Billion-Dollar Shakedowns From Climate Lawsuits Threaten American Energy, Higher Costs

Propelled by the shale revolution in which human ingenuity (fracking) has made beneficial use of favorable geology, the United States is now the world’s leading producer of crude oil and natural gas. [some emphasis, links added]

China can produce all the solar panels and raw materials for wind turbines and EV batteries it wishes, but Beijing’s bet that it can hook the world on green energy is no match for America’s fossil-fuel dominance.

But instead of celebrating the nation’s good fortune, a ravenous pack of city, county, and state governments wants to shake down America’s oil and gas producers for their alleged role in what are said to be the damages caused by climate change.

Vermont and New York have already passed “climate superfund” laws, while legislatures in at least nine other states, including California, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Virginia, are considering similar proposals.

Meanwhile, Chicago, San Francisco, Oakland, Boulder County, Colorado, and Multnomah County, Oregon, have filed lawsuits citing the costs of protecting urban infrastructure from the effects of climate change.

The sums at stake are astronomical, with Oregon’s Multnomah County (surrounding Portland) demanding a $51.55 billion abatement fund, the largest single damage request to date.

“Relying on a novel public nuisance theory, climate change cases seek compensatory damages, a relief fund to pay for future damages, and abatements to stop fossil fuel companies from emitting carbon gases,” an April 2026 report by Ohio’s Buckeye Institute notes. “The requested damages already run into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and such damages will inflict extraordinary financial and social impact if the plaintiffs prevail and other jurisdictions follow their lead.”

Climate lawsuits typically begin by redefining traditional public nuisance doctrine, with its narrow focus on “special injury” suffered by a private party at the local, even neighborhood, level, and applying it to global greenhouse-gas emissions.

“Climate change plaintiffs must establish that the harms they have alleged were incurred as a result of climate change and were caused by defendant fossil fuel companies,” the Buckeye Institute report points out. “To do so, plaintiffs rely on so-called ‘attribution science,’ which attempts to link particular local harms to global emissions and then assigns some share of those emissions to specific defendants.”

“Once the types and extent of damages are established and a causal link to fossil-fuel emissions is demonstrated,” the report explains, “the courts must assess the monetary value of those damages and determine the portion attributable to each defendant.”

This kind of litigation – with its distortion of traditional public nuisance laws, purely speculative causal links between global emissions and local harms, and determinations of monetary damages based on nothing more than guesswork – has the potential to bring the American economy to a screeching halt by crippling the nation’s major energy producers.

“Energy security is national security, and we will not self-sabotage our critical industries with a cascade of costly lawsuits and extreme penalties that jeopardize American drilling,” said Rep. Harriet Hagerman (R – Wyoming) in a statement. “America’s energy producers should be protected from the dangerous legal precedent that would be set by the retroactive punishment of lawful activity.”

Together with Sen. Ted Cruz (R – Texas), Hagerman has introduced the End Climate Shakedowns Act of 2026.

Their bill:

• “Prohibits retroactive climate liability lawsuits and other proceedings to implement or enforce an energy penalty law.
• Dismisses pending lawsuits and proceedings on the date of the law’s enactment.
• Voids state energy penalty laws.
• Affirms that the federal government maintains the exclusive authority and jurisdiction to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions and other interstate environmental standards.”

While the bill has a reasonable chance of passing the House, it would need 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a Democrat-led filibuster threat, a daunting barrier.

But their legislation coincides with a recent Supreme Court decision to hear a challenge by ExxonMobil and Chevron to Boulder, Colorado’s, 2018 “climate accountability” lawsuit.

That lawsuit, brought under state law, alleges the two companies deliberately misled the public on the effects of climate change to make enormous profits, and some of that money should now be used to help Boulder recover and prepare for future climate-related disasters.

Last year, the Colorado Supreme Court allowed the case to proceed in state court, prompting the oil companies to ask the high court to step in.

For its part, the high court will review whether federal law preempts state-law claims regarding interstate emissions.

Fearing the precedent the Boulder lawsuit could set, the Trump administration, through the U.S. Office of Solicitor General, has urged the Supreme Court to reject the state tort claims, a ruling that could lead to many similar cases being dismissed.

The justices are expected to hear oral arguments in the fall, with a decision to follow sometime in 2027.

Read more at CFACT