Carly Phillips is a research scientist with the Science Hub for Climate Litigation at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) recently agreed to hear arguments in Boulder v. Exxon and Suncor, a case that could decide whether communities harmed by climate change can hold polluters accountable in state court.

Originally brought against the fossil fuel giants in 2018 for their decades of disinformation and other contributions to the climate crisis, the case points to a wide range of challenges the Boulder community is facing due to a changing climate, including unprecedented flooding, prolonged drought, extreme heat conditions, unreliable snow pack and worsening air quality.

In 2021, the Marshall Fire underscored the urgency of the case as Colorado’s costliest wildfire in history, destroying over a thousand homes in Boulder County and causing approximately $2 billion in damages.

Lower courts have consistently recognized that state courts are the appropriate venue for state-law claims about deception and local damages. However, this Supreme Court decision could impact whether climate accountability lawsuits filed by states and municipalities across the country can move forward in state courtrooms.

While scientific evidence clearly shows that fossil fuel emissions are the primary driver of climate change and that industry actions, including a well-documented decades-long campaign of deception, have delayed climate action, this decision jeopardizes the possibility of that sound science being heard in court.

What is SCOTUS debating?

The legal question under consideration – whether such lawsuits belong in federal or state court – could shape the future of dozens of science-backed cases brought by US cities, counties and states that argue the industry long knew their products were driving climate change while they deliberately misled the public to boost their profits.

SCOTUS is no stranger to this question, having declined to intervene at least four times in previous, similar cases, instead allowing them to play out in state courts. The facts in these cases haven’t changed, nor have Justice Samuel Alito’s documented conflicts of interest.

What has changed, however, is the identity of the plaintiffs. In this case, his former recusals have been preempted on a technicality and as a result, the court is now willing to reconsider a long-standing request for a federal accountability escape hatch.

Such procedural jousting and legal gamesmanship obscures Big Oil’s end game: to evade accountability by ensuring the scientific evidence in these cases never has its day in court.

Attacks on science extend across all three branches

Attacks on science during the Trump administration are nothing new – from withdrawing from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and promoting a sham report commissioned by the Department of Energy to repealing the Endangerment Finding, trying to discredit attribution science, and undermining judicial education. But this recent decision clarified precisely what’s at stake in the ongoing battle for a livable climate.

The science underpinning these cases is clear, robust and consistent. Yet the fossil fuel industry and its political allies are doing everything in their power to neutralize threats by neutering science, even as communities face the costly and sometimes deadly consequences of the sector’s products.

Gas flaring soars in Niger Delta post-Shell, afflicting communities

The fossil fuel industry and their trade groups are also lobbying to escape legal liability through the introduction of state immunity legislation and congressional intimations of a federal liability waiver should this procedural maneuver fail. These waivers, if signed into law, would grant fossil fuel companies immunity from both existing and future lawsuits, effectively eliminating access to justice and accountability for communities across the country.

If litigation does move forward in state court, attempts by industry allies to delegitimize science itself are already obstructing judicial access to robust scientific information and riding the wave of Big Oil’s decades-long disinformation campaign.

One of the most flagrant examples of this strategy took place last month, when the Federal Judicial Center – the independent research arm of the federal counts, responsible for educating judges on complex scientific issues – removed its entire chapter on climate science from its Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence in response to pressure from attorneys general aligned with industry interests.

Evading accountability through all means necessary

This is not about judicial neutrality or substantive debate over research methods that have been developed over decades and reviewed and revised by countless scientists. Rather, these attacks on science function as another layer of Big Oil’s already comprehensive insurance policy to protect their profits and power at the expense of people already reeling from the impacts of their products.

The broader goal of a multi-pronged approach to change venues, legislate immunity and erase access to scientific information isn’t to win on the merits, but to ensure no merits are ever considered. No trial. No day in court. No consideration of the scientific facts that Big Oil knew about the severe harm its products would cause and chose to lie at the expense of global climate stability and local communities’ lives and livelihoods.

Gulf oil and gas crisis sparks calls for renewables investment

Should their attempts to legislate immunity flounder and their procedural maneuvering fail to yield dismissal or relocation to federal court, they will nonetheless have obstructed access to reliable, scientific information through decades of their own disinformation.

Courts and legislatures need access to the best available evidence. Obstructing facts limits pathways to justice and only serves the interests of the powerful, polluting few.

