Supreme Court deals blow to oil companies by turning away climate cases
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday allowed lawsuits brought by municipalities seeking to hold energy companies accountable for climate change to move forward in a loss for business interests.
The court turned away oil company appeals in five cases involving claims brought by cities and municipalities in Colorado, Maryland, California, Hawaii and Rhode Island aspart of efforts to hold businesses accountable for the effects of climate change.
The relatively narrow legal issue is whether the lawsuits should be heard in state court instead of federal court. Litigants care because of the widely held view that plaintiffs have better chances of winning damage awards in state courts.
"Big Oil companies have been desperate to avoid trials in state courts, where they will be forced to defend their climate lies in front of juries, and today the Supreme Court declined to bail them out," said Richard Wiles, the president of the Center for Climate Integrity, an environmental group.
Business groups expressed disappointment, with Phil Goldberg, a lawyer with the National Association of Manufacturers' legal arm, saying climate issues should be dealt with at the national or international levels.
"The challenge of our time is developing technologies and public policies so that the world can produce and use energy in ways that are affordable for people and sustainable for the planet. It should not be figuring out how to creatively plead lawsuits that seek to monetize climate change and provide no solutions," he said.
The Biden administration urged the court not to hear the case, and in a change to the legal position taken by the Trump administration, it said the lawsuit and others like it should be heard in state courts.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted in the brief order that he would have taken up one of the cases. Justice Samuel Alito did not participate, most likely because he owns stock in oil companies.
In all five cases, BP, Chevron, Shell and other companies had lost in lower courts.
The lawsuits say the municipalities have been harmed by the effects of climate change caused by carbon emissions that the oil companies are heavily responsible for.
In an earlier case, the Supreme Court in 2021 ruled in favor of oil companies on a procedural issue in a similar lawsuit brought by the city of Baltimore.
On a separate legal issue, the court in a major ruling last year limited the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to address climate change under a provision of the Clean Air Act.
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The end result of these nuisance lawsuits will be higher prices for the oil companies which will be passed on to the ultimate consumer, impacting the poor and disadvantaged the most.
It is pathetically short-sighted to focus exclusively on higher prices as an excuse to not take reasonable actions to mitigate AGW.
that big oil tail has wagged the dog long enough. what they're pumping out of the ground, and then price gouging the consumer for, belongs to every american.
You can't even define any reasonable and workable actions to mitigate AGW other than promoting one wacky theory after another.
Alternative sources of energy are not enough to satisfy the global demand. Fossil fuels will be with us for a long time coming.
That comment illustrates you have no understanding whatsoever of AGW and the methods of mitigation. You apparently (naively) believe AGW is a bunch of bullshit and categorically dismiss all efforts to reduce anthropogenic contributions to GW.
Yes fossil fuel usage will necessarily wane over time due to our vast infrastructural dependence (it takes time to move from one paradigm to another). I have made no comment to the contrary and this is also not the point.
This reply also applies to Just Jim who apparently agrees with you.
And is anyone going to try and figure out what the impact on the atmosphere is with hundreds of thousands of wind turbines removing energy from the atmosphere and solar panels keeping and holding the sunlight that would normally be reflected back to space.
WTF are you talking about?
I don't think it works that way.
Are you concerned that wind turbines slowing down air current will adversely affect the planetary ecosystem? To me that is like being concerned that a tiny decorative propeller placed on the bumper of a moving car will affect the driver's ability to control the vehicle.
As for solar panels capturing photon energy, two comments:
I always thought those were a scam designed to scare dear, elk and moose standing in the road, lol.
Have you ever heard of the phrase "conservation of energy"? The wind farms aren't just slowing the air current, they are removing energy from the atmosphere. If that "tiny decorative propeller" weren't just freely spinning, but instead turning a generator to say help charge the car's battery then it would affect the fuel mileage of the vehicle.
From where do you get the idea that wind farms' diversion of energy has a negative impact on the atmosphere? That is a new one.
No, that is the opposite of what I wrote. We were talking about solar panels. We want photon energy from the sun captured by solar panels and redirected to useful purposes. If we go beyond solar panels, into discussion of ice sheets, snow, etc. the comments will be more complicated and would deal with the planetary balance of reflection and absorption.
it's a rework of the wind turbines kill birds idiocy...
In a sense, I suppose. It is ultimately looking for ways to argue against taking action to mitigate AGW.
Some AGW-dismissive arguments suggest that human beings are so insignificant that there is no way we could impact the planet (an argument popularized by Rush Limbaugh, et. al.).
It seems odd that there are also AGW-dismissive arguments that suggest solar panels and wind farms somehow cause problems.
On one hand, human beings are too insignificant to impact our climate, but on the other hand some extremely tiny mechanisms (given the size of our planet) are of concern.
I have to wonder if you had a straight face when writing all that?
