Summary of the Workshop on Climate Accountability, Public Opinion, and Legal Strategies

The workshop explored how the tobacco industry's history of disinformation and the subsequent legal breakthroughs—specifically the discovery of internal documents—could inform strategies to hold fossil fuel companies accountable. Participants discussed various legal avenues, including public nuisance and RICO lawsuits, the scientific challenges of attributing specific climate damages to individual producers, and the need for a compelling public narrative to move beyond scientific evidence and mobilize public action.

• The tobacco and fossil fuel industries have employed nearly identical strategies of disseminating disinformation to create scientific uncertainty and prevent government regulation, often utilizing the same public relations firms and front groups.
• A critical turning point in tobacco litigation was the use of legal discovery to uncover internal industry documents, which shifted the legal focus from scientific debates over causation to the industry's fraudulent conduct and conspiracy.
• Participants identified several potential legal strategies for climate accountability, including public nuisance lawsuits, RICO Act claims to target corporate conspiracies, libel suits against those discrediting scientists, and atmospheric trust litigation based on the Public Trust Doctrine.
• While scientists can confidently state how overall risks are changing, attributing a single specific weather event to human-caused climate change remains scientifically difficult due to confounding factors and 'noise'.
• Research by Richard Heede aims to quantify the proportion of global atmospheric carbon load attributable to specific 'carbon majors' from 1864 to 2010, which could potentially be used to establish joint and several liability in court.
• Public opinion on climate change is heavily influenced by 'cultural cognition,' where individuals filter information to fit pre-existing worldviews (e.g., hierarchical vs. egalitarian), making scientific data alone insufficient for mobilization.
• Effective public engagement may require a 'dialogic approach' to develop an emotionally resonant narrative and a focus on immediate, local consequences—such as heat stroke in high school athletes—rather than distant future projections.
• There is a tension between the desire to mobilize the public through outrage over industry deception and the concern that an overly adversarial tone might alienate the 'middle' or discourage necessary future cooperation from energy companies.

APA

Shulman, S. (2012). Summary of the Workshop on Climate Accountability, Public Opinion, and Legal Strategies. Union of Concerned Scientists. https://www.ucs.org/sites/default/files/attach/2016/04/establishing-accountability-climate-change-damages-lessons-tobacco-control.pdf

Chicago

Shulman, Seth. Summary of the Workshop on Climate Accountability, Public Opinion, and Legal Strategies. Union of Concerned Scientists, 2012. https://www.ucs.org/sites/default/files/attach/2016/04/establishing-accountability-climate-change-damages-lessons-tobacco-control.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Shulman |first1=Seth |title=Summary of the Workshop on Climate Accountability, Public Opinion, and Legal Strategies |publisher=Union of Concerned Scientists |date=October 2012 |url=https://www.ucs.org/sites/default/files/attach/2016/04/establishing-accountability-climate-change-damages-lessons-tobacco-control.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{shulman2012summary, author = {Shulman, Seth}, title = {{Summary of the Workshop on Climate Accountability, Public Opinion, and Legal Strategies}}, institution = {Union of Concerned Scientists}, year = {2012}, month = oct, url = {https://www.ucs.org/sites/default/files/attach/2016/04/establishing-accountability-climate-change-damages-lessons-tobacco-control.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }