but the gas-powered model did not achieve ZNE status.

In webinars held last year researchers noted that even when ZNE homes do not achieve “absolute zero,” they can still help to promote efficiency.

ZNE homes with gas can meet the zero-net benchmark—in a statement, Atmos said its Habitat homes have done so—and not all fully electric ZNE homes necessarily achieve the goal. Still, Vardi said the SoCal Gas-funded study provided yet more evidence that gas is unnecessary. “There is really no reason to build new construction that is not all electric,” he said.

Some Habitat partnerships show that this is possible.

Habitat’s affiliate in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, built all-electric homes in partnership with a Cape Cod utility, which in 2021 were the “best-rated” Habitat homes in the nation in terms of efficiency. Another affiliate in Massachusetts’s Pioneer Valley built an affordable, all-electric ZNE home that won praise from the federal government.

This year, the federal government announced $2 billion for a coalition of nonprofits including Habitat for Humanity International and Rewiring America to build fully electric low-income housing.

The projects began amid a widespread lack of affordable housing in the US. A poll this year found that most US renters believe they will never be able to afford a home, and that a majority live in areas that are so unaffordable that they are “barely livable.” Meanwhile, US public housing stock shrank by 25 percent between 2009 and 2022, according to a recent analysis of federal data by Climate and Community Project.

Habitat depends on financial donations to fund their work, which Aldana Cohen said created the opportunity for “dramatic inconsistency or contradiction, like using affordable housing to prop up the gas industry.”

In another example, Habitat International, has accepted donations from the multinational fossil fuel conglomerate Koch Industries. “When you delegate things to any number of nonprofits and for-profit companies, you’re far more likely to just get totally self-serving interventions,” he said.

“There’s no reason to lock a single social policy priority, like affordable housing, into the survival of the fossil fuel industry,” Cohen said.

A “deal” allegedly offered by Donald Trump to Big Oil executives as he sought $1 billion in campaign donations could save the industry $110 billion in tax breaks if he returns to the White House, an analysis suggests.

The fundraising dinner held last month at Mar-a-Lago with more than 20 executives, including from Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Occidental Petroleum, reportedly involved Trump asking for large campaign contributions and promising, if elected, to remove barriers to drilling, scrap a pause on gas exports, and reverse new rules aimed at cutting car pollution.

Congressional Democrats have launched an investigation into the “ethical, campaign finance, and legal issues” raised by what one Democratic senator called an “offer of a blatant quid pro quo,” while a prominent watchdog group is exploring whether the meeting warrants legal action.

But the analysis shared with the Guardian shows that the biggest motivation for oil and gas companies to back Trump appears to be in the tax system, with about $110 billion in tax breaks for the industry at stake should Joe Biden be re-elected in November’s election.

Biden wants to eliminate the tax breaks, which include long-standing incentives to help drill for oil and gas, with a recent White House budget proposal targeting $35 billion in domestic subsidies and $75 billion in overseas fossil fuel income.

“Big oil executives are sweating in their seats at the thought of losing $110 billion in special tax loopholes under Biden in 2025,” said Lukas Ross, a campaigner at Friends of the Earth Action, which conducted the analysis.

Ross said the tax breaks are worth nearly 11,000 percent more than the amount Trump allegedly asked the executives for in donations. “If Trump promises to protect polluter handouts during tax negotiations, then his $1 billion shakedown is a cheap insurance policy for the industry,” he said.

Some of the tax breaks have been around for decades, and are a global issue, but the US oil and gas industry benefited disproportionately from tax cuts passed by Trump when he was president in 2017.

Next year, regardless of who is president, a raft of individual tax cuts included in that bill will expire, prompting a round of Washington deal-making over which industries, if any, will help fund an extension.

Lobbying records show that Chevron, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Occidental, Cheniere, and the American Petroleum Institute (API) have all met lawmakers this year to discuss this tax situation, likely encouraging them to ignore Biden’s plan to target the fossil fuel industry’s own carve-outs.

