The climate litigation straw that could now break the director’s back.

Tanya Fiedler Climate accounting and accountability LinkedIn

The climate litigation straw that could now break the director’s back.
Climate attribution science has been advancing, but this is the moment it connects directly to corporate accountability.
For the first time, this amazing group of researchers have quantified how a single fossil fuel project can be linked to hundreds of heat-related deaths and millions of corals lost.
The implications for directors, insurers, debtors and creditors are profound. What was once hypothetical is now numerically traceable.
This means directors can no longer claim uncertainty as a defence, as the causal chain between project approvals, emissions, and human harm is now empirically established.
The simple equation below, outlined in The Conversation article and further detailed in the Nature paper (both of which I share links for in the below comments) changes everything:

Project emissions = x increase in heat-related deaths + y million corals lost

Huge congrats to Nerilie Abram and co-authors Nicola Maher, Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, Georgy Falster, Terry Hughes, Katrin Meissner, Louise Slater, Andrew King, Andrew Pitman, AO, FAA, Gillian Moon, and Wesley Morgan

Abram, N.J., Maher, N., Perkins-Kirkpatrick, S. et al. Quantifying the regional to global climate impacts of individual fossil fuel projects to inform decision-making. npj Clim. Action 4, 92 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44168-025-00296-5

Conversation article to be found here: https://theconversation.com/for-the-first-time-we-linked-a-new-fossil-fuel-project-to-hundreds-of-deaths-heres-the-impact-of-woodsides-scarborough-gas-project-266060