Joy Pullman writes for the Federalist about bad news for major energy companies.
Massive energy companies are funding both sides of multibillion-dollar climate litigation because the high-dollar law firms conducting their defense also support their legal adversaries. Major litigation using climate activists’ strategy reaches the Supreme Court Monday morning in Suncor v. Boulder.
That case concerns whether climate activists can use anti-Constitution courts as a national superlegislature to decommission the reliable energy that undergirds the U.S. economy. The plaintiffs seek to pillage reliable energy companies by blaming them for alleged global emissions that allegedly damage the far-left city of Boulder, Colorado.
Even climate alarmists admit China is the world’s top source of energy emissions, annually releasing a claimed three times as much as the United States. Climate “science” is notoriously unreliable and politicized.
“Adverse verdicts could extract tens of billions of dollars from the energy sector and effectively impose a national carbon tax on American consumers. Gas prices and utility bills would soar, left-wing activists and green advocates would cheer, and working families would bear the cost,” writes consumer protection lawyer and former Arizona Attorney General O.H. Skinner.
Massive energy firms such as ExxonMobil, Suncor, BP, Conoco Philipps, Philipps 66, and others face similar litigation in numerous cases that will increase if the Supreme Court rules in favor of Boulder. The damages demanded are so large they could end the companies and transform them into another massive money pot fueling even more leftist aggression against private property and limited government.
Yet these same companies are effectively funding their would-be destroyers through the Big Law firms these companies have hired to defend themselves from ruin.
“Consider WilmerHale, Arnold & Porter, and Latham & Watkins — three of the most prestigious law firms in the country,” former Arizona Supreme Court justice Andrew Gould noted recently at National Review Online. “All three are representing major energy companies in climate lawsuits, and all three are closely connected to ELI” — the Environmental Law Institute, a nonprofit that trains judges to rule in favor of climate activist litigation against reliable energy.
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