Chevron and ConocoPhillips, the analysis shows, lobbied on a deduction for intangible drilling costs, the largest federal subsidy for US oil and gas companies, which is worth $10 billion, according to federal figures.

Other lobbying centered on more generalized tax breaks that the oil and gas industry has taken advantage of. ExxonMobil lobbied for a little-known bill that would restore a bonus depreciation deduction to its full value, which, according to Moody’s, would allow Big Oil to avoid Biden’s newly established corporate minimum tax.

“Unlike previous administrations, I don’t think the federal government should give handouts to big oil,” Biden said following his inauguration in 2021. But Congress and the president will have to agree to any new tax arrangements next year, and the fossil-fuel industry continues to have staunch support from Republicans and some Democrats.

The API insisted its industry gets no favorable treatment in the tax system. “America’s energy industry proudly invests in communities, pays local, state and federal taxes and receives no special tax treatment from the federal government,” a spokesperson said. “This nonsense report is another attempt to distract from the importance of all energy sources—including oil and natural gas—to meet America’s growing energy needs.”

The high stakes for the fossil-fuel industry, as well as for the climate crisis, have placed scrutiny upon those who attended Trump’s dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Although representatives of large oil companies were present, the majority of known attendees were executives of smaller firms focused on specific subsections of the fossil-fuel industry, such as fracking or gas exporting.

Those companies are not often held to account in international forums such as the UN climate talks or the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, which means they are less likely to make buzzy climate pledges. They may also be more threatened by regulations on individual parts of the US fossil fuel economy, such as auto-emissions standards aiming to quell gas-car usage.

“The oil majors…see their future in plastic [production]. That doesn’t apply to the smaller companies who don’t work across the industry,” said Kert Davies, director of special investigations at the Center for Climate Integrity. “They’ve got nothing to shift to.”

Among other reported attendees were the head of the company Venture Global, which rivals Qatar as one of the world’s leading liquefied natural gas exporters. This year, the company came under fire after it was revealed to have been using millions of gallons of water to construct a Louisiana LNG terminal while a nearby community faced extreme shortages. The firm was also accused late last year of reneging on its contracts by Shell and BP.

Another attendee: Nick Dell’Osso, CEO of Chesapeake Energy, which after years of court fights had to pay $5.3 million to Pennsylvania landowners who say they were cheated out of gas royalties. The company’s earlier CEO, John McClendon, was indicted in 2016 on charges of conspiring to rig bids on oil and gas leases in Oklahoma.

Billionaire oil tycoon Harold Hamm, who founded fossil fuel exploration company Continental Resources, was also present. He helped raise money for Trump’s 2016 presidential run and was under consideration to be Trump’s energy secretary, and was reportedly one of the seven top donors who had special seats at Trump’s inauguration. Though he eschewed the former president after his 2020 loss, he donated to Trump’s primary campaign in August.

Asked about the meeting, API spokesperson Andrea Woods said the organization “meets with policymakers and candidates from across the political spectrum on topics important to our industry.” She said the premise of Democrats’ investigation into the meeting is “patently false and an attempt to distract from a needed debate about America’s future—one that requires more energy, including more oil and natural gas.”

Amid the scrutiny of last month’s Mar-a-Lago dinner, Trump is continuing to court oil-tied funders. On Tuesday evening, he held a Manhattan fundraising dinner that cost a minimum of $100,000 to attend.

Among the event’s hosts, advocacy group Climate Power noted, was John Catsimatidis, the chief executive of the much-scrutinized gas refiner United Refining Company and owner of two grocery chains, a radio station, and holding company Red Apple Group.

Between 2017 and 2023, United Refining Company’s small refinery in western Pennsylvania was the most dangerous refinery in the country, with federal data showing it reported 10 times the average number of injuries for a refinery—63 percent higher than the next-most dangerous facility.

The company also reportedly sought to dodge environmental regulations using a process championed by Trump’s EPA administrator Scott Pruitt.

Catsimatidis has also been criticized for neglecting vacant gas-station properties and for blaming gas prices on “open” borders, corporate taxes, and worker benefits. The Pennsylvania town home to United Refining pays some of the highest gas prices in the state, despite the presence of the refinery, raising suspicions among some residents about the company’s practices.

