S upply  and demand form the oldest and most powerful framework we have for analyzing price shifts for goods and services. Increase the cost of supply

Litigation against Fossil Producers Is Litigation against Energy Consumers and Voters

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2021-07-13 15:00:09

S upply and demand form the oldest and most powerful framework we have for analyzing price shifts for goods and services. Increase the cost of supplying a given good, and — presto! — its price will rise, imposing economic costs not only upon the producers but emphatically upon the consumers of the good.

Which brings us to the ongoing litigation game against producers of fossil fuels, in general an effort to blame them for the purported local adverse effects of anthropogenic climate change. In May, the Supreme Court ruled 7–1 in BP PLC v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore that federal appellate courts have the jurisdiction to examine all of the arguments made by litigants on whether such lawsuits belong in federal or state courts. The plaintiff cities and states usually prefer state courts as the venues, as they are seen as more likely to rule against the defendant fossil-fuel producers, in substantial part because the Supreme Court ruled in 2011, in an 8–0 decision (American Electric Power v. Connecticut) written by Justice Ginsburg, that “it is primarily the office of Congress, not the federal courts, to prescribe national policy in areas of special federal interest.”

So back to the lower courts we go for determinations of whether a state or federal court is the appropriate venue for a given lawsuit, with appeals becoming a certainty after such rulings are handed down. But in the larger context, this litigation game is based upon a premise that is false: that it is fossil-fuel producers who should be held responsible for the (highly uncertain) effects of increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHG).

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