Climate science is not on trial, but it is under siege. As long as Big Oil can delay, distort, and deny, they win – no matter what the evidence shows. The public deserves well informed judges to make decisions grounded in data. Preserving access to science preserves access to justice.

The post As Trump’s attacks on science escalate, Big Oil moves to avoid legal accountability appeared first on Climate Home News.

As Trump’s attacks on science escalate, Big Oil moves to avoid legal accountability

While the faith-based marchers failed to push the Clear Horizons Act through the state legislature, it spread prayers for the climate from ranches to oil fields to wind farms.

By Tina Deines

Oil and gas wells might seem unusual sites for religious pilgrims, but on January 12, three faith-motivated environmentalists set out on a 328-mile trek from Carlsbad, New Mexico, that would see them slogging on foot past fossil-fuel developments, through remote ranch lands and deep into the desert on their way to the state capitol in Santa Fe.

A New Mexico Religious Pilgrimage Rode a Global Wave Hoping for Ripple Effects for the Environment

Doubling down on fossil fuels in response to the spikes in oil and gas prices unleashed by the Iran war would be “completely delusional”, the UN climate chief is expected to warn on Monday, in one of his strongest attacks yet on planet-heating fossil fuels.

Addressing political and business leaders in Brussels, Simon Stiell will argue that dependence on oil and gas is “ripping away national security and sovereignty” and will urge them not to use the crisis as a pretext to slow the clean energy transition.

“Fossil fuels that supercharge disasters rake in trillions in taxpayer-funded subsidies globally,” he will say. “Money that could be far better spent”.

Climate Home News understands Stiell views the current crisis as a crucial moment to ramp up pressure against fossil fuels, as it lays bare the economic irrationality of new oil and gas investments compared with the benefits of renewable energy.

Stiell’s warning comes at the start of a pivotal week for energy policy in Brussels. Energy ministers meet on Monday to discuss soaring energy costs before environment ministers gather on Tuesday to debate climate targets and a proposal to dilute carbon dioxide emissions standards for cars. Energy security will also feature high on the agenda of the European leaders’ summit on Thursday and Friday.

Oil and gas prices surging

Oil and gas prices have surged after key Gulf producers halted output following Iran’s attacks on regional infrastructure and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil supplies pass.

The disruption is hitting Asia hardest. Nearly 90% of the region’s oil and gas flows east, and fuel shortages have already forced Bangladesh to shut universities early and the Philippines to cut civil servants’ working hours. Across the continent, import-dependent countries have scrambled to lock in supplies, driving up prices as they compete for the same cargoes.

Europe has little direct exposure to the Strait of Hormuz disruption, but integrated global energy markets mean the continent will still pay more for its oil and gas imports.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said last week that the Iran war had already cost European citizens an additional three billion euros ($3.4 billion) in fossil fuel imports. “That is the price of our dependency,” she added.

‘Renewables turn the tables’

But right-wing politicians have seized on the Middle East crisis to attack the bloc’s green policies, blaming them for rising energy prices and weakening competitiveness.

Some governments, including Italy, have called for the suspension of the Emissions Trading System (ETS), the continent’s main climate policy, which incentivises companies to invest in lower-carbon production by putting a price on pollution. Eight other governments have urged the EU not to weaken its carbon market.

Von der Leyen said abandoning the EU’s long-term strategy, focused on investment in renewables and nuclear, would be a “strategic blunder”.

Gulf oil and gas crisis sparks calls for renewables investment

Echoing her message, Simon Stiell is expected to tell leaders that “meek dependence on fossil fuel imports will leave Europe forever lurching from crisis to crisis”.

“This fossil fuel crisis will happen again and again in this new world disorder where some major powers do as they please,” the UN climate chief will say.

“Renewables turn the tables,” Stiell is expected to add. “Sunlight doesn’t depend on narrow and vulnerable shipping straits. Wind blows without massive taxpayer-funded naval escorts”.

The rollout of new wind and solar power capacity across Europe since the introduction of the Green Deal in 2019 has saved 59 billion euros ($67bn) that would have been spent on additional fossil fuel imports, according to analysis by think-tank Ember.

The post ‘Completely delusional’: UN climate chief warns against fossil fuel push after Iran crisis appeared first on Climate Home News.

‘Completely delusional’: UN climate chief warns against fossil fuel push after Iran crisis