On February 11, oral arguments in the City and County of Boulder’s activist-backed climate lawsuit will be heard by the Colorado State Supreme Court. That means today may be the beginning of the end of Boulder’s attempts to pin the blame of climate change on American energy producers.
As Axios Denver reports, Boulder “faces an uphill battle” in court. The momentum, and recent caselaw, are not in Boulder’s favor. In recent months, state judges in Baltimore, New York City, Annapolis and Anne Arundel County, and New Jersey have dismissed similar climate lawsuits on the grounds that the lawsuits inappropriately aim to regulate global emissions.
Experts Say That Boulder’s Climate Lawsuit Threatens Consumers and Manufacturers Alike
Boulder’s lawsuit, filed more than seven years ago, has amassed strong opposition in the energy-producing state. When the case was first filed, Colorado media saw through this attempt to drive policy through the courts. At the time, the Denver Post Editorial Board went on record to oppose the City’s lawsuit:
“Climate lawsuits like the one in Colorado and others in New York City and California seek to bypass the political process and either wrest large settlements out of companies that tire of the legal battering or locate a court sympathetic to the plaintiffs’ dubious legal theories.” (emphasis added)
Seven years later, the case still “dangerously miss[es] the mark,” to borrow the words of the Denver Post.
Recently, Amy Oliver Cooke, director of the Energy and Environmental Policy Center at the Denver-based Independence Institute, examined to the numerous flaws inherent in the case. For starters, Cooke noted that Boulder’s lawsuit wasn’t an organic effort: it was carefully orchestrated by environmental nonprofits and the left-wing billionaires that fund them. From its lawyers to its PR team, the entire gambit has been bought and paid for by special interests:
“Boulder’s outside legal team and communications experts, led by DC-based EarthRights International, receive millions of dollars of funding from a who’s who of well-heeled donors, including the likes of far left billionaire George Soros and the Rockefellers.” (emphasis added)
Perhaps even more concerning is the fact that this lawsuit is bound to raise prices on Coloradan consumers. Cooke lambasted the City of Boulder’s leadership for pursuing this litigation at a time when misguided Coloradan energy policies are already hurting consumers:
“The reality is clear: Coloradans are bearing the brunt of skyrocketing electricity rates and Boulder’s frivolous lawsuit only adds insult to injury. Colorado voters have demonstrated they’re looking for pragmatic solutions to energy challenges, not ideological experiments that raise costs and jeopardize reliability.” (emphasis added)
Even worse, the inevitable cost to consumers is a feature, not a bug. In 2020, Marco Simons, an attorney with nonprofit EarthRights International and the lead plaintiffs’ counsel for the case, explained to a reporter that one goal of the lawsuit is to “raise the price of the products” created by energy companies so they become too expensive to use. A Boulder County official later commented that the lawsuit is a means to advancing a “systems-level change”
It’s clear that this lawsuit has little to do with solving climate change, but instead is a politically motivated effort to force Coloradans into reducing their consumption of fossil fuels.
Bottom line: Coloradan and American consumers deserve better than for their energy prices to be gambled on by out-of-state interests seeking to weaponize the judicial branch to ban fossil fuels. The Colorado Supreme Court has an opportunity to follow in the footsteps of state courts in Maryland, New York, and New Jersey, and reject this misguided litigation campaign.
Read the full story at EIDclimate.org.
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