In 1998, a historic $206 billion settlement was reached between four major tobacco companies and nearly every state in the nation to recover Medicaid and other costs associated with the tobacco industry's deadly product. The Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, still the largest legal settlement of its kind, was nearly 50 years in the making. It arrived after decades of duplicity, during which, in one of the greatest acts of corporate deceit, the "tobacco majors" ignored, obfuscated, and buried their own internal reports affirming that smoking was a threat to public health. Meanwhile, they kept state and federal legislators in check with millions of dollars in campaign contributions and mobilized an army of lobbyists and political front groups to advance their agenda.

Now we face a similar historic fight, except this time the stakes are even higher. The corporate malfeasance in question has ramifications not just for us but also for countless other species—all while a corporate plutocracy ascendant in American politics is determined to cover it up. 

In "The Case for Climate Reparations," Jason Mark traces the legal and ethical questions raised by the fossil fuel industry's practices at a time when the bill for climate-change-related disasters is finally coming due. The "Carbon Barons," as Mark aptly calls them, are responsible for a dramatic alteration of the planet's climate, which has cost lives through heat waves and floods, displaced upwards of a million people in 2017 alone, and has caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. Some cities are now moving to hold the Carbon Barons accountable, through lawsuits that seek to recover damages from extreme weather events and the costs of planning for sea level rise.

Fossil fuel executives would do well to visit the Marshall Islands and the Maldives to see what happens when climate change affects entire nations. In the photo essay "Redrawing the Atlas," Rebecca Solnit describes two countries slowly vanishing beneath the sea as the streets fill with seawater. Meanwhile, in "Below Chaco," Paul Rauber takes us on a "fracking reality tour" through New Mexico's Chaco Canyon, where the Carbon Barons are busily sucking dirty money out of the ground while the local population suffers in poverty.  

We are facing the challenge of a lifetime: to do right by those who have suffered terrible harms in the name of shareholders and their focus on the bottom line; to bequeath to future generations a clean, healthy planet on which all species, not just our own, can thrive. Who are we going to be if not the generation that meets that challenge head on? The question is here before us, a blinking cursor on the screen, waiting for our reply.

This article appeared in the May/June 2018 edition with the headline "#TheyKnew."