Make Big Oil sweat this time

When my four-year-old son's classroom hit 38 degrees and children started to faint, it was no longer a place of learning but of danger. Our home was fast becoming one too. So like many Parisians, I went from pharmacy to pharmacy, looking for emergency blankets to hang over the windows and keep out the sun. These blankets can now be seen all across Paris, like a city-wide distress signal.

Beneath the daily reporting runs a familiar refrain: another exceptional heatwave, another crisis to be managed until temperatures fall. What disappears from that telling is political responsibility. Described by scientists as "virtually impossible" without climate change, this heat is the result of governments choosing to preserve a fossil fuel economy long after its human costs were clear. These costs have just been jacked up by 10,000 heatwave deaths, yet those accountable, instead of sweating in shame, are cashing it big.

Over the coming weeks, some of the world's largest oil and gas companies are due to report second-quarter results. Several are expected to post their strongest profits since 2022. Exxon Mobil has already indicated that higher oil prices and stronger refining margins could add around US$5 billion to second-quarter earnings compared with the first.

Wars destroy lives first, then they disrupt energy supplies and push fossil fuel prices higher and more unaffordable than ever for households and governments. But for oil and gas companies, these same disruptions are simply good for business. They're not simply insulated from instability, they're positioned to profit from it. In the same way, the fossil fuel industry is not simply insulated from debates over air conditioning: it's poised to escape having to pay for extreme heat damage.

That is, unless global leaders get their act together, in the most unlikely of places for climate multilateralism to thrive. In August, governments will return to negotiations on a United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation. A UN Tax Convention, set to be finalized in 2027, is working towards binding global rules that can ensure equitable taxation of multinational corporations, including Big Oil.

Following a push by African countries, negotiations are now looking at new government commitments to "fair allocation of taxing rights," measures to address tax avoidance by multinationals and billionaires, and international tax cooperation approaches that "will contribute to the achievement of sustainable development."

The principle should not be controversial. Industries making exceptional profits from business models that drive the climate crisis should contribute far more to paying for the damage and for an equitable transition away from it. Analysis by the Global Alliance for Tax Justice found that a 20% surtax on the profits of the world's 100 largest oil and gas companies could have raised more than US$1 trillion since the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015.

Where multinational profits are taxed, and which countries are able to collect the revenue, is also a matter of justice. Right now, an oil major headquartered in the US can be enjoying windfall profits from fuel costs borne by jeepney drivers barely surviving in the Philippines, and still pay minimal taxes in that country due to incumbent global tax rules that allow it to shift profits elsewhere. There's now an opportunity to turn that around with a global tax on fossil fuel profits that will not just compel Big Oil to pay its proper dues, but also fund its own obsolescence by paying for the energy transition.

Stronger taxing rights are not an obscure, technical matter, they are part of many countries' struggle to mobilize domestic resources for badly needed social protection and adaptation, as well as for public investment in a clean energy shift that can bring down costs for good.

Renewables are now among the cheapest sources of new power in much of the world. More than 90% of utility-scale renewable projects commissioned in 2025 generated electricity more cheaply than the lowest-cost new fossil-fuel alternative, according to IRENA. Yet the falling costs of renewable technology has not translated to equal access, especially in the Global South. Governments repeatedly tell their citizens that there isn't enough money for the upfront investment in technology, grids or storage, while vast pools of fossil fuel profits extracted on their soil are shored up abroad and remain largely untouched.

As oil and gas companies report on their latest war haul, millions across the world will continue to pay for a crisis they did not cause with their lives, income, homes, and health. With the battle over Hormuz still raging and a Super El Niño fueling climate extremes, distress signals are everywhere. A tax treaty alone will not cool down this crisis. But it can be how rules on who pays for it begin to change.

It will be good to see Big Oil sweat a little, for once.

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