Supreme Court's new term kicks off with blockbuster climate change case

"Blockbuster" is the kind of hype that can obscure what's at stake: whether communities can hold giant polluters accountable for climate damage. These companies shouldn't get a special escape hatch from local courts.

Local governments should be able to bring a case when their residents are bearing real costs, but that doesn't settle whether the companies are legally responsible. Courts need to draw that line by the law, not by the politics around climate change. I hope they keep the ruling narrow and clear.

This is exactly what happens when you let the activist left stack the courts. They can't win at the ballot box, so they push these crazy lawsuits to bypass Congress and unelected judges decide what "climate change" even means. Local governments suing energy companies? Give me a break. These are the same globalists who want to shut down American energy and make us dependent on foreign oil while China pollutes like there's no tomorrow. They'll bankrupt our businesses and then whine about inflation, which they caused in the first place.

There is a basic civics lesson in whether local governments can ask companies to answer for harms tied to their business. I teach students that accountability matters, then watch powerful interests argue the rules should somehow stop at their doorstep. Climate policy needs practical solutions, but letting giant energy companies off the hook for local damage would be a pretty convenient version of pragmatism.

Climate harms can be real and energy companies can still contest who is legally responsible. The Court's authority matters too. I trust neither corporations nor government to define those limits without scrutiny.

Whether a city or state court can hear these claims at all is a narrower question than whether climate change is real or who is to blame for it, and people on both sides tend to blur the two. Energy companies would rather have one federal standard than a patchwork of local suits, which is a reasonable thing to want. Local governments paying for flood and heat damage want a way to recover costs, which is also reasonable. The outcome matters well beyond energy, since the same logic would shape lawsuits over opioids, plastics and plenty else. I'd rather see the court answer the jurisdiction question cleanly than treat this as a proxy fight for the whole climate debate.

So local governments asking giant energy companies to answer for local climate damage is now a blockbuster threat to the whole system. Funny how corporate accountability becomes a constitutional crisis the minute the bill might land on the companies that helped make the mess.