More than 60 state and local governments have filed state-law tort suits in state courts around the United States collectively seeking billions of dollars in damages and other relief from major oil and natural gas producers for the alleged local effects of global climate change. Preclusion of these proliferating climate-change tort suits is crucial not only to the defendant fossil fuel energy companies, but also to the nation’s economy, critical infrastructure, national security, and international relations.
The Supreme Court has granted certiorari in Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County (25-170), which presents the question of whether federal law precludes state-law tort suits for the alleged local effects of global warming and climate change.
The Atlantic Legal Foundation, joined by the Federation of Defense & Corporate Counsel, has filed an amicus brief arguing that climate-change tort suits significantly conflict with uniquely federal interests, and that alleged liability for contributing to global climate change cannot be fragmented into countless state and local pieces.
Case Background
Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) and Exxon Mobil Corporation are defendants in a suit brought by Boulder, Colorado seeking damages and other relief for those companies’ alleged role in “causing” or “exacerbating” global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions and supposed resultant “alteration” of the earth’s climate. Over a strong dissent, the Colorado Supreme Court held that federal law does not preclude the suit from proceeding.
Amicus Brief
The amicus brief argues that if the County and City of Boulder, Colorado can proceed with their suit seeking to hold the defendants liable for alleged local harm attributable to global warming and climate change, so can Colorado’s other 61 counties and 271 municipal governments, and indeed, tens of thousands of other local governments throughout the United States. If such suits are successful, businesses and individuals claiming to have been harmed by global climate change also could attempt to cash-in on the “climate crisis” by suing the nation’s major fossil fuel energy companies.
Boulder’s and every other climate-change tort suit has a transparent political, as well as pecuniary, purpose: destroying the highly regulated oil and gas industry, or at least severely curtailing the entirely legal production, sale, and use of fossil fuels in the United States and abroad.
Climate-change tort suits that attempt to splinter fossil fuel producers’ alleged liability into countless state or local pieces cannot be reconciled with at least two indisputable scientific facts: First, global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions and resultant climate change are whole-earth phenomena that have no geographic or political boundaries. Second, there are a multitude of sources of carbon dioxide (essential for plant life) and other greenhouse gas emissions, including non-fossil fuel sources, both in the United States and abroad. Further, some respected scientists believe that there are non-greenhouse gas factors that contribute to global warming.
The Supreme Court long has recognized that interstate pollution is a subject of uniquely federal interest, and thus cannot be addressed by 50 different state-court and state-tort systems. The amicus brief argues that at the very least, there would be an enormous potential for conflicting or inconsistent findings of fact, conclusions of law, judgments, imposition of astronomical and overlapping damages awards, and additional remedies. Instead, a nationally uniform rule of decision is needed: a Supreme Court opinion unequivocally holding that climate-change tort suits are precluded by federal law.