Trump this week also held a fundraiser hosted by the Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), who is one of the largest recipients of Big Oil funding in Congress, and another with Joe Craft, a major Trump donor who owns massive coal producer Alliance Resource Partners. In 2016, Craft reportedly gifted Pruitt courtside basketball tickets after the agency crafted pro-coal regulations.

House Democrats have launched an investigation into a meeting between oil company executives and Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home and club last month, following reports that the former president offered to dismantle Biden’s environmental rules and requested $1 billion in contributions to his presidential campaign.

Democrats on the House oversight committee late on Monday evening sent letters to nine oil executives requesting information on their companies’ participation in the meeting.

“Media reports raise significant potential ethical, campaign finance, and legal issues that would flow from the effective sale of American energy and regulatory policy to commercial interests in return for large campaign contributions,” the Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the committee, wrote in the letters.

Vermont is poised to pass a groundbreaking measure forcing major polluting companies to help pay for damages caused by the climate crisis, in a move being closely watched by other states including New York and California.

Modeled after the EPA’s Superfund program, which forces companies to pay for toxic waste cleanup, the climate superfund bill would charge major fossil fuel companies doing business within the state billions of dollars for their past emissions.

The measure would make Vermont the first US state to hold fossil fuel companies liable for their planet-heating pollution. “If you contributed to a mess, you should play a role in cleaning it up,” Elena Mihaly, vice-president of the Conservation Law Foundation’s Vermont chapter, which is campaigning for the bill, said in an interview.

If passed, the bill will face a steep uphill battle in the courts. But supporters say the first-of-its-kind legislation could be a model for the rest of the country. Four other states are weighing similar initiatives. Sens. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) also attempted to include a federal version in the infrastructure bill passed in 2022, though it was omitted from the final draft. (The measure would have raised $500 billion.)

Advocates for the Vermont bill notched a major win on Friday when the state’s House of Representatives advanced the measure with a preliminary vote of 100-33—enough support to overcome a potential veto by the state’s Republican governor, Phil Scott. On Monday, the bill passed the House in a 94-38 vote.

Within the next week, it will receive a final vote in the state Senate, where it received preliminary approval on a 26-3 vote last month. It will then head to Gov. Scott’s desk for final approval; if he shoots it down, supporters are confident that they have the votes to override a veto.

“Climate impacts are mounting everywhere and they’re coming with a price tag” said Jamie Henn, director of Fossil Free Media, which is campaigning in support of climate superfund legislation across the US. “Of course we’re going to see efforts to force the companies responsible for disasters to pick up the bill.”

Vermont is known for its temperate summers, but last July, catastrophic floods pummeled the state. Roads became rivers, bridges were decimated, and two people were killed by the rushing waters. “It was devastating,” said Mihaly.

She is originally from California, a state that has seen widespread devastation from wildfires and other climate-related disasters. “I had before considered Vermont a haven, a safe choice from a climate perspective. Last summer was a wake-up call,” she said.

The floods wreaked more than $1 billion in damages, just 11 years after Tropical Storm Irene devastated nearly all of Vermont. As the climate crisis persists, research shows future flooding events could be even more devastating and costly.

The legislation would compel Vermont’s state treasurer, Mike Pieciak—who supports the effort—to set up a fund for climate damages. To do so, he would be required to determine how much money to collect to pay for climate-related impacts to Vermont’s public health, biodiversity, economic development, and other damages. (The bill text does not include a specific figure to be collected, but an initial rough estimate from the Vermont Public Interest Research Group suggests the figure could be as much as $2.5 billion.)

The state would also have to work with scientists to figure out how much of that damage is attributable to climate change. Then, officials would calculate how much each major oil and gas company within the state contributed to it, based on the emissions from their products between 1995 and 2024. To do so, they would use the Carbon Majors database—an account of the world’s largest polluters’ contributions to the climate crisis.

