Climate lawfare is an urgent threat to our high quality of life, but recent court decisions offer an encouraging sign for consumers and energy providers.
In recent months, three judges in Maryland and New York have dismissed outlandish lawsuits that demand billions of dollars from energy companies over climate change. If successful, these lawsuits would empower far-left cities like San Francisco or Boulder, Colorado, to set energy policy for the entire country.
Unable to garner support for their ideas among the American public, leftwing climate activists have turned to the courts to achieve their ideological goals. Using state “public nuisance” and fraud laws, they are demanding exorbitant sums in damages and forcing providers to pay for their unpopular and expensive climate agenda and infrastructure programs. The activists are deliberately filing lawsuits in areas sympathetic to their cause, circumventing Congress to impose big-spending projects and hoping to make national climate policy.
What kinds of projects are we talking about? Imagine your city buys a new fleet of electric snowplows. Imagine your neighborhood is repurposed into a walk-only “15-minute city.” All that social engineering will be bankrolled by climate lawfare.
If it sounds undemocratic, that’s because it is.
In addition to trampling upon our federal structure and the will of the American people, these efforts could very well prevent these companies, including major players, from doing business at all, raising the price of energy for consumers and potentially ending the fossil fuel industry as we know it.
That means Americans will no longer be concerned with whether their appliance works effectively, but whether they can turn their appliance on at all. At a time when America seeks energy independence to protect its interests from bad actors all over the world, these moves by the climate-obsessed Left threaten to endanger our national security.
The good news is that thus far the courts are trending against the bloodthirsty climate activists. They have suffered a string of high-profile losses of late in New York City, Baltimore, and Annapolis and Anne Arundel County. At the heart of their lawsuits are claims alleging that companies like ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Citgo, and Chevron misled the public about how their products contribute to climate change.
In each of these cases, the lawsuits were dismissed. The judges cited both the preposterous nature of the accusations alleging deception by the companies and noted that federal law, not state law, governs climate and global pollution regulation. Federal statutes and the Constitution are clear. Congress and its designated agencies set energy policy for our nation, not leftwing lawyers working for Honolulu.
These decisions are a win for the American people and our federal system of government. Moreover, the trends demonstrate that this last, desperate attempt by the climate activists may yet fail just like all the others. Unfortunately, climate warriors have filed over two dozen similar lawsuits. But the recent decisions suggest the climate warriors are on track for a bad year.
For quite some time, these ideologues have tried to force their agenda on the American people by any means necessary. Before the Supreme Court finally put a stop to it, Chevron deference allowed them to in effect create a fourth all-powerful branch of government in the form of the federal bureaucracy. Now, the attempt to legislate via lawsuit – another tyrannical tactic – looks to be taking its last gasps before its inevitable demise.
The American people deserve, and are in fact entitled to, the right to have their voices heard on all issues, especially those that affect every aspect of their daily lives. So far, our laws and systems of government have successfully checked the climate power grabs.
While we cannot become complacent, Americans can breathe a sigh of relief. The warriors are meeting their Waterloo – and we can thank the system our Founders designed for that.
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