Friend,

Earlier this year, a groundbreaking study from Harvard University found one in five deaths worldwide is due to inhaling fine particulate matter resulting from fossil fuel emissions. That’s 8 million deaths per year — three times more than the deaths caused by HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined.

In the wake of that landmark study, investigators from CIEL, the Climate Investigations Center, and The Guardian exposed that the oil industry knew for more than fifty years that particulate matter from burning fossil fuels was a threat to human health.

Documents uncovered during the investigation showed not only industry knowledge, but an active industry campaign to undermine the science and to block progress on vital public health regulations. These obstruction tactics continued for decades, even as recently as last year.

Sound familiar, friend?

For nearly a decade, CIEL has been working to expose early industry knowledge of climate science and what the industry did with that knowledge. In 2016, we released our first exposé outlining the earliest records of the Oil Majors’ knowledge, denial, and failure to act to prevent the climate crisis. That investigation led to our 2017 Smoke & Fumes report, and to follow-on investigations on Shell and BP. Together, the documents we’ve unearthed, the histories we’ve pieced together, and the legal analysis we’ve done have become critical tools for those bringing climate litigation around the world.

Last fall, CIEL helped reveal that this pattern of knowledge and denial extends beyond the oil industry and includes major automakers, too. And we’ve begun to uncover a similar history and all too familiar patterns in the effort to expose, understand, and address the plastic crisis.

As our most recent investigation on particulate matter demonstrates, this work is active and ongoing. Because exposing the truth about what industry knew and when they knew it is a critical step in holding them accountable, whether for the impacts of climate change or for the profound health risks associated with fossil fuels.

Exposing such corporate misconduct helps shatter the myth that everyone is equally responsible for the climate crisis, the plastic crisis, and the impacts of the fossil economy — impacts that are measured in human rights, human health, and human lives. We hope we can count on your continued support as we hold those most responsible to account, friend.

CIEL’s research, analysis, and expertise are supporting legal efforts around the world to confront the fossil economy and the corporate actors that drive and profit from it. Your support enables us to continue our critical research and turn that knowledge into precedents that will protect people and the planet for generations to come.

Thank you for helping us pave the way to a cleaner, safer, fossil-free future.

Sincerely,

Carroll Muffett
President
Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL)

P.S. To learn more about our work to build a fossil-free future, join us this weekend for 350.org’s Global Just Recovery Gathering. The three-day virtual event will take place April 9-11, and you can register here today. Tune into the sessions hosted by CIEL and our partners: “Climate Change, Plastics, and Environmental Racism: Slaying the Petrochemical Hydra” and “The People v. Climate Change: Advancing Climate Justice through the Courts.”

Join the conversation online!         

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