This story on the Guardian reports that all 11 directors of Shell are being personally sued by ClientEarth over the company's climate strategy, which the claimants say is "inadequate to meet climate targets".

The main issue seems to be Shell's plans to continue oil and gas exploration. The International Energy Agency (IAE) said in 2021 that "no new oil and gas projects were compatible with net zero emissions by 2050" (see here, also on the Guardian). “Doubling down [by Shell] on new oil and gas projects isn’t a credible plan – it’s a recipe for stranded assets.”

Shell is not the only fossil fuel company to tone down their emissions commitments or to plan increased exploration. They are also not the only such company to be sued (see here, also on the Guardian).

I see this as a healthy development. For too long companies have not had any consequences for the environmental damage (oil spills, gas leaks, oil-field gas burn-off and carbon emissions) that their businesses cause; this is a kind of false accounting, whereby the rest of us pay for the costs of the damage they cause, so that they appear to be profitable, but only because they are not paying the true costs of them doing business. They only way to make them act responsibly is to hit the directors personally in the wallet.