ii) iii) iv) the work of Rick Heede, showing that the majority of greenhouse gases can be attributed to just 90 “Carbon Majors”; recent peer reviewed research quantifying the individual and collective contributions of the Carbon Majors to global atmospheric temperature increase, to global sea level rise, and to the increased impacts from individual extreme weather events;344 and the work of investigative journalists which appears to show that certain companies deliberately set out to undermine the scientific consensus regarding climate change, with the specific purpose of obstructing the development of appropriate policy responses.345 Plan B recommends that, in assessing the question of causation in the present inquiry, the Commission consider the approach employed by the UK House of Lords in another case involving complex causation. In Fairchild v. Glenhaven Funeral Services [2002], the UK House of Lords addressed the issue of causation in the context of asbestos mesothelioma. Recognizing the difficulty of precise attribution between cause and effect, Lord Bingham stated that policy suggests that it is most important to compensate for the harm stemming from a failure of duty to protect.346 Similarly, in Urgenda, the Dutch government’s annual contribution to aggregate emissions of 0.42% was not considered to be de minimis and the court rejected the government’s submissions that its actions were not a cause of climate change loss and damage. 347 As noted in Section III of this joint summary amicus brief regarding the Science of Climate Change Impacts, Attribution, and Recovery, Rick Heede’s work demonstrates that all of the Respondent Carbon Majors have contributed to the increased atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases at a 344 Brenda Ekwurzel, et al., The Rise in Global Atmospheric CO2, Surface Temperature, and Sea Level From Emissions Traced to Major Carbon Producers, 144(4) CLIMATIC CHANGE 579 (2017), available at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-017-1978-0. By disaggregating the Carbon Majors’ individual emissions by year and constructing emissions profiles for each company over time, the researchers were able to attribute fractions of total atmospheric CO2 concentration, accumulated global temperature increase, and sea level rise to individual companies and to the Carbon Majors as a group. Significantly, the research team also demonstrated how excess deaths from a specific extreme weather event could be attributed to the Carbon Majors. For a detailed discussion, see CIEL, SMOKE AND FUMES: THE LEGAL AND EVIDENTIARY BASIS FOR HOLDING OIL COMPANIES ACCOUNTABLE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE, supra note 323, at 4. 345 Plan B brief, at § 6.6.1. 346 Id. at § 6.6.2 (p. 40-41) (quoting Fairchild v. Glenhaven Funeral Services [2002] UKHL 22, [2003] 1 AC (HL) 32 (June 20, 2002) “... there is a strong policy argument in favour of compensating those who have suffered grave harm, at the expense of their employers who owed them a duty to protect them against that very harm and failed to do so, when the harm can only have been caused by breach of that duty and when science does not permit the victim accurately to attribute, as between several employers, the precise responsibility for the harm he has suffered. I am of opinion that such injustice as may be involved in imposing liability on a duty-breaking employer in these circumstances is heavily outweighed by the injustice of denying redress to a victim.”). 347 Urgenda Foundation v. Kingdom of the Netherlands, Judgment: Regarding the failure of the Dutch State to take sufficient actions to prevent dangerous climate change, (District Court of the Hague 2015) (“From the above considerations ... it follows that a sufficient causal link can be assumed to exist between the Dutch greenhouse gas emissions, global climate change and the effects (now and in the future) on the Dutch living climate. The fact that the current Dutch greenhouse gas emissions are limited on a global scale does not alter the fact that these emission contribute to climate change. The court has taken into consideration in this respect as well that the Dutch greenhouse emissions have contributed to climate change and by their nature will also continue to contribute to climate change.”); see also Plan B brief, at § 6.6.2 (pgs. 46, 48). 72