In July, federal Judge John F. Keenan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed New York City’s lawsuit against five major oil companies.
The lawsuit sought to force the oil companies to help pay NYC’s alleged costs associated with climate change.
Keenan’s ruling was the second victory against municipal governments seeking to use the judiciary to address problems purportedly caused by climate change.
The first triumph came in June when Judge William H. Alsup of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco threw out a similar lawsuit against the same five companies — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, and Royal Dutch Shell — in a case brought by Oakland and San Francisco.
In the 23-page decision dismissing New York City’s lawsuit, Keenan wrote climate change must be addressed by the executive branch and Congress, not by the courts.
Although climate change “is a fact of life,” Keenan wrote, “the serious problems caused thereby are not for the judiciary to ameliorate. Global warming and solutions thereto must be addressed by the two other branches of government.”
Keenan ruled New York’s state and federal common law claims were prohibited under the Clean Air Act.
He stated it would be “illogical” and would violate U.S. Supreme Court precedent to allow the claims under state common law,
“when courts have found that these matters are areas of federal concern that have been delegated to the executive branch as they require a uniform, national solution … (and) the Clean Air Act displaces the City’s claims seeking damages for past and future domestic greenhouse gas emissions brought under federal common law.”
In addition, Keenan determined NYC’s lawsuit is unjustified because the city contributed carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and benefited from fossil-fuel use.
“(I)t is not clear that Defendants’ fossil fuel production and the emissions created therefrom have been an ‘unlawful invasion’ in New York City, as the City benefits from and participates in the use of fossil fuels as a source of power, and has done so for many decades,” wrote Keenan.
Climate policy is solely within the domain of the legislative and executive branches of the federal government, as two federal judges have amply demonstrated in their written decisions.
However, states and cities seem intent on banging their heads up against this legal brick wall.
On July 2, just a week after Alsup threw out a climate lawsuit brought by Oakland and San Francisco, Rhode Island filed a lawsuit against oil companies to recover the costs from supposed climate change.
On July 20, just a day after Keenan dismissed NYC’s lawsuit, Baltimore sued oil companies for climate change expenses in Maryland.
Furthermore, New York City, Oakland, and San Francisco plan to appeal their cases’ dismissals.
Climate Change Lawsuits: A Waste
Apparently, these cities and states have no serious problems — such as crime, budget shortfalls, and education woes — for which the resources devoted to these lawsuits might be better used, or their leaders just don’t care if they waste taxpayers’ money on frivolous lawsuits.
It seems as though the several attorneys general pursuing these pointless lawsuits are so caught up in the grip of climate mania, they just can’t let go, the law be damned.
Or perhaps the lawsuits are simply an attempted shakedown of an industry with deep pockets.
These cities and states desperately hope oil companies will ultimately settle out of court, agreeing to pay billions of dollars and promising not to fight climate change legislation in the future.
Furthermore, these out-of-touch environmental zealots want to force oil companies to shift their investments from fossil fuels to politically connected, highly subsidized green-energy power sources.
Oil companies have not succumbed to these outrageous demands yet, and it seems unlikely they will any time soon, with their continued profitability and their very existence at stake — as well as two legal wins under their belt.
It is long past time to end this game of legal whack-a-mole.
Alsup and Keenan should require cities to pay the court costs, attorney fees, and other expenses incurred by oil companies, thus warning municipal and state climate zealots seeking big paydays there is a price to pay for wasting courts’ time.
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is a senior fellow on energy and the environment at The Heartland Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research center headquartered in Arlington Heights, Illinois.
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The lawsuits were frivolous in the first place and based upon Junk Science and Politics now the judge should make all the plantiffs in these lawsuits pay back a fee to the defendants in the whole rediculous idea of Climate Change/Global Warming
Not only should they be laughed out of court but the plaintiffs should be ordered to pay the defendants costs. That will stop these attorneys that are pushing the cities and states to file these frivolous lawsuits.
Question: ‘What is 500 lawyers at the bottom of a lake?’ Answer: ‘A good start.’ This has nothing to do with climate and everything to do with ‘billable hours.’ Remember, an inordinate number of politicans are lawyers. Politicians enact laws and the more laws and the more complex those laws the more billable hours. Makes sense doesn’t it?
The cities doing the suing are looking for more money without increasing taxes on their residents while the money-grubbing lawyers looking for a huge payday–all it takes one to get past the judges and to local juries to maybe win big.
Also the lawsuits filed by the various Eco-Freak groups like the NRDC who have been boasting about their stupid lawsuits against Trump they don’t real’y care about the enviroment all they want is to force us all to live in a primative lifestyles because of their idiotic views of the EARTH and their GAIA MENTALTY
One defector from a liberal think tank said his group wanted to use climate change to force de-industrialization. That would certainly result in primitive life styles for those who survived.
God, the stupidity is strong in these over-educated idiots!
As we used to say several decades ago about the environmentalists fighting nuclear power for electricity, let the bastards freeze in the dark. That’s what they want for all of us (except them of course!)
I’m surprised that the plaintiffs are not ordered to pay the costs of the defendants as a matter of course after losing such cases. Perhaps oil companies should consider counter-suing municipalities for legal abuse. After all, it seems pretty obvious that they are harassing them with frivolous litigation.
In Australia yes. Perhaps in other countries, but I don’t think it works that way in America.
God, the stupidity is strong in these over-educated idiots!