The money collected would be used to fund projects to improve climate adaptation and resilience, as determined by the state’s Agency of Natural Resources.

If passed, the measure could serve as a model for the rest of the country as interest in climate accountability is growing, and as New York, California, Maryland, and Massachusetts weigh similar initiatives.

New York’s measure, which would collect $30 billion, sailed through the New York Senate this week after being omitted from the state’s budget earlier this year. Advocates are now hoping for a full state Assembly vote before the session ends on June 6.

“While New Yorkers brace for the rising and costly impacts of climate change, fossil fuel profiteers are reaping record profits,” said Eric Weltman, senior New York organizer with the environmental group Food and Water Watch. “It’s time these big oil corporations paid to clean up their mess.”

Meanwhile, the California measure will face a challenging vote in a in state Senate committee next week. Massachusetts’ and Maryland’s measures have stalled.

All five states considering climate superfund bills have also filed lawsuits against Big Oil for allegedly attempting to sow doubt about the climate crisis despite longstanding knowledge of the dangers of burning fossil fuels. But unlike the lawsuits, the legislative proposals do not requite proof of that history of deception. “This bill is not about punishing big oil for deceiving the public,” said Mihaly.

Spreading knowledge of that deception, however, has helped build support for the measure. During a Vermont Senate committee vote on the bill in March, for instance, the Republican senator Robert Norris said he was initially “hesitant” about the bill but chose to support it after learning about the fossil fuel industry’s misinformation campaigns.

“I was not aware…the large companies knew about this in the ’50s and ’60s and so forth and still did nothing to address this,” he said.

Jennifer Rushlow, dean of the Maverick Lloyd School for the Environment at Vermont Law and Graduate School, noted that the lawsuits have often run into “roadblocks” when judges question whether or not the litigation should be the purview of legislators rather than courts.

“In that way, the climate superfund bills are a well-designed response to the challenges many climate lawsuits have faced,” said Rushlow, who has campaigned for the bill.

The bills enjoy widespread support from voters, said Cassidy DiPaola, communications director at Fossil Free Media. April surveys conducted by her organization and the polling firm Data for Progress found that 70 percent of likely California voters would support a climate superfund bill, while 66 percent of all likely US voters would support such a measure, as would 89 percent of Democrats.

If the Vermont bill becomes law, fossil fuel interests are expected to challenge it in the state’s courts, the bill’s detractors have noted.

“We’re a mosquito compared to a giant,” the Vermont senator Randy Brock, a Republican who voted against the bill, said on the Senate floor last month. “ExxonMobil alone has an annual sales of $344.6 billion and Vermont has an annual budget of about $8.5 billion.”

Gov. Scott has not said whether or not he would veto the measure. But he has voiced concern about the state facing steep litigation costs.

The American Petroleum Institute, the largest oil and gas lobby group in the United States, sent a letter to the Vermont Senate opposing the bill, claiming it “retroactively imposes costs and liability on prior activities that were legal” and “violates equal protection and due process rights by holding companies responsible for the actions of society at large.”

But Rushlow said to avoid “damaging litigation,” lawmakers had worked to write a “good solid law where the legislature makes clear what they want other branches of government to do.”

Mihaly said supporters had worked to build a “robust record to demonstrate that there’s a rational basis for this law,” adding that the Vermont attorney general, Charity Clark, supported the bill and said her office was “ready to proudly defend the law.”

The fossil fuel industry spent decades sowing doubt about the dangers of burning oil and gas, experts and Democratic lawmakers testified on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

The Senate budget committee held a hearing to review a report published on Tuesday with the House oversight and accountability committee that they said demonstrates the sector’s shift from explicit climate denial to a more sophisticated strategy of “deception, disinformation and doublespeak.”

“Big oil had to evolve from denial to duplicity,” said Sheldon Whitehouse, the Rhode Island Democrat, who chairs the Senate committee.

The revelations, based on hundreds of newly subpoenaed documents, illustrate how oil companies worked to greenwash their image while fighting climate policy behind the scenes.

