Shell is facing a landmark legal fight in London as survivors of a deadly Philippine typhoon allege the company helped make the storm more destructive.
A group of 103 survivors of Typhoon Rai, which killed around 400 people and wrecked millions of homes in December 2021, has filed a claim at the Royal Courts of Justice.
They allege Shell’s historic emissions and alleged climate misinformation contributed to a warmer atmosphere that made the typhoon more likely and more severe.
Shell rejects the case and calls the claim baseless.
The action is being brought in the UK because Shell is headquartered in London – but the group intends to apply Philippine law as the damage occurred there.
In pre-action correspondence the claimants alleged Shell is responsible for roughly 2% of historic global emissions and claim the company had long-standing knowledge of climate impacts.
Shell strongly denies this and says the suggestion it had unique insight into climate science is untrue.
“This is a baseless claim and it will not help tackle climate change or reduce emissions,” a Shell spokesperson said. “The suggestion that Shell had unique knowledge about climate change is simply not true.”
The claim is backed by environmental groups who say advances in attribution science now allow researchers to estimate how much human-driven warming influences extreme weather.
They argue this opens the door to new forms of liability for major emitters.
However linking alleged corporate emissions to specific climate disasters remains a high bar and previous attempts in other jurisdictions have had mixed results.
US cases against oil majors have frequently been dismissed while a Dutch court’s order requiring Shell to cut emissions was overturned on appeal last year.
The UK claim has only just been filed and detailed particulars are due next year.
Shell faces legal claim of making Typhoon ‘more destructive’ appeared first on Energy Live News.