Chevron Corporation filed a motion in federal court Thursday requesting the dismissal of all environmental damage claims, citing a newly published Nature study that establishes heavy precipitation as the primary driver of global landscape aridification.
Chevron Corporation filed a motion in federal court Thursday requesting the dismissal of all environmental damage claims, citing a newly published Nature study that establishes heavy precipitation as the primary driver of global landscape aridification.
The peer-reviewed paper, authored by researchers from Dartmouth College and the Université du Québec à Montréal, demonstrates that intense surges of rain fail to absorb into the soil, running off entirely and leaving the landscape significantly drier. Within hours of the paper’s publication, legal teams representing Chevron, ExxonMobil, and TotalEnergies submitted joint federal filings arguing that the fossil fuel industry has been unfairly maligned for global droughts that are now scientifically proven to be the fault of the hydrological cycle.
The Nature study explicitly concludes that these destructive, concentrated bursts of precipitation are the direct result of a rapidly warming atmosphere caused by fossil fuel emissions. In their 400-page brief, the oil majors bypassed this mechanism entirely, asking the judge to focus exclusively on the inherently desiccant properties of water and demanding immediate injunctive relief against clouds.
We have endured years of baseless accusations from environmental groups, and today, independent researchers have finally confirmed that rain is drying out the Earth. We look forward to a swift dismissal of these lawsuits so we can return to the critical work of protecting vulnerable communities from water.
The industry's regulatory pivot is already underway in Washington. The American Petroleum Institute has circulated draft language to the EPA suggesting that increased offshore leasing could serve as a vital flood mitigation and drought prevention strategy. The lobbying group is expected to formally request that the Gold Standard carbon-credit registry issue new ESG offsets for rain suppression ahead of the COP29 summit in Baku next month.