Professor John Yoo, a senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute and Michael Toth, Civitas’s research director, wrote in The Washington Post this week about how the “lawfare by American climate activists threatens significant damage to the nation’s domestic energy industry — and with it national security.”
Yoo and Toth highlighted two cases before the Supreme Court:
In Suncor v. Boulder County, which the Supreme Court agreed to hear in February, Colorado officials have invoked a sweeping legal theory that would essentially make states the arbiters of international climate policy. The theory states that energy companies are responsible for billions of dollars in damages because they supposedly concealed the link between fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions all over the world.
The supreme courts of Colorado and Hawaii allowed these lawsuits to move forward, while the Maryland Supreme Court did not. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to rule on whether the state laws allowing these lawsuits violate federal supremacy on interstate commerce and foreign affairs.
But before the justices hear Suncor, they will decide another case with similar implications. Argued in January, Chevron v. Plaquemines Parish asks whether local officials in Louisiana and their Republican governor can sue companies for supposedly causing coastal land loss while fulfilling a federal contract. Together, Suncor and Plaquemines will test whether the Constitution precludes states from undercutting American energy diplomacy.
Lawsuits are not the only efforts at strategic self-sabotage under the guise of climate leadership. New York and Vermont have passed climate “superfund” laws that impose retroactive damages for past greenhouse gas emissions. Missing is any credit to energy companies for the human flourishing made possible by modern fuels, from the vast increase in global food supplies to the productivity gains resulting from widespread home electricity.
Instead, these laws impose financial penalties — often with limited due process — based on extreme environmentalist theories that make activist local governments the regulators of global energy markets.
Yoo and Toth conclude: “State laws that impose these climate change penalties on energy companies should be preempted, and governors who value national strength must stop treating energy producers as enemies. In a world of war, America’s first duty is keeping its lights on.”
Read more in The Washington Post.
