Lawyers are cashing in on climate change. Law firms around the US are getting ready for an explosion of work. Attorneys expect a bonanza of climate-related work tied to government regulation, lawsuits against energy companies and new markets that will trade the rights to emit carbon.

"You're going to see some really serious exposure on the part of companies that are emitting CO{-2}," Steve Susman of Susman Godfrey in Houston told the Dallas Morning News. "I can't say for sure it's going to be as big as the tobacco settlements, but then again it may even be bigger. We're not going to know until the regulatory environment becomes clearer."

I predict that one of the crunch issues will be the claims that companies make about being carbon neutral. Are these claims real or not? A carbon trading regime might reveal a very different picture from what the companies have been portraying. I explain why we need to treat these claims with scepticism here.

Businesses are now entering into a new era of litigation risk, brought on by climate change.