shell's Got Game: Big Oil Behemoth claws back to beat Climate Activists in court

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Shell took a beating from Dutch climate activists when, in 2021, a court ordered the oil company to cut emissions by 45% by 2030 compared to 2019 levels in a suit brought be Friends of the Environment Netherlands.

Many legal experts believed oil companies would face similar decisions in the Netherlands and other nations, but today the Dutch court of appeals reversed the decision.

According to CNBC, “The appeals court in The Hague said that while Shell is required to reduce its carbon emissions, it could not determine the extent of these cuts. The case against Shell, therefore, was dismissed entirely.”

The decision has reverberations well beyond Shell and Friends of the Environment Netherlands. The number of lawsuits against oil companies for damaging the environment has risen rapidly in the last several years, with the U.S. being a prime example — at least a dozen states and municipalities have sued oil companies for the damage their products have done. Most of the charges allege that oil companies knew of the harm decades ago and covered it up.

Big Oil has been no doubt been very anxious about facing the same same problem Big Tobacco did when it faced suits in the Nineties that claimed cigarette damage to human health and clear cover-ups of what the tobacco companies knew about smoking. The judgment totaled $248 billion when it was settled in 1998.

While the Shell victory does not guarantee smooth sailing outside the Netherlands, it gives oil companies a glimmer of hope.