Supreme Court Should Not Let Climate Lawfare Set US Energy Policy |
Boulder, CO lawsuit gives SCOTUS a superb opportunity to end these legal abuses
Climate lawfare is a Big Business. State, county and city lawyers have filed some 30 lawsuits, alleging that oil companies misrepresented the impacts of their products and caused billions of dollars in climate and weather damages.
After being approached by EarthRights International, Boulder and Boulder County, Colorado joined San Miguel County in April 2018 to sue Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil.
Leaving out the hurricanes and rising seas emphasized by coastal litigants, plaintiffs’ 105-page complaint alleges that the oil companies have severely harmed their property, health and safety, by causing higher temperatures, more droughts and wildfires, and dwindling snowpack that adversely affects water supplies and the farming and skiing industries.
They want a trial by local jurors and seek billions of dollars to compensate their jurisdictions for past and future damages and costs, evaluate and mitigate climate change impacts, abate and remediate its hazards, and compensate them for decreased agricultural and urban property values.
Defendants argue that the case raises major, complicated national and even international issues and therefore belongs in federal, not state courts. But after years of legal wrangling, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in May 2025 that the lawsuit could indeed proceed in state court.
So now Suncor and ExxonMobil have petitioned the US Supreme Court to review the case. Plaintiffs strongly oppose this. But there are compelling reasons why the Supremes should move it to federal venues, after declining earlier lawsuits that they said did not present a ripe or perfect case for review.
Fifty-plus years ago, I lived in Boulder and Denver and often went downhill and cross-country skiing. We had variable snow seasons: early and long, late and short, great snowpack or rocks. Back then the mantra was global cooling and a new ice age,........