“Time and again, the biggest oil and gas corporations say one thing for the purposes of public consumption but do something completely different to protect their profits,” Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House oversight committee, testified. “Company officials will admit the terrifying reality of their business model behind closed doors but say something entirely different, false and soothing to the public.”

The findings build on years of investigative reporting and scholarly research showing that the sector was for decades aware of the dangers of the climate crisis, yet hid that from the public.

In the absence of decisive government action to curb planet-warming emissions, the impacts of the climate crisis have gotten worse, committee Democrats said. Several senators said the industry should have to pay damages for fueling the crisis.

“In my view, it should not be state government or the federal government having to pick up the bill,” said the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders. “I think it’s time to ask the people who caused that problem, who lied about that situation, to pick up the bill.”

But budget committee Republicans pushed back on the very premise of the hearing. Chuck Grassley, the Iowa senator and the committee’s top Republican, said it is “undeniable that…fossil fuels are critical to our energy security.”

Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson, meanwhile, claimed that CO2 is a “plant food,” implying it has positive aspects. It’s a talking point that has long been promoted by fossil fuel industry-funded think tanks that aim to sow doubt about climate change.

“I’m not a climate-change denier, I’m just not a climate-change alarmist,” Johnson added.

Kert Davies, director of special investigations at the Center for Climate Integrity, who has long studied climate denial, noted his rhetoric was exemplary of “old school” denial tactics that have long fallen out of favor in the industry.

“The plant food thing was a popular talking point in the 1990s,” he said in an interview. “They’re falling back on these tropes…and that’s all they’ve got, because they have no other rebuttal to the findings about the deception campaigns.”

Perhaps the tensest moment of the morning’s hearing came when Louisiana senator John Kennedy questioned Geoffrey Supran, a University of Miami associate professor who studies fossil fuel industry messaging and whom the Senate committee Democrats had invited to testify.

The Republican senator attacked Supran for retweeting posts about the protest organization Climate Defiance, which recently accosted Joe Manchin, the centrist West Virginia Democratic senator who has well-documented financial interests in coal, and called him a “sick fuck.” (Supran says he did not retweet anything about the action and was not aware of it until the hearing.)

“Are you going to call me a sick fuck?” Kennedy asked.

In response, Supran said Kennedy’s comments were “characteristic” of the oil industry’s “propaganda techniques.”

“Among all the tactics that the fossil fuel interests have used over the decades to deny their products have caused global warming, one of the most common is character assassination,” Supran said in an interview after the hearing. “The idea is to attack the messenger rather than the message, because they don’t have a foot to stand on with the message.”

The Republicans’ messaging, Supran added, is an indication that though the industry has adopted new forms of “climate delay,” older forms of “climate denial are still alive and well in some cases.”

He said Kennedy’s questioning also points to the “influence of oil money on American politics,” adding that research shows representatives who fight climate policy get more money from fossil fuel companies. (Kennedy has accepted more than $1.5 million from the oil industry.)

Cities and states have filed a slew of lawsuits against big oil for alleged deception. Sharon Eubanks, who was lead counsel on behalf of the US in a successful 2005 lawsuit against big tobacco and was invited by the Democrats to testify, said the US could also reasonably take legal action against the oil industry.

In her testimony, Eubanks referenced a document called the Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan, nicknamed the “victory memo” by climate-denial researchers. Circulated by top oil and gas lobby group American Petroleum Institute in 1998, the document detailed a plan to undermine climate science and promote doubt and denial.

One prong of the plan, Davies noted, was targeting US representatives. “They’re explicitly targeted, and companies spent money on giving Congress propaganda,” he said. “They’re doing the industry’s work for them.”

Climate experts fear Donald Trump will follow a blueprint created by his allies to gut the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), disbanding its work on climate science and tailoring its operations to business interests.

Joe Biden’s presidency has increased the profile of the science-based federal agency but its future has been put in doubt if Trump wins a second term and at a time when climate impacts continue to worsen.

The plan to “break up NOAA is laid out in the Project 2025 document written by more than 350 right-wingers and helmed by the Heritage Foundation. Called the “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” it is meant to guide the first 180 days of presidency for an incoming Republican president.

