Kysar on Products Liability and Climate Change

Douglas Kysar has posted to SSRN Products Liability and Climate Change.  The abstract provides:

Human alteration of the Earth’s climate is inexorably connected to industrial production. Contemporary systems of energy, construction, manufacturing, agriculture, and many other aspects of production depend, at their foundation, on the generation of greenhouse gases. This Chapter (which will appear in Douglas Kysar and Ernest Lim (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Private Law (Oxford University Press, 2026, forthcoming)) explores whether the consumer products associated with those processes-in particular, goods such as fuel, electricity, and meat-might raise issues under products liability law in light of their connection to climate change and its attendant harms. The Chapter first examines whether products liability law offers a potential source of legal accountability for the causes and consequences of the climate change crisis. It then turns the analysis around to ask how products liability law itself might be impacted by the dramatic effects of humanity’s climate experiment. The Chapter concludes by arguing that, despite offering low likelihood of imposing significant near-term accountability for climate-related harms, products liability law contains important intellectual resources for thinking about climate accountability more broadly.