Are fossil fuel companies directly responsible for the climate change caused by burning their products – and if so, can they be sued for damages? Yes, say researchers who have developed a new method for tying greenhouse gas emissions from individual firms to specific climate-related economic harm.

“I think the answer is unequivocally, yes,” says Justin Mankin at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. His technique, developed with his colleague Christopher Callahan at Stanford University in California, links each of the world’s five largest fossil fuel companies to a loss in…