The document bears the fingerprints of Trump allies, including Johnny McEntee, who was one of Trump’s closest aides and is a senior adviser to Project 2025. “The National Oceanographic [sic] and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories,” the proposal says.

That’s a sign that the far right has “no interest in climate truth,” said Chris Gloninger, who last year left his job as a meteorologist in Iowa after receiving death threats over his spotlighting of global warming.

The guidebook chapter detailing the strategy, which was recently spotlighted by E&E News, describes NOAA as a “colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future US prosperity.” It was written by Thomas Gilman, a former Chrysler executive who during Trump’s presidency was chief financial officer for NOAA’s parent body, the commerce department.

Gilman writes that one of NOAAs six main offices, the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, should be “disbanded” because it issues “theoretical” science and is “the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism.” Though he admits it serves “important public safety and business functions as well as academic functions,” Gilman says data from the National Hurricane Center must be “presented neutrally, without adjustments intended to support any one side in the climate debate.”

But NOAA’s research and data are “largely neutral right now,” said Andrew Rosenberg, a former NOAA official who is now a fellow at the University of New Hampshire. “It in fact basically reports the science as the scientific evidence accumulates and has been quite cautious about reporting climate effects,” he said. “It’s not pushing some agenda.”

The rhetoric harkens back to the Trump administration’s scrubbing of climate crisis-related webpages from government websites and stifling climate scientists, said Gloninger, who now works at an environmental consulting firm, the Woods Hole Group.

“It’s one of those things where it seems like if you stop talking about climate change, I think that they truly believe it will just go away,” he said. “They say this term ‘climate alarmism’…and well, the existential crisis of our lifetime is alarming.”

NOAA also houses the National Weather Service (NWS), which provides weather and climate forecasts and warnings. Gilman calls for the service to “fully commercialize its forecasting operations.”

He goes on to say that Americans are already reliant on private weather forecasters, specifically naming AccuWeather and citing a PR release issued by the company to claim that “studies have found that the forecasts and warnings provided by the private companies are more reliable” than the public sector’s. (The mention is noteworthy as Trump once tapped the former CEO of AccuWeather to lead NOAA, though his nomination was soon withdrawn.)

The claims come amid years of attempts from US conservatives to help private companies enter the forecasting arena—proposals that are “nonsense,” said Rosenberg.

Right now, all people can access high-quality forecasts for free through the NWS. But if forecasts were conducted only by private companies that have a profit motive, crucial programming might no longer be available to those in whom business executives don’t see value, said Rosenberg.

“What about air-quality forecasts in underserved communities? What about forecasts available to farmers that aren’t wealthy farmers? Storm-surge forecasts in communities that aren’t wealthy?” he said. “The frontlines of most of climate change are Black and brown communities that have less resources. Are they going to be getting the same service?”

Private companies like Google, thanks to technological advancements in artificial intelligence, may now indeed be producing more accurate forecasts, said Andrew Blum, author of the 2019 book The Weather Machine: A Journey Inside the Forecast. Those private forecasts, however, are all built on NOAA’s data and resources.

Campus organizers at three universities filed legal complaints on Monday arguing that their schools’ investments in planet-heating fossil fuels are illegal, the Guardian has learned.

The students from Columbia University, Tulane University, and the University of Virginia each wrote to the attorneys general of their respective states calling on them to scrutinize their universities’ investments. They accuse their universities of breaching the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act, a law adopted by 49 states that requires nonprofit institutions to consider their “charitable purposes” when investing, and exercise “prudence” and “loyalty.”

“[T]he privileges that Columbia enjoys as a non-profit institution come with the responsibility to ensure that its resources are put to socially beneficial ends,” the Columbia students wrote.

Investments in coal, oil, and gas violate each of the three schools’ stated missions and pledges to prioritize climate action and research, the complaints say. From a purely financial standpoint, investments in fossil fuel stocks are also volatile, the students argue.

