The latest attempt to hamper our ability to do things? A series of lawsuits against oil companies for allegedly committing global warming. The plaintiffs want billions and billions to be extracted from these companies for fueling civilization.
Litigation before the Supreme Court, Suncor v. Boulder County, is “one of the most consequential energy cases in decades,” argue Michael Toth and Sarah Harbison in the New York Post.
Boulder County is just one of many seeking to make oil and gas companies fork over massive damages.
To whom? Entities like Boulder County.
The high court’s response will help determine the viability of future such litigation and “whether the United States remains an energy superpower.”
Energy superpower status is not what people trying to drive their cars and heat their homes at a reasonable cost are worried about. If the court accepts the plaintiffs’ reasoning, the sky’s the limit as far as the liability of the energy industry.
And those new sky-high liability costs for gas and oil providers will result in new sky-high costs for you and me.
Looting all of us is fine with lawsuit supporters like David Bookbinder of Environmental Integrity Project. “This is a rather convoluted way to achieve the goals of a carbon tax,” Toth and Harbison claim. “The people who use the products pay for the damage that they cause.”
The Post’s authors urge the Supreme Court to “shut down” this attempt to circumvent the Constitution. And confirm that U.S. energy policy “can’t be dictated by local lawsuits.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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One reply on “Punish Energy Producers?”
The incentives promote these suits. The suits always have some finite chance of success, as junk-science sometimes triumphs in court. The political officials who bring these suits curry favor with a significant share of the voters their districts and with political donors across the country and sometimes from abroad. If the suits fail, the taxpayers bear the costs; the supporting voters don’t generally begrudge the expenditure of tax dollars.