By Shailaja Nair on March 10, 2010 7:15 AM

Can the poor village woman in a remote part of India who has to walk longer distances to get her daily load of firewood for cooking blame ExxonMobil or Chevron or Shell for her hard life?

Yes she can. going by the class action suit filed by Hurricane Katrina victims against big oil companies, blaming them for global warming and ultimately the storm that killed so many and left many more destitute and homeless.

In fact, not only the Indian village woman but the girl who is married off early in famine-hit Africa as her family wants the food they will get as bride price, the poor woman in Asia whose children are killed by a tsunami or cyclone, can also sue the oil majors for all their suffering.

The class action suit by people living in southern Mississippi was first filed soon after the hurricane had wreaked havoc in 2005. They said that "operation of energy, fossil fuels, and chemical industries in the United States caused the emission of greenhouse gasses that contributed to global warming."

Though thrown out by a district court then, the case is now in an appeals court and a decision is due by the end of this year.

Their case gains strength from the study by the European Parliament on scientific evidence of a link between natural disasters and climate change. The 2006 study says: "There is convincing evidence that changes in the earth's climate are taking place that can not be explained without taking into account human influence, through the emission of greenhouse gases."

The huge fallout from climate change has a much bigger impact on women than men, according to various studies by UN as well as women's organizations conducted over the last decade. Most of the victims of Hurricane Katrina were women, according to New York-based Women's Environment and Development Organisation.

More than 70% of the people killed by the 2004 tsunami were women. An Oxfam report said that more than 75% of the tsunami deaths in eight Indonesian villages and almost 90% of those killed in Cuddalore in southern India were women.

Dwi Bertha, executive director of an Indonesian NGO LP2M, told a local newspaper recently how women in Sumatra, which was ravaged by an earthquake in September last year, found their already tough lives made even more difficult after their houses were toppled or damaged, their children or other family members hurt and traumatized by the quake.

Even their clothes sometimes can affect whether they are able to survive a natural disaster. Dresses that restrict movement often hamper women when they are trying to flee from torrential floods or devastating quakes, that can more often than not be attributed to climate change from greenhouse gas emissions.

As the European parliament study pointed out, both rain and drought were becoming more severe because of climate change. "Harder rainfall and shifts in rainfall patterns mean both increased likelihood of flash flooding and drought. There may not be a change in large scale flooding," it added.

If all these women join their voices to those of the Katrina victims, and claim punitive damages and compensation from the oil companies, the results would be interesting to watch to say the least.