“Despite the demonstrable financial and social benefits of institutional fossil fuel divestment, the Board has remained steadfast in its support of an industry whose business model is based on environmental destruction and social injustice,” the University of Virginia students wrote.

The investments from influential, moneyed institutions set a dangerous example, the students say.

“Universities occupy a unique position as a bastion of values and morals the best of society should strive for,” said Nicole Xiao, 19, a second–year Columbia student studying climate systems science. “When Columbia refuses to commit to divestment, it hinders those very same principles and continues a blatant disregard of the important climate work its own faculty, students, and affiliates do.”

The complaints, filed on Earth Day, come as officials at Columbia University face staunch criticism for directing New York City police to remove students protesting against Israel’s war in Gaza and calling on Columbia to divest its finances from corporations with links to Israel.

“In light of current campus events occurring at Columbia, this complaint further highlights the University’s responsibility to uphold stringent standards on socially responsible and ethical investments, with respect to fossil fuels and beyond,” said Xiao.

The filings are each signed by faculty, staff and alumni, as well as local, national and international climate organizations. They estimate that the three schools each have millions of dollars invested in coal, oil, and gas.

The students say their concerns are compounded by “conflicts of interest” on each of the three campuses. Staff and board members at each school accept payments for roles at fossil fuel companies, and polluting corporations have also funded research at each of the three institutions.

The complaints build on pre-existing fossil fuel divestment efforts at each of the three universities, and follow 19 similar initiatives at colleges around the US filed over the past four years. They come amid increasing scrutiny of the role fossil fuel money plays in the US academy. On Sunday, the Guardian revealed that Louisiana State University had not only accepted major funding from oil major Shell, but also let the company weigh in on faculty research activities.

Bill McKibben, the veteran environmental activist and author, supports the students’ efforts. He noted that Columbia University is where James Hansen, the US scientist who warned the world about the greenhouse effect in the 1980s, pioneered his study of the climate crisis. “It’s nuts that schools like these would try to profit off the climate crisis,” he wrote in an email.

Each of the filings was written with help from nonprofit environmental law organization Climate Defense Project.

State officials have not affirmed any of the legal filings yet, but students have met with state officials in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Mexico, Alex Marquardt, executive director of the Climate Defense Project, said. Several schools—including Harvard, Cornell, and Princeton—also voluntarily committed to divest from fossil fuels shortly after complaints against them were filed, he noted.

Maille Bowerman, 21, a senior at the University of Virginia who studies urban planning and environmental studies and organizes with DivestUVA, said student organizers on her campus think the filing is a “next step in getting our message through to the university and showing that the situation is urgent and requires drastic action.”

The students from each of the universities noted that the climate crisis—primarily caused by fossil fuels—had devastated each of their institutions’ home cities. These effects have been especially severe in Tulane University’s city of New Orleans, Louisiana, which is “arguably one of the cities most imperiled by the climate crisis in the United States,” said Emma De Leon, 20, a junior who is majoring in environmental studies and communication.

“The fossil fuel industry’s actions and infrastructure accelerate coastal erosion, which in combination with rising sea levels could result in New Orleans and Tulane’s campuses being inundated in the future,” said De Leon, who organizes with the sustainability and divestment committee of the Tulane Undergraduate Assembly. “During this semester alone, there have been two flooding events on campus that resulted in me either walking through water up to my calves or being stuck inside a building.”

Thomas Sherry, professor emeritus at Tulane University’s department of ecology and evolutionary biology, who signed the complaint, said the school has refused to divest from fossil fuels in its portfolio since he started his job on the campus in 1989. Even Hurricane Katrina, which struck New Orleans in 2005 and was one of the deadliest hurricanes in US history, did not prompt officials to take the leap.

“I understand that taking bold action, essentially against fossil fuels, is politically perilous in Louisiana, but I also would have expected more leadership from Tulane administration and trustees,” he said. “It’s ethically immoral at this juncture for institutions like Tulane to ignore its own contributions to, and inactivity regarding, climate change threats.”

The Guardian has contacted officials at Columbia University, Tulane University, and the University of Virginia for comment.