Climate lawsuits only cost consumers

The Civil War-ending Battle of Gettysburg recently marked its 161st anniversary. Citizens of different states taking up arms against one another seems like an impossibility in the modern age. Yet if subversive lawsuits against energy companies are pursued to their natural end, history may repeat itself.

Right now, the battle is in the court system. Nineteen attorneys general have asked the Supreme Court to grant a motion to file a bill of complaint against five others for trying to enact disastrous energy policies on a nationwide basis. Alabama, et al. v. California, et al. names California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey, and my own state of Rhode Island as trying to extract enormous payouts from energy companies that would lead to increased energy prices on a nationwide basis and the bankrupting of many local economies.

The game is simple. By filing lawsuits against energy producers in state courts via state tort law alleging damages from a “climate crisis,” these five states hope to find a new source of cash to plug budget holes. Their model is the 1998 tobacco settlement that secured all 50 states and U.S. territories millions of dollars a year for as long as cigarettes are sold. By using state rather than federal courts, they can keep the cases in a venue more friendly to their climate grievances. Their goal is to manipulate the justice system and the courts to drive a national policy agenda away from fossil fuels by punishing energy producers.

This is not speculation. Transparency group Energy Policy Advocates revealed that in July 2019 state officials joined climate change activists and funders in Pocantico, New York, at a secret forum hosted by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The purpose of the cabal’s meetup was “to strategize together on the most promising ways to accelerate the pace of implementation” of “increasingly ambitious climate goals,” as the draft agenda promised. “The group will also discuss how state (legal) action can influence and underpin future federal action.”

The result of this “Accelerating State Action on Climate Change” meeting was to follow Rhode Island’s lead.

The state bragged about being the first to file a climate change lawsuit against major national energy companies; its lawsuit was filed a year before the New York meeting. Janet Coit, then director of Rhode Island’s Department of Environmental Management, was well positioned to discuss state efforts to secure a “sustainable funding stream” in the course of “suing big oil for R.I. damages in state court.” These actual notes were revealed after an open records request by Energy Policy Advocates.

California, one of the five states named in the Supreme Court filing, has several climate lawsuits against energy companies in motion by plaintiffs ranging from the state to municipalities and tribal entities. The attorney general of the Golden State, Rob Bonta, was chillingly explicit in a recent interview in which he described their lawsuits as an attempt to “open up the floodgates” for others to join in suing energy companies.

“More is better,” he said, to create a “broader ecosystem of impact litigation" — in other words, litigation whose purpose is to change society as a whole. He claims this will result in energy companies ceasing fossil fuel investment, but consumers, in reality, willl be the ones who will suffer apocalyptic “impact” on their daily lives if unaccountable judges indoctrinated by activist groups render friendly rulings.

If Alabama’s appeal fails, and the five states are victorious in their lawsuits, families and businesses will pay the cost through higher energy and fuel prices and dangerously low levels of grid capacity and reliability. Furthermore, as the brief makes clear, entire industries in other states could be put out of business because of the power grab of a few.

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The conveniences of modern daily life that we take for granted will become unavailable or unaffordable for most people.

“If a foreign country tried to do this to the U.S., we’d respond with diplomacy and, if that failed, force,” notes Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, who filed the case. The Supreme Court must allow this case to go forward and put a stop to this abusive overreach of the state court system. If the court doesn’t put a stop to this overreach by blue states suing energy companies, it may come down to force.

Mike Stenhouse is CEO of Rhode Island’s only conservative think tank, the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity. He earned an economics degree from Harvard University and is a former major league baseball player for the Red Sox, Twins, and Expos.

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this story, the Washington Examiner misreported the source of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund forum exposé and the open records request. They were performed by Energy Policy Advocates. The Washington Examiner regrets the error.