They are too busy killing off whales on the east coast trying to install their wind turbine farm in the ocean; killing off birds with their wind turbine farms on land; and frying birds, lizards, and anything else that gets close to solar farms- to worry about doing any type of real science on atmosphere affects.
The Sierra Club is full of idiots- most of them on the far left./S
They are also killing whales- in case you missed it.
But just ignore the evidence- as green energy nuts and Democrats ignore it and try to explain it away.
I am really surprised at this, do you believe that wind turbines are just spinning freely with no resistance to the rotation? Wind is heat on the move, heat is what lifts water into the air. Whatever energy these wind turbines produce must be removed from the atmosphere and the energy being removed from the wind is heat.
Michigan, May 2020, 500 year flood, they predicted 3-4 inches of rain from a storm moving north, but to get to us it passed over a large wind farm to the south in Michigan and the northeast flow came over the wind farm in the thumb and instead of a 3-4 inch rainfall we got near a foot of rain and our 500 year flood. The removal of the water suspending heat from the storm caused it to lose the water over a shorter area.
Germany 2021, a storm system came over the off shore wind farms and the inland wind farms and dumped the precipitation which fell out over a shorter area causing massive flooding.
Sydney, Australia 2022, a storm moving up from the south came over the windfarms south of Sydney and the precipitation fell out over a shorter area flooding Sydney.
California 2023, river of moisture off the Pacific came over the massive wind farms up and down California removing enough energy that the moisture didn't have enough energy to clear the mountains and the precipitation fell out at lower altitudes flooding the area and what made it higher buried the area in snow.
Why, yes I did.
Are you seriously suggesting those storms were caused, or at the very least, relayed to wind turbines?
No, I am saying that they are insignificant to our planetary environment.
What are you trying to state with you scenarios?
I am interested in where you got the idea that wind turbines taking energy from the atmosphere (from wind in particular) have any significant effect on our environment.
Fuel prices have been steadily increasing for years, before climate issues went before the courts. How much significant change do you expect as a result of the court refusing to hear the case?
BP 2022 gross profit was $76B. ( a 74% increase over 2021 )
Shell 2022 gross profit was $40B ( almost double 2021)
Chevron 2022 gross profit was $36.5 B ( also double 2021)
These law suits have been going on for years and the eventual settlements are covered by both the sources liability insurance and their huge cash reserves,
but, kudos, Greg for your heartfelt concern for the poor and disadvantaged car owners among us. /s
The SCOTUS decision appears to be consistent with the court's shift toward strengthening decentralized government. State's rights are embedded in the founding documents and the Constitution. At some point the cumulative effect may open the door for challenges to the authority of the Federal bureaucracy.
The litigation against oil companies seems obvious, too, since that's where the money is. But damage cases are supposed to be against those that caused the damage. The consumption of oil caused the damage; not the production of oil. Governments at all levels have created infrastructure to promote the consumption of oil. And the consumption of oil has been taxed by local, state, and Federal governments. That would suggest that litigation against government would be warranted, too. Governments have deeper pockets than oil companies.
Governments are just as complicit (perhaps more so) in climate change as oil companies because governments encouraged and promoted consumption of oil. Oil doesn't affect the climate until it is burned by consumers. So, consumers are the responsible party for damages caused.
This is about city governments vs corporations and would NOT be consistent in decentralizing government. The result could be just the opposite effect longer term.
And these cities want to use the facts the energy companies hid as far back as the 1970s against them. Consumers and lawmakers can't make effective judgments if facts are hidden and actively campaigned against.
Uh... What? City governments exercising authority within their jurisdiction without Federal interference really does strengthen decentralized government. SCOTUS stepping in to overrule the authority of city government would weaken decentralized government. Particularly when the case involves civil litigation for damages rather than any violation of law.
Businesses have been using the Federal EPA as protection against civil litigation in state courts. Businesses have claimed that compliance with Federal regulations places civil litigation under Federal jurisdiction. That interpretation means city governments must litigate civil damages in Federal courts under the authority of the Federal EPA. This SCOTUS decision that state courts have jurisdiction over these types of civil litigation begins limiting the authority of the Federal EPA.
Weren't governments at all levels complicit in those 'lies'? Government regulates the consumption of oil; oil companies do not. And oil companies do not consume the oil they produce.
The science based argument is that consumption of oil is the human factor causing climate change or global warming. And the science of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas has been understood since the late 19th century. Alternative sources of energy were more widely used before government, at all levels, began encouraging and promoting the consumption of oil. Governments began constructing paved roads for automobiles while allowing mass transit to be dismantled and destroyed. During the mid-20th century the United States had a nation-wide system of mass transit but promoted the use of automobiles instead of protecting mass transit. Governments designed cities around automobiles at the expense of other modes of travel. Government promoted electrification and mechanization of both household and business related tasks. Government encouragement and promotion of oil consumption was motivated to obtain revenue through taxes and fees of various types. Consumption of oil was a money maker for all levels of government.